shared a medium sized room with two older employees, Mike and Sharon. Both were in their 50s, and always nicely dressed. They were competent, well-spoken, and had been at the company for nearly 20 years, working in tandem.

As we sat in the room, I often heard them going over documents, joking, bickering, negotiating, doing all the things a couple might. If you only heard audio of them interacting, you might assume they were together.

But they were both happily married, and seemed loyal enough to their families. Pictures of their children and spouses sat by their respective desks.

Sharon jokingly asked me when I was going to get married —despite my being far from such a status being one of the only single men in the office.

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“Not anytime soon I said,” with finality.

Mike and Sharon were both very professional. But they often referred to one another as, “My work spouse.” I was 24 at the time, and never saw it as weird. If anything, it came off as endearing, a way of making peace with all the heated debates they got into over work and important decisions they mulled.

I related to them. Being in an office feels like you’re living with people, with each day and week blurring and shifting into one giant clump of recurring tasks, alarm clocks, and lunch breaks.

And this brought a sort of close comraderie that’s hard to replicate. Sharing the trenches and enduring the same concerns, uncertainties, and futures, does a magical job of building kinship.

Yet problems emerge when we begin referring to coworkers as work spouses. And it isn’t readily apparent in the moment.

The origins of it all
The term “work spouse” first emerged when the author, David Owen, wrote of the platonic intimacy that emerges with opposite sex coworkers, who play a role in mitigating the difficulty each deals with at the office, helping each other stay calm in the storm.

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Even George Bush joked that Condoleezza Rice was like his work spouse, with White House employees observing that they seemingly had conversations using only their body language. Condoleezza spent more time with Bush than any other aide, and she even accompanied the Bushes on vacations.

This habit of describing someone as a work spouse reflects an interesting trend in American offices, and is perhaps our way of dealing with anxiety around mixed-gender work. The term “work wife” and “work husband” have taken on a friendly and common nomenclature. The repurposing of the obvious non-platonic meaning of a spouse seemingly engenders a special meaning between two people.

After all, this coworker, more than any other, can relate to you and the hellish conditions you might endure in the office. They’ll understand your stories that would otherwise bore your real spouse into a nap. The connection comes naturally.

But perhaps it’s time we rethink such terms. Referring to someone as a work spouse can be suggestive to outsiders, and spur on rumors which do neither parties any good in the realm of office politics. And, with persisting cases of sexual harassment in offices, it’s the last thing you want if that relationship between you and your “work wife” goes sour.

What then does it become? A work divorce?

The incrementalism problem
The work spouse phenomenon is symptomatic of a work environment that stresses long hours, promotes meritocracy above all else, and perpetuates face time culture. The end result of this — our waking hours spent in perpetuity at an office — is casual language from daily life slipping in.

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It is only natural, right? Not necessarily.

What seems innocent in one case, may not be in others. Years ago, I worked at a large corporate logistics office, and there was a vice president, Jon, who was about 45 years old. He’d just hired a new team of entry level employees. One of them was a young, pretty 22-year-old engineer with a sparkle of ambition in her eye. She was great at her job, and traveled often with Jon to events.

I saw a peer of Jon’s ask him point blank about his constant travel with the young woman, half-jokingly, and half with genuine concern. Jon waved it off and said, “She’s like a daughter to me.”

Well, it turned out she was much more than a work daughter to him. In the ensuing six months, his expense reports and an internal investigation revealed he’d been sharing hotel rooms with this employee while traveling. Jon’s wife was also well known in the office and had worked there years prior, creating an absolute mess of a situation.

Compressing a series of events, Jon wasn’t fired —which was shocking in and of itself — but most knew he survived only because he brought so much revenue into the company. Jon wasn’t the first or last man to use his position of power to bed a woman and get away with it.

Jon was demoted from his senior vice president position, down to a director. He also tarnished his reputation in a way that’s hard to ignore or forget. And then there was his divorce, which got understandably acrimonious and expensive.

This story matters because the language we use to describe our relationships in the office can have dual meanings, even when we use them with the best of intentions. To you, saying work spouse is innocent. But to someone else, who saw a VP with his “work daughter” in their prior job, it might be hard to buy in to your reality.

Having a spouse can be a beautiful thing — as they (hopefully) understand you in a way that most people don’t and can talk you down in your more anxious or upset moments. And it isn’t unusual to find this in someone you work with. I loved working with good, smart, empathetic people. Not every financial analyst was a self-serving serpent.

The problem is that “work spouse” relationships routinely cross the line into inappropriate behavior. What begins as a feeling of closeness can suddenly become an emotional affair. According to clinical psychologist and marriage specialist, Dr. William F. Harley, there can be an incrementalism to this process, “Next is conversation, when that conversation turns personal. Admiration is another emotional need, where you tell the person they’re great at what they do. Once someone does enough of this for you, you start looking forward to being with him the next day, can’t stop thinking of him — one thing leads to another, and next thing you know, you’re having sex.”

And Harley isn’t the sole academic with these concerns. Sociologist, Dr. Marilyn V. Whitman, described the work spouse as an, “Exclusive, intimate, nonsexual shared bond with a work colleague.” He said that the connection often sat at a midway point between being platonic and romantic.

Now, as a thought experiment with Dr. Whitman’s assertion, imagine your spouse told you they had a coworker who was their work spouse, but not to worry, because it was midway between platonic and romantic. I suspect most of you are like me in that this relationship would sound nothing like “midway”, and more like fully romantic.


Sean Kernan