How does an office couple keep their romantic relationship from impacting their work relationship?

Host: How does an office couple keep their romantic relationship from impacting their work relationship?

Toni Coleman: The key word here is boundaries and boundaries in general can be hard for a lot of people. The work life oozes along with them when they go home and vice-versa and keeping those clean boundaries in general are important. It's especially important when you are dating somebody from the office, you are going home and perhaps you were dealing with the difficult client that day or perhaps you are having problems with the coworkers, the boss, you bring that home, you end up spending off a lot of time and energy, talking about work, which is where you have just left. Even though people do that with the partner who doesn't work with them, it's still a little bit different because the person does not know these people they are talking about; it isn't their work environment, is at least something different from where they spend a good part of their life. So I think it's a very, very important that they have a kind of an agreement and one of the things that I often recommend to people is that they allow themselves; if they drive home together, that's a great time, where they take the metro or they can sit and talk about some work related stuff in the transition or if they come separately and come home, they can spend, the five minutes, each get five minutes; tell me about me your day. In five minutes you can easily cover the highlights and yeah if there is a particular problem that you really need some counsel then you can ask for. Otherwise, you cover the highlights; it's a little transition and then you get into a 'us' here at home, close the door in the office.