I do agree that it’s reasonable/inevitable that sometimes roles conflict with who you want to date. But in all your examples, I wouldn’t necessarily frame this as ‘telling someone who they couldn’t date’ (more like saying ‘you can’t date x while one or both if you is in y circumstance’). Like, if I ran an organization and a manager came to me and said ‘uh, my report and I have kind of fallen for each other, and we want to date’, I wouldn’t be like ‘well you can’t date them’, I’d be like ‘congratulations! But yeah, you probably shouldn’t manage them anymore—I’ll find them another manager’. When potential romantic relationships arise in workplace settings where there’s a power dynamic, I think the best move is to let the relationship play out and move around the working relationships so there’s no longer a power dynamic between the two. The reason I think this is that romantic relationships are very precious for people, and not that easy to find, 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.
Similarly, if a monogamous person says ‘I won’t date you if you date other people’, that seems like them (reasonably) expressing a condition on who they will date—similar to if they said ‘I won’t date you if you eat meat/are a social conservative/are a smoker/want kids’. This feels different to external people trying to stop me from dating another person who wants to date me.
Maybe a lot of this is semantic, but the substantive thing might be ‘in cases where there are clashing social and work relationships, I’d be in favour of prioritizing the social one over the work one, and in workplaces accommodating social relationships that arise within in them, rather than trying to prevent them from happening’ - similarly to how good workplaces should accommodate people having kids (by e.g. offering parental leave), rather than telling them to just quit if they want a kid.
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.
congratulations! But yeah, you probably shouldn’t manage them anymore—I’ll find them another manager
In lots of small orgs this is tremendously costly or impossible. It might be a nonstarter at a lot of large orgs too, I just wouldn’t know about it because I’ve never worked at a large org.
I think the word “probably” in this quotation is quite concerning—you should 100%, definitely, in every case and without question not let someone manage someone they are dating. It’s an unresolvable conflict of interest and totally unprofessional.
But also, to Quinn’s point, if it’s a small org, even making this change might not really mitigate the problem. Imagine a 5 person team, where the CEO and one of the staff are dating, so then you change the reporting line for the junior person in the relationship. It seems highly probable that the new manager is going to be influenced by the fact that their boss is dating their subordinate.
I’m going to write a longer comment on how I think you can manage this below.
I do agree that it’s reasonable/inevitable that sometimes roles conflict with who you want to date. But in all your examples, I wouldn’t necessarily frame this as ‘telling someone who they couldn’t date’ (more like saying ‘you can’t date x while one or both if you is in y circumstance’). Like, if I ran an organization and a manager came to me and said ‘uh, my report and I have kind of fallen for each other, and we want to date’, I wouldn’t be like ‘well you can’t date them’, I’d be like ‘congratulations! But yeah, you probably shouldn’t manage them anymore—I’ll find them another manager’. When potential romantic relationships arise in workplace settings where there’s a power dynamic, I think the best move is to let the relationship play out and move around the working relationships so there’s no longer a power dynamic between the two. The reason I think this is that romantic relationships are very precious for people, and not that easy to find, 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.
Similarly, if a monogamous person says ‘I won’t date you if you date other people’, that seems like them (reasonably) expressing a condition on who they will date—similar to if they said ‘I won’t date you if you eat meat/are a social conservative/are a smoker/want kids’. This feels different to external people trying to stop me from dating another person who wants to date me.
Maybe a lot of this is semantic, but the substantive thing might be ‘in cases where there are clashing social and work relationships, I’d be in favour of prioritizing the social one over the work one, and in workplaces accommodating social relationships that arise within in them, rather than trying to prevent them from happening’ - similarly to how good workplaces should accommodate people having kids (by e.g. offering parental leave), rather than telling them to just quit if they want a kid.
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.
In lots of small orgs this is tremendously costly or impossible. It might be a nonstarter at a lot of large orgs too, I just wouldn’t know about it because I’ve never worked at a large org.
I think the word “probably” in this quotation is quite concerning—you should 100%, definitely, in every case and without question not let someone manage someone they are dating. It’s an unresolvable conflict of interest and totally unprofessional.
But also, to Quinn’s point, if it’s a small org, even making this change might not really mitigate the problem. Imagine a 5 person team, where the CEO and one of the staff are dating, so then you change the reporting line for the junior person in the relationship. It seems highly probable that the new manager is going to be influenced by the fact that their boss is dating their subordinate.
I’m going to write a longer comment on how I think you can manage this below.