Co-Workers Can Be Hazardous to your Marital Health
There is an increasing number of people who have an affair with a co-worker. Most people believe this will never happen to them. If you want to protect you, your spouse, and your children from the devastation that follows an affair we recommend you implement the following tips.
1. Control Your Thoughts
Your thoughts are your first line of defense in protecting yourself. Not all thoughts become actions, but all actions began as thoughts. Keep your thoughts on a professional level.
2. Emotional Intimacy
Opening up emotionally to a co-worker of the opposite sex can be dangerous. At first it is very innocent. However, the more you open up to each other emotionally, the more vulnerable you become to having an emotional affair. The closer you become emotionally with a co-worker of the opposite sex, the further you will withdraw emotionally from your spouse. Keep the topic of your conversations with co-workers of the opposite sex focused on work related items.
3. Avoid Being Alone Together
Do everything possible to avoid being alone with co-workers of the opposite sex. Don't go out to lunch, travel, etc. alone with a co-worker of the opposite sex. If you do any of these activities, does it mean you are going to have an affair? Of course not. But each activity will make having an affair that much easier to slip into.
4. Remind Yourself About the Reality of Affairs
The excitement of the affair will fade with time. The faults you and your co-worker have been hiding from each other will be discovered. Chances are slim you will be able to form a healthy and happy long-term relationship with each other. Very few people who have had an affair will tell you it was worth it.
The cold hard reality about affairs is once you have peeled off the attractive packaging, you are only going to find misery and heartache.
5. Personal Space
The closer you get two attracting magnets to each other the stronger the attraction becomes. Increase your personal space and keep co-workers of the opposite sex outside that space.
6. Don't Flirt
Flirting may seem innocent and fun, but it's like revving your engine at a stoplight. All that will happen is you are either going to heat up your engine or accidentally slip into oncoming traffic. A few minutes of having fun by flirting is not worth the heartache and misery it could lead to.
7. Minimize Physical Contact
If your are in the habit of touching co-workers on the shoulder, arm, back, etc. break the habit. You probably don't mean anything by it, but your co-worker might get the wrong impression.
8. Get a Buddy
The buddy system is used to protect you from unseen or overlooked dangers. Choose a co-worker of the same gender and ask him or her to be your "Marriage Guard." Ask him or her to be brutally honest with you if he or she notices behaviors, habits, etc. that could result in getting too close to the line that you don't want to cross.
9. Strengthen Your Marriage
A healthy marriage doesn't guarantee that you won't have an affair, but it does offer significant protection. Protecting your relationship takes time and effort. If you think any of these tips are too hard to implement, ask someone who has gone through an affair how hard it was to try and repair the damage that was done to his or her marriage.
By following these steps you can decrease you chances of experiencing the pain and misery from an affair and increase your chances of experiencing a healthy and happy marriage.
