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by cush 286 days ago
All good points. Work from home isn’t helping us any either. People typically meet their partners at work.
4 comments

What 1970s office have you been working at where this is true?
It couldn't be more obvious and intuitive that the people you're around for half your waking time would be one of the bigger sources of potential partners, and also just friends/acquaintances where a partner comes from the social networks thusly formed.
The one that exists in reality
Most of my working life I've worked with grizzled old dudes. I think thats the case for a lot of other men too.
Not everyone is straight either
You’re kidding, really?
"Grizzled old dudes" often make good husbands and they have sufficient income and lifestyle to support a family.
> People typically meet their partners at work.

That seems unlikely. Genuinely curious if there’s something I’m missing here.

This paper suggests meeting people directly or indirectly via work was second to meeting through friends around the turn of the century, though there was a wide spread of how people met so it only amounted to a fifth of couples. Then online took over....

https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Rosenfeld_et_al_Disinterm...

it's for attractive people. for the rest of us it's a quick trip to HR.
You meet people at work, you don't proposition them at work.
I don't think your distinction matters at all.

If you're attractive and your advances are well recieved, you will not get reported to HR. Vice versa.

From the HR training i got from many places, harassment is what gets you in trouble with HR i.e. persisting after your advances have been rejected. Politely shooting your shot is fine, unless the target reports to you.
The distinction is creating a hostile work environment due to unwanted sexual attention.
You're missing the distinction. I met my wife at work but any and all propositioning happened outside the office, and not at office social events either.
and how did you get access to her outside the office for this propositioning?
You follow them to the gym, do you?
Uh, only if invited? I mean do you not ever get lunch with coworkers or invite them to events you're hosting or ask if they want to see a movie or concert with you that you've been into? The important thing is to establish a positive social relationship before indicating any sort of sexual interest, so they know you as "My chill coworker John" rather than "John the guy at the office who's always staring at my tits and asked me out for 'drinks' before we ever had a single conversation." It's not impossible to establish sexual or romantic chemistry before establishing social chemistry, but it's sure harder.
> The important thing is to establish a positive social relationship before indicating any sort of sexual interest

> asked me out for 'drinks' before we ever had a single conversation."

can you see the problem?

Ah, I found the cheat code... My now-wife was in HR.
Dating at work has almost become an incest level taboo.