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Infidelity in the Workplace
Aired December 09, 2003 - 15:13 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: As the honeymoon glow fades and marriage settles into a mundane routine, the search for romance can lead husbands and wives to the wrong places. All this week on LIVE FROM, we're looking at infidelity in America.
And today, our Kathy Slobogin looks a common danger zone, your job.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KATHY SLOBOGIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Jeff and Heather Love both knew they were meant to marry. But the night he planned to pop the question in a fancy restaurant,
HEATHER LOVE, WIFE: He was so nervous to ask me that he waited until we got to the parking lot.
SLOBOGIN: But after the wedding, the fun and the romance started to fade.
H. LOVE: He started getting into this, OK, I'm the responsible man. And he was not quite as romantic. And I had a hard time with that.
JEFF LOVE, HUSBAND: Work was driving my life at that point in time.
This is Jeff.
I got to catch up on the e-mail, voicemail.
I will admit freely to anyone that I'm a complete workaholic.
SLOBOGIN: Jeff was traveling 20 days a month, pushing Heather and their marriage to the back-burner.
(on camera): Did it ever occur to you that your wife might meet somebody else?
J. LOVE: Never even thought about it. I really -- I assumed at that point that we were both working for the same goal.
SLOBOGIN (voice-over): But while Jeff was working for the future, Heather was drifting. After only eight months of marriage, she met someone else at work.
H. LOVE: It felt very romantic. He was very affectionate, very complimentary. He just made me feel very beautiful and very sexy, very smart. He was telling me all the things that I wanted to hear from Jeff.
SLOBOGIN: One night, after they successfully landed a client together, Heather and the other man went out for a drink. Jeff was traveling.
H. LOVE: I remember him looking at me and saying, "Kiss me." And, at first, I said no. And then he said it again. And I thought, OK, I can just kiss him. And then it just kind of snowballed from there. And the next thing I know, he was coming home with me.
DR. SHIRLEY GLASS, INFIDELITY EXPERT: They begin as friendships, rather than as somebody eying somebody attractive and thinking, boy, I'd like to have sex with that person.
SLOBOGIN: Dr. Shirley Glass calls the workplace the new danger zone for affairs. In her clinical practice, nearly half the women and 62 percent of the men who were unfaithful met their lover at work.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SLOBOGIN: The workplace has become such a problem in the eyes of many experts that one psychologist who works with couples has written a book with rules for the workplace, the most drastic of which is that male and female colleagues shouldn't even be friends. It's just too tempting.
PHILLIPS: So what is it about the workplace, Kathy, that makes it so threatening to marriages?
SLOBOGIN: Well, if you think about it, you spend hours every day with people at work, in some cases, more than with your spouse. Men and women share projects, make deadlines together, land clients together.
And it can lead to what the experts call the unintentional affair. In other words, this isn't like the conventional idea of adultery, somebody intentionally looking to cheat on the side. This can be almost accidental. It starts with a shared cup of coffee every day. You start talking about your co-workers, your boss. The next thing you know, you're talking about your marriage. And emotional intimacy develops that can be more intense than what you have with your spouse. And that can lead to an affair.
PHILLIPS: Well, is this unintentional affair just as damaging to the marriage as the deliberate kind?
SLOBOGIN: Possibly more so, because there's an emotional intimacy and a friendship, along with the sexual attraction. And that kind of intimacy can be very hard to give up.
Now, tomorrow, we'll take a look at a kind of intimacy that becomes an addiction for a lot of people, cyber-cheating, straying over the line online without ever leaving your home -- Kyra. PHILLIPS: All right, Kathy, I think all of us here in the newsroom, we're not going to be looking at each other. We're all going to be a little paranoid.
(LAUGHTER)
SLOBOGIN: Be careful.
PHILLIPS: All right, Kathy, we'll look forward to your piece tomorrow. Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired December 9, 2003 - 15:13 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: As the honeymoon glow fades and marriage settles into a mundane routine, the search for romance can lead husbands and wives to the wrong places. All this week on LIVE FROM, we're looking at infidelity in America.
And today, our Kathy Slobogin looks a common danger zone, your job.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KATHY SLOBOGIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Jeff and Heather Love both knew they were meant to marry. But the night he planned to pop the question in a fancy restaurant,
HEATHER LOVE, WIFE: He was so nervous to ask me that he waited until we got to the parking lot.
SLOBOGIN: But after the wedding, the fun and the romance started to fade.
H. LOVE: He started getting into this, OK, I'm the responsible man. And he was not quite as romantic. And I had a hard time with that.
JEFF LOVE, HUSBAND: Work was driving my life at that point in time.
This is Jeff.
I got to catch up on the e-mail, voicemail.
I will admit freely to anyone that I'm a complete workaholic.
SLOBOGIN: Jeff was traveling 20 days a month, pushing Heather and their marriage to the back-burner.
(on camera): Did it ever occur to you that your wife might meet somebody else?
J. LOVE: Never even thought about it. I really -- I assumed at that point that we were both working for the same goal.
SLOBOGIN (voice-over): But while Jeff was working for the future, Heather was drifting. After only eight months of marriage, she met someone else at work.
H. LOVE: It felt very romantic. He was very affectionate, very complimentary. He just made me feel very beautiful and very sexy, very smart. He was telling me all the things that I wanted to hear from Jeff.
SLOBOGIN: One night, after they successfully landed a client together, Heather and the other man went out for a drink. Jeff was traveling.
H. LOVE: I remember him looking at me and saying, "Kiss me." And, at first, I said no. And then he said it again. And I thought, OK, I can just kiss him. And then it just kind of snowballed from there. And the next thing I know, he was coming home with me.
DR. SHIRLEY GLASS, INFIDELITY EXPERT: They begin as friendships, rather than as somebody eying somebody attractive and thinking, boy, I'd like to have sex with that person.
SLOBOGIN: Dr. Shirley Glass calls the workplace the new danger zone for affairs. In her clinical practice, nearly half the women and 62 percent of the men who were unfaithful met their lover at work.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SLOBOGIN: The workplace has become such a problem in the eyes of many experts that one psychologist who works with couples has written a book with rules for the workplace, the most drastic of which is that male and female colleagues shouldn't even be friends. It's just too tempting.
PHILLIPS: So what is it about the workplace, Kathy, that makes it so threatening to marriages?
SLOBOGIN: Well, if you think about it, you spend hours every day with people at work, in some cases, more than with your spouse. Men and women share projects, make deadlines together, land clients together.
And it can lead to what the experts call the unintentional affair. In other words, this isn't like the conventional idea of adultery, somebody intentionally looking to cheat on the side. This can be almost accidental. It starts with a shared cup of coffee every day. You start talking about your co-workers, your boss. The next thing you know, you're talking about your marriage. And emotional intimacy develops that can be more intense than what you have with your spouse. And that can lead to an affair.
PHILLIPS: Well, is this unintentional affair just as damaging to the marriage as the deliberate kind?
SLOBOGIN: Possibly more so, because there's an emotional intimacy and a friendship, along with the sexual attraction. And that kind of intimacy can be very hard to give up.
Now, tomorrow, we'll take a look at a kind of intimacy that becomes an addiction for a lot of people, cyber-cheating, straying over the line online without ever leaving your home -- Kyra. PHILLIPS: All right, Kathy, I think all of us here in the newsroom, we're not going to be looking at each other. We're all going to be a little paranoid.
(LAUGHTER)
SLOBOGIN: Be careful.
PHILLIPS: All right, Kathy, we'll look forward to your piece tomorrow. Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
