Professionals often spend significantly more time at the office than at home. So much so that there is always a generous amount of single men and single women who don't have the time to meet new people. So the logical choice for them to meet other single men and women is naturally, the office.

When single people spend at least 40 hours, in some professions 50 hours and more, with like minded people of similar backgrounds and interests, relationships are a tempting side effect. Although it's a logical choice to look within the office for romance, there are definitely good and bad aspects to the office dating scene.

The good in office dating

There are several advantages to office dating one of which is obvious -- the time you have to check out the available singles is during your work hours so no longer do the constraints of office hours apply. Also the awkwardness of first introductions is usually eliminated as initial conversations are done within the pretense of a work environment once again relieving the stress of having to make such a critical first impression since the impression would be based on some sort of work objective as opposed to strictly a personal objective like you would have in the normal dating process.

A second advantage is knowing the person before you date them, at least to some degree. The truth is you may interact with a potential date several times on a business level and get to know something about their personality and themselves without being on the spot as you would in a normal social setting. This helps avoid the common pitfall of most early relationships -- incompatibility.

A final advantage, is the ability to quickly build a relationship as the time you see each other is significantly more than people who would meet outside the work place?

The bad in office dating

As with any dating scenario there is defiantly a bad side to office romance. For example just as being in constant contact with each other due to sharing an office can be an advantage it can also be a huge disadvantage. This amount of time spent together can cause a relationship to fall apart just as quickly as it developed, why? We all need alone time and seeing each other five days a week for eight hours or more and then spending time together on the weekends makes for precious little alone time.

Another disadvantage to the office romance is when a person must exercise their professional responsibilities which might include having to discipline or even fire the person they are dating . Although this might seem like a remote idea when you being the relationship, I don't think you would be very comfortable having to tell your boyfriend or girlfriend, "your fired". Another example of this might be a need for one of the participants to go out of their way to show the rest of the office they are not playing favorites maybe even to the point of not promoting the person even though they might be the most deserving.

A final disadvantage to office dating could be jealousy especially if the relationship is "under cover". If you see your officemates flirting with your date the natural reaction would be negative and why would being in a office environment generate any other reaction than a natural one? With that reaction might come a unnecessary reaction including punishing someone for something that is not work related at all.

Before you entertain the thought of dating the cute secretary on the fourth floor or the hot hunk VP you saw during the last office meeting, entertain the consequences of dating that person, balance the pros and cons and if you decide to move foreward keep an eye out for all of the things that can go wrong and have an understanding of how you might handle any of those situations. Remember you are dating a professional single so to keep your job keep the professional in front of the single.