How to deflect Cupid’s arrow at work—or not Americans spend a lot of time at work. Department of Labor estimates that we spend an average of 8.5 hours per day, or 42.5 hours a week, at the office. Facts material to the application are as follows: On July 19, 1939, the petitioner commenced an action to obtain a divorce from his wife, Bessie E. The action was commenced in San Francisco, but on application of the defendant an order was entered transferring the case to the county of San Mateo.

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Americans spend a lot of time at work. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that we spend an average of 8.5 hours per day, or 42.5 hours a week, at the office.

It’s perhaps then not too surprising that the lines between our professional lives and personal lives will sometimes blur, opening us up to the possibility of romantic entanglements with coworkers. But when Cupid takes aim should we be willing to catch fire, or would it be better to wear a flak jacket?

In a recent poll published by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 76% of the nearly 700 people surveyed said they’d dated a peer at work, 26% had dated a superior, and 21% said they’d dated a subordinate. These findings were highlighted in the Feb. 12 SHRM article, “Workplace romances: getting to the heart of the matter.” In the article, G&A Partners’ own Senior HR Business Partner Lucy Garcia shared some pro tips on how companies can limit liability, set clear boundaries, and communicate the risks to amorous employees, all while maintaining a professional, collegial working environment.

Sound difficult? It is. That’s why Garcia carried this advice a little further in her interview with Law360, a LexisNexis company, which shared her input in its Feb. 13 article, “Cupid in the cubicles: 4 Valentine's Day tips for employers.”

Things don’t always come up roses when one attempts to woo a coworker. There can be a fine line between innocent crush and stalker—and it typically hinges on the feelings of the person being wooed. There are also precarious professional rules of engagement to manage if a relationship develops between a subordinate and his or her supervisor. The last thing a company needs is a messy sexual harassment lawsuit and the negative press that goes with it.

Garcia outlined this and several more risks when sharing her advice with a syndicated news service that published the article, “Office romances aren’t all bad, but they come with costly risks.”

There’s a right way and a wrong way to have an office romance. How you choose to act on your impulses will determine your fate at your job. That was the overarching message in the Payscale.com article, “How to lose your heart at work (but keep your job).” In the article, Garcia and several other experts shared a number of precautionary steps to take before making the leap.

After all, Cupid’s arrows don’t always strike true. There are plenty of misfires that can lead to serious breaches in the company’s Code of Conduct if affection isn’t reciprocated or welcomed. That is why Garcia advised employers and employees to take the necessary precautions to shield themselves from Cupid’s wayward arrows, thereby avoiding the legal ramifications that could come along with them.

We’ve heard the clichés: “It was love at first sight,” “It’s inner beauty that truly matters,” and “Opposites attract.”

But what’s really at work in selecting a romantic or sexual partner?

University of Notre Dame Sociologist Elizabeth McClintock studies the impacts of physical attractiveness and age on mate selection and the effects of gender and income on relationships. Her research offers new insights into why and when Cupid’s arrow strikes.

In one of her studies, “Handsome Wants as Handsome Does,” published in Biodemography and Social Biology, McClintock examines the effects of physical attractiveness on young adults’ sexual and romantic outcomes (number of partners, relationship status, timing of sexual intercourse), revealing the gender differences in preferences.

“Couple formation is often conceptualized as a competitive, two-sided matching process in which individuals implicitly trade their assets for those of a mate, trying to find the most desirable partner and most rewarding relationship that they can get given their own assets,” McClintock says. “This market metaphor has primarily been applied to marriage markets and focused on the exchange of income or status for other desired resources such as physical attractiveness, but it is easily extended to explain partner selection in the young adult premarital dating market as well.”

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McClintock’s study shows that just as good looks may be exchanged for status and financial resources, attractiveness may also be traded for control over the degree of commitment and progression of sexual activity.

Elizabeth McClintock

Among her findings:

  • Very physically attractive women are more likely to form exclusive relationships than to form purely sexual relationships; they are also less likely to have sexual intercourse within the first week of meeting a partner. Presumably, this difference arises because more physically attractive women use their greater power in the partner market to control outcomes within their relationships.
  • For women, the number of sexual partners decreases with increasing physical attractiveness, whereas for men, the number of sexual partners increases with increasing physical attractiveness.
  • For women, the number of reported sexual partners is tied to weight: Thinner women report fewer partners. Thinness is a dimension of attractiveness for women, so is consistent with the finding that more attractive women report fewer sexual partners.

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Another of McClintock’s recent studies (not yet published), titled “Desirability, Matching, and the Illusion of Exchange in Partner Selection,” tests and rejects the “trophy wife” stereotype that women trade beauty for men’s status.

“Obviously, this happens sometimes,” she says, pointing to Donald Trump and Melania Knauss-Trump as an example.

“But prior research has suggested that it often occurs in everyday partner selection among ‘normal’ people … noting that the woman’s beauty and the man’s status (education, income) are positively correlated, that is, they tend to increase and decrease together.”

According to McClintock, prior research in this area has ignored two important factors:

“First, people with higher status are, on average, rated more physically attractive — perhaps because they are less likely to be overweight and more likely to afford braces and nice clothes and trips to the dermatologist, etc.,” she says.

“Secondly, the strongest force by far in partner selection is similarity — in education, race, religion and physical attractiveness.”

After taking these two factors into account, McClintock’s research shows that there is not, in fact, a general tendency for women to trade beauty for money.

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“Indeed, I find little evidence of exchange, but I find very strong evidence of matching,” she says. “With some exceptions, the vast majority of couples select partners who are similar to themselves in both status and in attractiveness.”

Contact: Elizabeth McClintock, 574-631-5218, emcclint@nd.edu