Is it true that other successful institutions generally have norms against dating within them? (I don’t want to use the term “sleeping around”, which feels derogatory in this particular context). My company only prohibits dating people in your chain of command, and I am certainly aware of relationships within the company that have not caused any objections or issues that I know of. Though my company is tens of thousands of people, with thousands in my building, so maybe it doesn’t qualify as tight-nit. I also haven’t perceived any of my friend groups as having a norm against dating. Family seems obviously different, because there is that incest norm, and that impossibility of stepping away on the off chance that things go really badly. Though again, maybe you have a family with different dynamics—to the best of my knowledge, I’ve never met a cousin’s spouse’s anything. Anyway, point is, I don’t think it’s actually true that the rest of society operates this way.
Varies by context and institution. In my experience, I don’t perceive any norms against “serious dating” of people of roughly equal rank, but a lot of casual sex with officemates would cause some people to question your judgment. Activities with someone outside of the legal department (I’m a lawyer) wouldn’t raise any norm issues unless the other person was very senior.
i think “please do not intefere with people’s dating decisions unless there is a very very good reason” is the hard-won-of-experience cultural practice here
“not having norms” and “I failed to see the norms” would look very similar from the perspective of a socially clumsy actor.
I may be seeing things that don’t exist, but generally the groups I belong to have really strong norms against dating. The pervasiveness of flirting (subversive, plausibly deniable way in which socially adept folks circumvent these norms) should be evidence towards this.
I think using “dating” as synonymous with “casually sleeping with” is not a great choice since there is the option of dating people while holding off on sleeping with them. I think companies tend to have prohibitions when there are direct conflicts of interests but there are usually also more informal norms against casually sleeping with coworkers outside of that, unless it’s a huge company that isn’t tight-knit at all.
You think that dating a coworker or whatever without sleeping with them is less likely to cause problems than the reverse? That does not ring true to me at all. It does ring of Christian purity culture, which I would not have expected to encounter in EA.
Is it true that other successful institutions generally have norms against dating within them? (I don’t want to use the term “sleeping around”, which feels derogatory in this particular context). My company only prohibits dating people in your chain of command, and I am certainly aware of relationships within the company that have not caused any objections or issues that I know of. Though my company is tens of thousands of people, with thousands in my building, so maybe it doesn’t qualify as tight-nit. I also haven’t perceived any of my friend groups as having a norm against dating. Family seems obviously different, because there is that incest norm, and that impossibility of stepping away on the off chance that things go really badly. Though again, maybe you have a family with different dynamics—to the best of my knowledge, I’ve never met a cousin’s spouse’s anything. Anyway, point is, I don’t think it’s actually true that the rest of society operates this way.
Varies by context and institution. In my experience, I don’t perceive any norms against “serious dating” of people of roughly equal rank, but a lot of casual sex with officemates would cause some people to question your judgment. Activities with someone outside of the legal department (I’m a lawyer) wouldn’t raise any norm issues unless the other person was very senior.
i think “please do not intefere with people’s dating decisions unless there is a very very good reason” is the hard-won-of-experience cultural practice here
“not having norms” and “I failed to see the norms” would look very similar from the perspective of a socially clumsy actor.
I may be seeing things that don’t exist, but generally the groups I belong to have really strong norms against dating. The pervasiveness of flirting (subversive, plausibly deniable way in which socially adept folks circumvent these norms) should be evidence towards this.
I think using “dating” as synonymous with “casually sleeping with” is not a great choice since there is the option of dating people while holding off on sleeping with them. I think companies tend to have prohibitions when there are direct conflicts of interests but there are usually also more informal norms against casually sleeping with coworkers outside of that, unless it’s a huge company that isn’t tight-knit at all.
You think that dating a coworker or whatever without sleeping with them is less likely to cause problems than the reverse? That does not ring true to me at all. It does ring of Christian purity culture, which I would not have expected to encounter in EA.