Ms. LG,

I have enjoyed this board for years and find your advice to generally be interesting, almost always helpful to situations that applied to me, and never really troubling.  I am afraid you this time, you are off-base.

Your advice to this mildy troubled fellow was disappointing and loaded with misinformation.  Make no mistake about it, relationships between coworkers (whether merely physical or deeply emotional) can have all sorts of problems, only some of which you mentioned.  You broad brush statement about these relationships being "unethical and grounds for termination" is flat out incorrect unless there is an extremely well-structured company policy in place forbidding such relationships or unless they occur in the office.  Neither of these situations happens often.  Sexual harassment occurs either when someone offers something in exchange for a sexual relationship with someone over whom they have some sort of professional "power" or when a "hostile environment" is created related to expressed sexual attitudes that are unwelcome.  Flirting with each other, or even having relationships, violates neither of these tenets in the automatic way you describe.

Having said all of the above, as a professional manager of people of a wide range of skills, education, and salary, I acknowledge that workplace relationships can cause problems.  Would managers rather their employees never date each other?  Of course we would, but that is unrealistic, particularly in workplaces that demand a great deal of time and commitment from their employees.  I have coached employees and peers alike to keep it clean in the office as workplace behavior can result in some of the things you describe up to and including termination of problematically offending individuals and even lawsuits.  Parties to a relationship can change their minds and attempt to create workplace problems for other people.  This is where thorough investigation is required to ferret out what is going on the workplace and how it affects productivit.

What should happen is that smart managers watch the workplace for signs of problems and upon obseving something, warn both parties that untoward activities in the workplace is a bad idea and why.  The idea that management should have broad control over the relationships individuals have outside the office is folly and bad policy as well.  It is wise to remind people that the workplace can be about work and if nothing else gets accomplished there, that should be OK with everybody.  It is not OK to put excessive controls over what people do outside the office.