whereas manager/report relationships (or professor/student or whatever) are generally less meaningful and require less compatibility, so it makes sense to prioritize the romantic relationship over the professional one.
While I do think this is generally true for managers at large organizations, there’s also an issue where there could have been some amount of abuse of power around the manager and report getting together. I think that’s even clearer in the professor and student case, where I would be extremely surprised to see a “congratulations” from the Dean.
You’re right that in some circumstances people would choose to handle a conflict by giving up their existing role, and “you can’t date X” phrasing from role gatekeepers assumes that someone strongly values their specific existing role. But I do think it’s reasonably common that people do value their existing roles more strongly, especially when we’re talking about casual dating and not “I think I’ve found my life partner”. So I do think this is responsive to the point you made in your original post, which is that having norms against combining certain roles with certain relationships does have consequences in terms of people not getting to enjoy some otherwise positive and fulfilling relationships.
While I do think this is generally true for managers at large organizations, there’s also an issue where there could have been some amount of abuse of power around the manager and report getting together. I think that’s even clearer in the professor and student case, where I would be extremely surprised to see a “congratulations” from the Dean.
You’re right that in some circumstances people would choose to handle a conflict by giving up their existing role, and “you can’t date X” phrasing from role gatekeepers assumes that someone strongly values their specific existing role. But I do think it’s reasonably common that people do value their existing roles more strongly, especially when we’re talking about casual dating and not “I think I’ve found my life partner”. So I do think this is responsive to the point you made in your original post, which is that having norms against combining certain roles with certain relationships does have consequences in terms of people not getting to enjoy some otherwise positive and fulfilling relationships.