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Workplace Challenges

Making Love Work at Work

Personal vs. Professional Lives: 5 Tips for Keeping Them Separate

Keeping your personal and professional lives separate can be tough for anyone, but doubly so if you work with your loved one. Experts dish up the dirt on how to keep work and play apart.

By Hélèna Katz

[ 2009-02-06 ]

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1. Don’t discuss work at home.

Life and business coach Joshua Zuchter says work can bleed into a couple’s home life, with both positive and negative effects. While chatting about workplace issues can help workers brainstorm on ideas they didn’t have time to think about at the office, he thinks it wiser to ban shop at home. “This will allow you to be more present and not carry any baggage from the office home with you.”

2. Leave your lover’s spat at home.

“Let’s say that John and Lisa had a huge disagreement before they went to work. This will probably affect their productivity,” says Zuchter. One technique for leaving personal disagreements out of the office includes acknowledging that you both want to clear up the conflict, but will agree to “park it” before going to work. You can revisit it once the work day is done.

3. Develop common interests outside of work.

Randall Craig, career planning expert and author of the bestselling book Personal Balance Sheet, says this is essential for broadening the relationship and giving you something else to talk about. “If you meet someone at a tennis club and go for coffee, you will start out by talking more about tennis,” he says. Similarly, if you met on the company’s audit team, you may be more apt to talk about this until you develop other common interests outside of work such as hiking, cooking or trips you’ve taken together.

4. Act professional at the office.

Treat your partner as you would any other colleague. That means no holding hands or kissing at work, says Zuchter. This keeps your personal and professional lives from overlapping by clearly setting boundaries between the two.

5. Take five.

Keep the home fires burning by creating time apart from each other regularly to enjoy some time alone. “It’s important for any relationship, but more so with people who work together and sleep together,” Zuchter says. “We need to recharge, remember who we are and not lose ourselves in the relationship.”