Many successful families started with a relationship between people who met at work. Therefore, if you are looking for love, look around at the people you know and meet through your work. Do any of them interest you?

While to some the work environment might seem "off limits" for romance, it could be the best meeting ground available. You know the people have a job, can ask others about them and you probably can watch how they interact with others before they even know you are watching.

Determining company policy about personal relationships between colleagues is wise. Some companies encourage relationships within the organization and hire family members with the belief that this creates greater loyalty. Other companies will fire both parties who engage in intimate personal relationships. Before you act, know your company policy.

Closeness often results when people are working on projects together. They focus their emotional energy and there can be excitement in these relationships. There are often shared jokes and playful teasing. Laughter is good for a sense of well being. Receiving positive attention is good for the ego. Flirting is fun.

Many people spend more of their waking time in the workplace than in their homes. Similarity of attitudes breeds attraction. At work, people are usually on their best behaviour, well dressed, confident and feeling powerful. Power is sexy!

Working long hours on creative projects can be sexually stimulating. Feeling sexually charged is normal and healthy. Travelling to meetings, eating in fine restaurants and staying at classy hotels, is the perfect climate for sexual chemistry to mix and intimacy to grow. Men and women openly admit they like the charge that sexual arousal can create. This can be invigorating when life has become routine and heavy with responsibility.

Work place romance may be wonderful but it can also destroy careers. Secret meetings and communications can sap energy and resources that could be better used for constructive work. Jealousy and gossip can destroy chances for advancement. The traditional belief that women get promoted when they sleep with the boss still prevails. Many women have been hurt deeply when their boss moves on to his next target or when they find out he has more than one lover.

You have moved from a friendly working relationship when:

• there is sexual contact,
• the relationship is a secret,
• you feel guilty or afraid in the relationship,
• fantasies take mental time and energy.

In a platonic relationship, these behaviours are not present.

Be aware of your feelings and acknowledge they are normal human emotions. Take responsibility for your decisions and actions. You are not powerless! Just because you feel the attraction, you do not have to act on it. You can defuse it.

To avoid an intimate relationship avoid some of the situations that create the intimacy. Boundaries need to be built to maintain a professional standard of conduct. Let your feelings cool.

STOP:
• meeting privately, after hours or over lunch,
• personal E-mail and fax notes,
• endearments on voice mail,
• lingering glances,
• touching,
• keeping your feelings a secret, tell a trusted friend,
• creating fantasies.

Marilyn Barnicke Belleghem M.Ed., is a registered marriage and family therapist with a private practice in Burlington Ontario Canada. She consults to families in business on issues related to workplace relationships. She is the author of books on personal growth through travel. Questing Marilyn: In Search of My Holy Grail (Quest Publishing Canada 2003) takes the reader through sacred and historic sites in England and Ireland and involves the search for the authentic adult Self. It explores: “Who can I be when I am free to be my Self?” Questing France: Deepening the Search for My Holy Grail (2005) is the process of holding onto the Self when in a marriage relationship. It explores flirtations, infidelity, qualities of a functional marriage as well as parenting children through marital conflict. Questing France explores the questions: “Can I be me when I am with you?” and "Why do people stay in a marriage after an affair?" http://www.questpublishing.ca