As you know, any kind of cheating is destructive. In the end, you will get hurt along with many other people around you.
The destruction is especially damaging when the affair involves the employee/boss relationship in the workplace. The employee and boss relationship has its foundations on trust.
There is also an element of duty. When this relationship becomes sexualized, the relationship is never the same again.
Not only are the relationships between the boss and employee impacted, an affair changes all the office relationships of those surrounding them.
There’s a risk that decisions start being made based on keeping secrets rather than good business sense. When decisions are based on secrets rather than sound business practices, the business suffers.
Once the boundaries between boss and employee are ruptured, things are never the same. It is as if Pandora’s Box has been opened and the contents can never be returned.
There are reasons for boundaries, even at work. Violations of those boundaries always bring consequences. The work situation turns from employment to prostitution.
This sounds harsh, yet once the affair and secrets take over, the work situation is drastically different.
The focus shifts from production or sales to self-indulgence. Neither the boss or the employee have the same priorities after sex enters their relationship. The relationship also becomes a leverage point for possible blackmail or exploitation.
Whether the affair was to secure favor, promotion or exploit each other, everyone suffers. The secrets are used as levers as a way of making things happen.
This is one reason spies often use sex as a way of turning people. Not only does sex sell products, it’s also a powerful manipulative tool.
When power relationships like boss/employee, pastor/parishioner, teacher/student, commanding officer/commandee or physician/patient are sexualized, there’s a tremendous release of energy.
That energy turns destructive. When you mingle the power with the sex, the result is explosive. The power that at one point was used to provide, protect or instruct gets twisted into a self-serving focus of sexual gratification.
What may have been a healthy relationship becomes diseased.
The sexual experience rewires the brain of each of the participants. The longer the affair continues, the greater the damage done within each parties brains and emotions.
Even when you’re not involved directly in the affair you’re impacted by the secrecy, and the pull of loyalty. Affairs test the loyalty of people to each other, employers to associates and bosses to employees.
Work associates often feel torn between saying something and keeping the secrets. Those kind of tensions eventually undermine and destroy teamwork.
The physical bonding between those involved in the affair changes as well. The change in bonding may lead to secondary problems that include a loss of objectivity, favoritism, and shift of focus. There will be tell tale observable signs of these changes.
Affairs at work are never a good thing.
If you are faced with the stress of workplace affairs, there’s hope. The video “How Can I Trust You Again?” provides the essentials needed in rebuilding trust, even in a workplace.
Best Regards,
Jeff
