Trend: Office Spouses

Watching CNN this a.m. - caught a story about the phenomenon of "office spouses" or "office wife" or "office hubby".

This is not to be confused with dating or trysting with folks at the office, that is one thing...this is more about the intimacy that evolves between co-workers (many with real spouses outside the office) that evolves into a 9-to-5 personal relationship of open confession, personal advising, even highly-charged sexual innuendo. But the line is somehow never really crossed (nor is it expected).

In a survey by Vault Inc., a career research and consulting company, workplace "spousing" has surged in the last year. 32% of office workers said they have an office "spouse," with many having more than one.

Obviously some jobs increasingly require us to spend more time with workmates than time spent with real spouses. Cross-country flights, late-nite deck-writing, phone calls and emails and text messaging have bridged us towards multiple relationships that we depend on for emotional support.

And having such a support system could lead to better performance reviews and advancement, the survey said. Sounds like a win-win!

I promptly ran searches on Google and BlogPulse to get more testimony on Office Spousing, and a fair amount is there.

Funnier, still, is being able to follow the trail of the CNN reporters who clearly stalked blogs for prospects and pitched them to go on-camera for the story.

In the end, this is prob not a "new" trend, but it is insightful reality, and it now has a name so when we do web searches we can have the same term to reference (ain't that the hardest friggin' thing about "trends"?!?), and some "legitimacy" cuz major media is reporting on it.

see the CNN story here: http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/business/2006/03/22/dornin.office.spouses.cnn