Unless we’re really lucky, our jobs and the office politics that come with them can amount to five days a week of drudgery. Friendships with our colleagues can be a godsend, but when it comes to the “work wife” or “work husband,” these relationships can get messy really fast — just ask a divorce attorney.
Most of the time, these male-female office friendships are benign, but it’s not hard to see why a person’s partner or spouse would bristle at the mere term “work wife” or “work husband.” The words alone feel like something that at least approaches crossing a line.
No surprise, then, that the internet is full of stories about these office friendships taking a turn into marital or relational discord — and all too often, a trip to divorce court, according to attorney Kira Abernathy at Atlanta-based family law practice Your Law Firm.
“People usually don’t realize how these seemingly innocent workplace relationships can gradually undermine their marriage,” Abernathy said. “I’ve seen firsthand how ‘work spouse’ dynamics contribute to marital breakdown and divorce proceedings.”
So how can you tell if your “work spouse” is just a casual friendship or something that is rapidly going too far? “The emotional investment that should be directed toward your actual spouse gets redirected to a colleague,” Abernathy explained, “creating distance in your marriage while building inappropriate intimacy at work.” And she said there are five key signs that these lines have been crossed.
“If your first instinct is to text your work spouse rather than your actual spouse” about important news, achievements, or concerns, “that’s a red flag,” Abernathy said. She called this an “intimacy imbalance,” and it indicates something is off in the relationship, and the “work spouse” connection has gone too far.
If you find yourself “making mental or verbal comparisons between how your work spouse and actual spouse handle situations,” this is a quick road to resentment. Even worse, these comparisons are often unfair in the first place, since the situations you face with your “work spouse” are completely different from things like financial responsibilities or parenting decisions you face with an actual partner.
Yikes — pump the brakes and pump them hard if this is you. “Confiding in your work spouse about issues in your marriage creates a dangerous triangle,” Abernathy said, one that “can emotionally distance you from your partner while creating inappropriate intimacy with your colleague.”
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If it’s your instinct to hide your interactions with your work spouse from your actual partner, you’ve already gone way too far. “Deleting messages, hiding conversations, or feeling the need to conceal the extent of your work relationship from your partner signals that boundaries have likely been crossed,” Abernathy warned.
If you’re feeling jealous about your “work spouse’s” actual relationship and home life, then you have already crossed several boundaries as well. Abernathy called this a “significant warning sign that the relationship has moved beyond appropriate professional bounds,” and it’s time to rein things in.
Abernathy warned that ‘work spouse’ relationships can be just as damaging to a career as a marriage.
It’s not just a lawyer’s office you may end up visiting if a “work spouse” friendship goes too far — you may end up in the HR director’s office too if the relationship becomes too workplace-inappropriate.
Abernathy said that to avoid all of this, transparency and openness are the key, including introducing your spouse to your work friends and letting them join in on some workplace social events. “This transparency helps prevent secretive dynamics from developing,” Abernathy added.
If these aren’t possible, it probably speaks to deeper problems in the relationship. But for myriad reasons, including protecting your job and the legalities of a divorce should one ensue, “work spouse” partnerships are not the way to handle the difficulties of a bad relationship.
“The solution isn’t to avoid close workplace relationships entirely, but rather to maintain appropriate professional boundaries,” Abernathy recommended. “Remember that protecting your marriage requires intentional effort, especially when you spend more waking hours with colleagues than with your spouse.” In the end, it’s all about balance.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
