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January’s almost over now, but there is still two weeks to catch the surge that occurs every year on dating sites after the winter holidays. Just like joining the gym to work off those holiday pounds, the six weeks or so between New Year’s and Valentine’s show a huge jump in the numbers of singles joining a dating site. January and February is the best possible time to get online to find love, and to cruise all the new faces. See the movement described in this article that appeared in the Seattle Times:
It’s hunting season… for love
By Tan Vinh
Seattle Times staff reporter
When it comes to finding love, even Cupid can’t spur singles to action faster than a New Year’s resolution.
January marks the busiest and most profitable month for online dating services, with singles going online in record numbers to find soul mates or dates for Valentine’s Day, many industry watchers say.
“You get this massive surge. People start to re-evaluate their lives. They don’t want to marry this person. Or they want to break up with their boyfriends. Or they haven’t had a date in a while. And they all set their New Year’s resolutions to find someone,” said Markus Frind, founder of plentyoffish.com in Vancouver, B.C., one of the largest dating sites in North America.
Plentyoffish.com, with 10,000 members in Washington state, projects a 30 percent spike in traffic from new and current members this month.
Perfectmatch.com in Bothell, the largest dating site based in Washington, expects a 15 percent jump.
“We have an annual poll that we do relative to New Year’s resolutions, and finding love is at the top of the list,” said Perfectmatch.com founder Duane Dahl, one of the pioneers of online dating.
Hitwise, which tracks Internet traffic, found that more singles visited dating sites in January 2006 than in any other month that year, mostly due to New Year’s resolutions.
As a result, many dating sites now start major advertising campaigns around New Year’s Eve.
For the online dating industry, this time of year is like a perfect storm, serving up the family holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas, then the going-out holidays, New Year Eve’s and Valentine’s Day.
“You have the November and December effect with family gatherings, and all those questions get asked — ‘Who are you dating? Are there wedding bells?’ “ said Mark Brooks, editor of onlinepersonalswatch.com, which tracks the online dating industry. “And New Year’s Eve, people want to go out with their other halves. And of course, you have that build up toward Valentine’s Day and you get the loneliness factor rising.”
The surge is similar to the gym phenomenon, where a record number of shorts-and-spandex-clad newbies will hit the treadmills and Pilates classes every January to fulfill their resolutions to lose weight.
Of course, as any gym rat knows, most of those resolution-inspired members will eventually fall to the lure of happy hour or return to their old after-work routines.
Same with online dating. Traffic starts to drop after the week of Valentine’s Day and faces a steep decline by summer, Brooks said.
Robert Glover, a Bellevue-based therapist and dating coach, explained: “By spring, you start to go outside. There are things to do. All of the sudden, you are not sitting at home on a holiday such as Christmas, New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day, thinking ‘I’m a loser.’ I strongly believe that the holidays bring out a person’s strong sense to feel connected to somebody. When the holidays come and go, it’s not on our minds as much.” Feeling lonely “might still be there, but not [with] quite the same intensity.”
Danell Long, a 37-year old single mother from Federal Way, didn’t find Mr. Right in 2007. But January, she said, marks a new beginning. With all the singles logging on this month, “That’s good news,” Long said. “Hopefully, the choices will be a lot better, because I’m tired of seeing the same old faces online.”
Yesterday’s New York Times had a great article about Internet dating, specifically sites that do the matching for you, like eHarmony and Chemistry.com What was REALLY juicy was the companion article and the comments attached. Wanted: Single or Married Adult with Online Matchmaking Story asks for stories from couples who met online, and WOW! Did folks write in or what? You know how I love love stories, so I’ll copy off a bunch here. And I’ll put up “Wanted: Single or Married Adult with Online Matchmaking Story” in another post as well.
Here’s the first article below:
January 29, 2008
Findings
By JOHN TIERNEY
PASADENA, Calif. — The two students in Southern California had just been introduced during an experiment to test their “interpersonal chemistry.” The man, a graduate student, dutifully asked the undergraduate woman what her major was.
“Spanish and sociology,” she said.
“Interesting,” he said. ‘‘I was a sociology major. What are you going to do with that?”
“You are just full of questions.”
“It’s true.”
“My passion has always been Spanish, the language, the culture. I love traveling and knowing new cultures and places.”
Bogart and Bacall it was not. But Gian Gonzaga, a social psychologist, could see possibilities for this couple as he watched their recorded chat on a television screen.
They were nodding and smiling in unison, and the woman stroked her hair and briefly licked her lips — positive signs of chemistry that would be duly recorded in this experiment at the new eHarmony Labs here. By comparing these results with the couple’s answers to hundreds of other questions, the researchers hoped to draw closer to a new and extremely lucrative grail — making the right match.
Once upon a time, finding a mate was considered too important to be entrusted to people under the influence of raging hormones. Their parents, sometimes assisted by astrologers and matchmakers, supervised courtship until customs changed in the West because of what was called the Romeo and Juliet revolution. Grown-ups, leave the kids alone.
But now some social scientists have rediscovered the appeal of adult supervision — provided the adults have doctorates and vast caches of psychometric data. Online matchmaking has become a boom industry as rival scientists test their algorithms for finding love.
The leading yenta is eHarmony, which pioneered the don’t-try-this-yourself approach eight years ago by refusing to let its online customers browse for their own dates. It requires them to answer a 258-question personality test and then picks potential partners. The company estimates, based on a national Harris survey it commissioned, that its matchmaking was responsible for about 2 percent of the marriages in America last year, nearly 120 weddings a day.
Another company, Perfectmatch.com, is using an algorithm designed by Pepper Schwartz, a sociologist at the University of Washington at Seattle. Match.com, which became the largest online dating service by letting people find their own partners, set up a new matchmaking service, Chemistry.com, using an algorithm created by Helen E. Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers who has studied the neural chemistry of people in love.
As the matchmakers compete for customers — and denigrate each other’s methodology — the battle has intrigued academic researchers who study the mating game. On the one hand, they are skeptical, because the algorithms and the results have not been published for peer review. But they also realize that these online companies give scientists a remarkable opportunity to gather enormous amounts of data and test their theories in the field. EHarmony says more than 19 million people have filled out its questionnaire.
Its algorithm was developed a decade ago by Galen Buckwalter, a psychologist who had previously been a research professor at the University of Southern California. Drawing on previous evidence that personality similarities predict happiness in a relationship, he administered hundreds of personality questions to 5,000 married couples and correlated the answers with the couples’ marital happiness, as measured by an existing instrument called the dyadic adjustment scale.
The result was an algorithm that is supposed to match people on 29 “core traits,” like social style or emotional temperament, and “vital attributes” like relationship skills. (For details: nytimes.com/tierneylab.)
“We’re not looking for clones, but our models emphasize similarities in personality and in values,” Dr. Buckwalter said. “It’s fairly common that differences can initially be appealing, but they’re not so cute after two years. If you have someone who’s Type A and real hard charging, put them with someone else like that. It’s just much easier for people to relate if they don’t have to negotiate all these differences.”
Does this method actually work? In theory, thanks to its millions of customers and their fees (up to $60 a month), eHarmony has the data and resources to conduct cutting-edge research. It has an advisory board of prominent social scientists and a new laboratory with researchers lured from academia like Dr. Gonzaga, who previously worked at a marriage-research lab at U.C.L.A.
So far, except for a presentation at a psychologists’ conference, the company has not produced much scientific evidence that its system works. It has started a longitudinal study comparing eHarmony couples with a control group, and Dr. Buckwalter says it is committed to publishing peer-reviewed research, but not the details of its algorithm. That secrecy may be a smart business move, but it makes eHarmony a target for scientific critics, not to mention its rivals.
In the battle of the matchmakers, Chemistry.com has been running commercials faulting eHarmony for refusing to match gay couples (eHarmony says it can’t because its algorithm is based on data from heterosexuals), and eHarmony asked the Better Business Bureau to stop Chemistry.com from claiming its algorithm had been scientifically validated. The bureau concurred that there was not enough evidence, and Chemistry.com agreed to stop advertising that Dr. Fisher’s method was based on “the latest science of attraction.”
Dr. Fisher now says the ruling against her last year made sense because her algorithm at that time was still a work in progress as she correlated sociological and psychological measures, as well as indicators linked to chemical systems in the brain. But now, she said, she has the evidence from Chemistry.com users to validate the method, and she plans to publish it along with the details of the algorithm.
“I believe in transparency,” she said, taking a dig at eHarmony. “I want to share my data so that I will get peer review.”
Until outside scientists have a good look at the numbers, no one can know how effective any of these algorithms are, but one thing is already clear. People aren’t so good at picking their own mates online. Researchers who studied online dating found that the customers typically ended up going out with fewer than 1 percent of the people whose profiles they studied, and that those dates often ended up being huge letdowns. The people make up impossible shopping lists for what they want in a partner, says Eli Finkel, a psychologist who studies dating at Northwestern University’s Relationships Lab.
“They think they know what they want,” Dr. Finkel said. “But meeting somebody who possesses the characteristics they claim are so important is much less inspiring than they would have predicted.”
The new matchmakers may or may not have the right formula. But their computers at least know better than to give you what you want.
Now, I just love the Brits. If you are a regular blog reader here, you’ll have seen my posting about Match.com’s hilarious ad campaign Cupid and Fate. If you haven’t already, you need to take a look.
Something they are doing over that, whether it is “Cupid and Fate” or in the water, seems to be working Big Time. Take a look at the article below for the HUGE percentages of British singles who are using online dating.
Single Brits looking for love online
By Clement James VNU Net - Monday, January 21 10:30 am
The internet has become a mainstream way to find love, according to dating agency Parship.
The online matchmaking service claimed that there is now a 50:50 chance that everyone knows someone who is currently logging-on to find a special partner.
Nearly eight million Britons used some form of online dating service in 2007, compared to 5.4 million who used a mixture of offline and online services in 2005.
Some 52 per cent of British men and 48 per cent of women have used the internet to find a date in the past 12 months, compared to 36 per cent of men and 34 per cent of women in 2005.
Over 53 per cent of singles intend to use the internet to meet someone in the future, rising to 65 per cent of 36 to 40 year-olds.
Tony Blin Stoyle, UK and Ireland manager at Parship, said: “UK singles, particularly those aged 30 to 40, recognise that as they get older and their social networks become smaller, they need to maximise their opportunities in order to meet a partner.
“Our research suggests that if you rely on traditional routes and wait for a chance encounter with someone special, you could end up waiting a very long time.”
Victoria Lukats, a psychiatrist and dating expert for Parship, added: “ Provided people choose an internet dating site that helps them to meet like-minded people, it can be a great way of meeting someone special.
“With the busy lives that people lead today the old saying ‘love only comes along when you least expect it’ is at best outdated. The internet now allows single people to be much more proactive in finding a relationship.”
And here’s something about Match.com’s new ad campaign, too—see article below. This one actually seems to mimic eHarmony’s featuring of successful couples who met on the site, but what is better for business than success? Hey, Match: I met my husband Drew on Match in 1998. Why not feature us, huh? I do wish we could see something more creative like the ads Match is running in the UK—see my blog posting about Cupid and Fate. But it probably is a good decision to keep those ads with the Brits. Americans just don’t have the same sense of humor. Unfortunately.
Match.com Aims for ‘Regular Folks’ With New Campaign
December 20, 2007
By Vanessa L. Facenda
Match.com’s new campaign aims to inform singles-looking-for-love that online dating works—especially via its service.
Darcy Cameron, vp-advertising and marketing, Match.com, said the new campaign dubbed “Rewind,” is the next step in breaking down the alleged stigma of online dating.
“In “Rewind,” we’re showing people who have found [love] online, that Match works,” she said.
Cameron noted that this year’s campaign, “It’s Okay to Look,” which also featured ads with TV’s Dr. Phil, aimed to break down some viewers’ aversion to online dating. “Rewind” raises the bar by telling stories of couples who found love on match.com. The three spots (60-, 30- and 15-seconds), titled “Baby,” “Vacation” and “Dating,” feature couples of differing ages in various stages of relationships (one couple just had a baby, another is on vacation, etc.).
The spots begin with the end result—what happens when you look online—and retraces how each couple’s “love story” began. The spots open with the question, “How did it all start?” and conclude with, “It starts with a look. At Match.com.”
“‘Rewind’ ties into our current campaign but brings it to the next level,” said Cameron. “The campaign is designed to show that the couple who met on Match are just like any other couple; they just met online.”
The campaign also highlights a new function on Match, “MatchMyFriends,” which enables friends (or relatives) to fill out a profile for someone, write a testimonial, upload images and even pay for the person. Cameron explained that a letter is then sent to the person to approve before anything is posted.
The campaign, via Hanft, Raboy & Partners, New York, features TV, radio, print and online. The print ads break in the Dec. 31 double issue of People that hits retail stands today. TV, radio and online ads launch Dec. 26.
TV spots will appear on networks, primarily ABC and NBC during Match’s busy season—now through Valentine’s Day. ABC programs include Desperate Housewives, Brothers and Sisters and Grey’s Anatomy. “We are also partnering with abc.com [to run ads] before Grey’s Anatomy,” said Cameron.
The ads will also appear on cable and in syndication throughout the campaign’s run.
Match.com, Dallas, which was founded in 1995, is the largest online dating site with 15 million members. Cameron says the membership is evenly split among men and women and is fairly split between all demographic groups.
Match spent $92 million in media in 2006, and $145 million between January and October 2007, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus for broadcast, print and outdoor, and Nielsen Online and AdRelevance for online.
I watched the first episode of Millionaire Matchmaker and I have to say that even though I have set the Tivo to tape the whole series, I dunno if I am going to be able to stomach watching. The Yick Factor was VERY high.
I sorta liked last year’s Confessions of a Matchmaker. Patti Novak in Buffalo worked with average folks and did what she could to pair them up. I even sat next to Patti this last fall at a conference. She’s “just plain folks” herself. Doesn’t look like A&E has continued the show for another season. Maybe later.
But Millionaire Matchmaker—oooeee! These are not just plain folks at all.
Patti Stanger started The Millionaire’s Club in 2000. From the website: Patti realized that busy, upscale men simply didn’t have the time to go looking for a relationship, weren’t meeting the kind of women that they dreamed about, or were looking for a certain “type” that they couldn’t currently find. These men needed a service where they could be introduced to exceptionally beautiful women in a relaxing, discreet and confidential manner.
The Millionaire Club is based in Los Angeles, and it shows. Money money money— in exchange for looks looks looks. The guys? Puhleeze! On the first show, one of them made his money selling sex toys online, and the other was in his mid 40’s and wanted to date women in their 20’s. Even Patti thought the cradle robber was seriously deluded and told him so. Mr. Sex Toy had to be told to hide the sex toys in his office, but couldn’t be convinced to move the stripping pole there too.
Now, the Millionaire Club staff got together a bevy of gorgeous women for these two to look over—and amazingly enough, none of the ladies left when they found out about the source of Mr. Sex Toy’s money. They were all coiffed and made up to the 9’s, in teensy dresses that they hung out over on all edges, and were teetering around in high heels.
Both guys pick one for a date, both guys wanted to see the ladies again, and both ladies dropped out. Glad to see that the girls at lease had some taste. Mr. Sex Toy and date (Harvard educated, can you believe?) had a nice dinner in a restaurant, then HE TAKES HER BACK TO HIS PLACE AND DOES A DANCE ON THE POLE FOR HER. At least he kept his clothes on. Minus for her that it took her a couple of more dates to say “No thanks.”
Mr. Cradle Robber took his date out on what looked like a huge yacht with its own crew. Even though she said she’s see him again, she didn’t return his calls to set up the date. Bully for her.
I’d like to know what y’all think of these millionaire matching sites. Do they creep you out like they do me?
Chemistry.com (Match.com’s answer to the matching system of eHarmony) is taking on eHarmony again in a new ad campaign, highlighting what I think are eHarmony’s all too obvious limitations: Its refusal to work with gays and lesbians ("Don’t know how” is not a good enough reason-- Learn!) and its conservative Christian roots. See the article below for more. Another factor I never see mentioned is that it is highly likely that women far outnumber men on eHarmony. The site does not publish gender ratios, though I suspect that women outnumber men by at least 2:1, especially in the older age ranges. I’ve written extensively about eHarmony here on this blog. Scan these entries to read more.
Little Love Among Matchmakers
By DOUGLAS QUENQUA
THE world of Internet dating can be a cold, unforgiving place, particularly when it comes to the fight for customers.
The online dating service Chemistry.com plans to unleash a new campaign that seeks to depict its older and larger competitor, eHarmony.com, as out of touch with mainstream American values. The ads, which will appear in weekly newspapers and magazines starting Monday, attack eHarmony for refusing to match people of the same gender and for the evangelical Christian beliefs of its founder, Dr. Neil Clark Warren.
It is not the first time that Chemistry.com has hit on this theme. In April, the service ran a set of ads called “Rejected by eHarmony” featuring people who were turned away from eHarmony for being gay, not happy enough or simply unmatchable by its system. Chemistry.com spent $20 million on that campaign, and the company plans to increase the budget for this new effort.
Although Chemistry.com has 3.7 million registered users, in contrast to eHarmony’s 17 million, the “Rejected by eHarmony” campaign may be working. Since it was introduced, Chemistry.com has experienced an 80 percent growth rate, said Mandy Ginsburg, general manager of Chemistry.com. She said that enrollments by gays and lesbians have risen 200 percent since the “Rejected” campaign started, and that 10 percent of Chemistry.com’s members are seeking a same-sex match.
Chemistry.com, an offshoot of Match.com, both of which are owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp, follows eHarmony’s practice of putting users through an in-depth personality test to generate potential matches. Other online dating sites, like Match.com and Yahoo Personals, allow users to post pictures and profiles of themselves to make connections.
Still, eHarmony says that its approach has little in common with its competitors. “Chemistry.com and eHarmony are fundamentally different companies,” said Jodi Petrie, an eHarmony spokeswoman. “We use our research-driven approach to help people find successful long-term relationships. We don’t consider ourselves a casual dating site.”
EHarmony, which is based in Pasadena, Calif., and was founded in 2000 by Dr. Warren, a clinical psychologist, has long been criticized for its practice of turning away applicants who are gay or lesbian, married or serially divorced. Dr. Warren, a former seminary student who has had several books published by Focus on the Family, an evangelical Christian group, has publicly voiced his belief that premarital sex can increase the likelihood of one’s marrying the wrong person.
Ms. Petrie said that eHarmony took no position on premarital sex and had no affiliation with any religion. As for its reason for not offering services to gays or lesbians, she said: “EHarmony’s matching system is based on psychological data collected from heterosexual married couples, and we have not offered a service for those seeking same-sex matches. Nothing precludes us from offering a same-sex service in the future, but it’s not a service we offer now.”
Nonetheless, Chemistry.com is betting that consumers will prefer to associate with a brand that they feel more closely reflects their own values. The campaign imagines a world in which eHarmony’s values — as interpreted by Chemistry.com — were enforced in various ways. For example, one ad shows a sign on a beach that reads “No gays on beach, May-September,” while another features a motel sign declaring, “No premarital sex.” The copy in both ads goes on to assure readers that Chemistry.com does not judge or enforce any moral code on its members.
The ads “demonstrate that eHarmony is out of sync with what is happening in America,” said Ms. Ginsburg of Chemistry.com. The company plans to expand the campaign to include television and more print ads in January.
The ads were developed by Hanft, Raboy & Partners, an independent agency based in New York. “The idea behind the campaign is to globalize eHarmony’s practices, and ask, ‘What would it mean if America had to live by those rules?’” said Adam Hanft, the agency’s founder and chief executive. “What would happen if gays couldn’t go on the beach, or if some paternalistic source says, ‘If you have premarital sex, you can’t get into this hotel’? By amplifying it to that level, it points out the absurdity and discriminatory nature of their practices.”
EHarmony counters that “consumers want to see advertising that is both accurate and positive.” In a statement, the company said: “Chemistry.com’s insinuation that eHarmony is discriminatory is 100 percent false, and we believe that Match.com would be better served improving their own service rather than attacking its competitors.”
Chemistry.com’s increasingly aggressive tactics reflect the heightened competition for customers in the online matchmaking business, which generates nearly $650 million a year in sales. After booming growth in the early part of this decade, with industry revenue increasing by more than 70 percent a year-over-year, the category has slowed down. The market grew 10 percent in 2006, to $649 million, and is projected to grow 8 percent annually until 2011, according to Jupiter Research, an Internet consultancy.
“We’re not projecting any significant growth in the number of new subscribers over the next few years,” said Nate Elliot, a Jupiter Research analyst. “That number is going up relatively slowly.”
As consumers who are new to the category grow harder to come by, competition for those who are already using these sites is heating up, said Mr. Elliot. Hence the negative advertising that seeks to siphon members from other sites. He noted, however, that “double dippers” — people who maintain memberships on more than one site — are becoming more common.
The 1/13/2008 NYT article that I wrote about in the last blog posting included a list of questions that came out of the meeting of the First Wives’ Club. I thought they were so interesting that I’ve posted the questions below. What are some of the questions you have had when you realized your marriage or relationship was really over?
January 13, 2008
What to Ask When It’s Over
The questions that arise after a divorce can be every bit as tough as those that precede the decision to part. The following were drawn from conversations among the women who attended the First Wives World meeting on Jan. 2, and from postings on the group’s Web site:
1. Am I emotionally strong enough to move on? If not, how do I become stronger?
2. What are you looking for, now that you’re single again?
3. My spouse cheated on me, so why do I feel like a failure because my marriage didn’t work?
4. Before dating again, shouldn’t I first try to get comfortable with being alone?
5. Will I stay in touch with my ex’s friends and family?
6. If children are involved, how do I cope when they are under another roof?
7. How soon will I start dating again? If there are children, how will I explain it to them?
8. In terms of my ex, is it ever a good idea to get physically or emotionally involved again?
9. What is the one thing I want to do now that I would have never done when I was married?
10. In addition to lines like “Forget about him” and “Move on with your life,” what divorce clichés are you most tired of hearing?
Last Sunday’s (1/13/2008) New York Times had several juicy pieces of interest to singles. This article below is about a real “First Wives’ Club” discovered by some guys who hope to make the “First Wives’ Club”—the Movie—into a musical. Along with some laughs, the article included an interesting side bar. I’ll publish it in the next blog entry here, but for the time being, here’s a true-to-life “First Wives’ Club.” If the Times says it, it must be true.
January 13, 2008
THEIR ring fingers were empty.
Their wine glasses were full.
Another meeting of First Wives World had come to order.
“We still love men,” Debbie Nigro, the moderator, told a group of 10 divorced women gathered around her in a Midtown apartment on Jan. 2.
“Since my own divorce, I always say I like men more on weekends now,” Ms. Nigro added. “Well, maybe every other weekend.”
Ms. Nigro is a founder and the self-described “Chief Executive Girlfriend” of First Wives World, a support group for women in different phases of life before, during or after divorce.
Women like Annette Montalbano, 49, a mother of five from Merrick, N.Y.
“If there is a next time, I want rich and handsome,” she said. “And educated wouldn’t hurt, either.”
Women like Sharon Jacobson, 46, a mother of two from Scarsdale, N.Y., who was asked by Ms. Nigro if she would ever consider marrying again.
“What, and give up on all the great sex?” Ms. Jacobson shot back. The women, who ranged in age from 31 to 65, spent the better part of two hours laughing and crying, soul-searching and griping, even networking.
They found one another at http://www.firstwivesworld.com. That Web site grew out of research conducted by Paul Lambert and Jonas Neilson, business partners who were investigating how to set the proper mood and tone for a musical adaptation of “The First Wives Club,” the 1996 movie about three divorced women whose husbands left them for younger women. They hope to stage the musical in New York next year.
“We soon realized that there was this opportunity to create a bigger community, one where divorced women could reach out and help one another,” Mr. Neilson said of the gatherings that grew out of their research.
Mr. Lambert’s apartment was used for the recent meeting, a get-together that coincided with the unofficial start of what matrimonial lawyers call “divorce season.” (“There’s always a spike in calls to my office during January,” said Jacalyn F. Barnett, a Manhattan divorce lawyer. “The first call of the year that some women make is to Jenny Craig, the second is to a divorce lawyer.”)
The First Wives meetings will continue, in New York and in other cities, long after divorce season ends. “We wanted to really get into the lives of these women by studying the deeper emotions,” Mr. Lambert said, adding, “There is an amazing power to heal when girlfriends are helping girlfriends.”
Such power was evident at Mr. Lambert’s apartment that evening.
“I was married for 17 years but I was not happy,” Felice Spector of Brooklyn, who gave her age as early 60’s, told fellow First Wives members. “I felt stifled and went to therapy, and when I finally got divorced, I realized that there is a whole new life out there to discover.”
One woman joked about one thing she is not eager to discover.
“The guy I’m going out with now,” she said, “I think I’ll vomit if I see him with his clothes off.”
“Hey,” Ms. Jacobson shouted over the roar of laughter, “that’s what candles are for.”
Dana Feldman, a 61-year-old mother of two who lives in Manhattan, had most heads nodding in agreement when she said of her former marriage, “If it rained, he said it was my fault.”
“I don’t miss my husband,” Ms. Feldman continued. “I do miss the life I had when I was married, going to the Hamptons and doing things in the city with our friends. I miss that certain sense of belonging.”
The conversation got around to Sandy Hicks of Englewood, N.J., who has divorced twice. Tongue in cheek, wine in hand, she introduced herself as a “two-time loser.” Immediately after her second divorce, she said, she bought a $250 ticket to a Paul McCartney concert.
“It was something to do for myself, and by myself,” Ms. Hicks said. “It was just a concert, but for me, it represented a whole new life, a whole new freedom.”
Ms. Hicks stared into her wine glass for a second, then raised her head and spoke softly to her new friends. “When you’re single and alone, tomorrow is another day,” she told them. “When you’re married and alone, tomorrow is the same day.”
When I was researching the previous blog posting about the con man on Dr. Phil (“Faking it?”), I ran across this article on Phil’s site on how to spot a con man (or con woman). The tips are so good that I have reprinted them below. Every single ought to be well-verse in the attributes of a con:
Tips to Keep You Away From a Con Man
Con artists charm their way into a woman’s heart, lie to her, and too often, take her for all she’s worth. Candace Delong, former FBI Profiler and author, shares tips to keep you away from a con man.
Signs You’re Involved with a Con Artist:
* Pressure to get married.
Marriage is far too important in life to be rushed. Be wary of a wedding or proposal out of the blue. If a man makes you believe your marrying him is a matter of life or death — he’s up to something.
* Vague answers to questions about his past.
Always ask questions about your mate’s background or past. If he refuses to answer these questions, be suspicious. If he does answer the questions, and you wonder if he is telling you the truth, look up the information he gives you on the Internet.
* Questionable financial worth.
If a man brags about how much he is worth or claims to be broke because he is paying child support, that can be checked out also. Have him show you income tax records for several years before you merge finances. Always get proof if you aren’t sure. Also, be aware if he is always asking to borrow money.
* Lies about his age.
A man lying about his age is cause for concern. He may try to change the date because the real date of his birth is on a warrant for his arrest somewhere. If he claims that there was a mistake on his birth certificate, or his job made a mistake, he is lying. It’s illegal to change your birth date.
* Multiple social security numbers.
Having more than one social security number is illegal. If a man has more than one, he is using it to scam money or avoid the criminal justice system. If he claims to be a victim of identity theft, have him show you documentation.
What You Have and Do That Makes You Vulnerable to a Con:
* You have something worth getting.
These types of men are looking for a woman with something they can take. You don’t have to be wealthy or be an heiress to a huge fortune. If you have a job and a little bit of room on your credit card, this may attract him.
* Gullibility.
You have a willingness to believe anything the con artist is telling you. You may think you’re a good judge of character, but these guys are really slick. They start learning how to lie at age 3.
* Believing the grand gesture.
Willingness to interpret questionable behavior as love. For example, a man goes to a woman’s house when she is not there, gets her stuff and puts it in his place. This is not the loving gesture it might appear to be. For one thing, it’s theft. Secondly, it is meant to control her and get her in his world as soon as possible. Also, be wary if he proposes quickly in the relationship.
* Testing boundaries with money.
Usually, this occurs early in the relationship. For example, he may ask you out to dinner and when the check comes say, “Oh, honey, I left my wallet in the car.” Your response should be, “Oh, honey, I left mine at home.”
Go to Mark Brooks’ blog and watch the video of his proposal to his girlfriend Irena. Mark is the editor of OnlinePersonalsWatch.com and is THE MAN when it comes to contacts in the online dating world. Mark interview me last year on his blog. You can read the interview here.
Congratulations, Mark and Irena!
When we got our new satellite tv system, we got a dvd recorder as part of the package, like a Tivo, and boy, do I love it! Finally, like the answering machine tamed the telephone, the tv is now our servant, rather than it feeling the other way around.
I set it to automatically record various shows like Nova and Nature that we like—and also, Oprah and Dr. Phil. I don’t watch all of the Oprah and Phil shows, just delete those that have no interest. And frankly, a lot more of Oprah gets zapped. Because I fancy that Dr. Phil and I are in the same business and I like to see how he handles things. Sometimes he is good, a few times, very very good. Often so-so (I feel good in comparison), sometimes down-right bad. Then I can’t stand to watch and just zap the whole business.
What I have gotten the most from Dr. Phil has been accidental: I get to watch show after show of people lying and evading the truth, close up. Sometimes Phil does pretty well at pinning those folks to the wall. It is impressive.
If for no other reason than to train yourself to spot liars, watch Phil regularly. Very cheap and effective training.
The best show I have seen yet for “putting pathology right on the screen” was shown on 12/31/2007. Probably a pretty dead day for viewers, but I taped it and watched a few days later. If you want to see a character-disordered con man, super-slick, you have GOT to see this show. The show is called “Faking it?” There’s a writeup and slide show available online, but if I were you, I’d buy the video for $29 which you can through the website. It’ll be worth every penny. The skillfulness of this guy does not come through in the write-up.
Being about to spot character disorders was the most difficult part of mental health diagnosis for me. (I’m a professional therapist, have been for 30 years.) The short definition that works for me is that “Normal neurotics,” folks like most of us, feel too much responsibility and too much guilt. Those who are character disordered don’t feel enough responsibility or enough guilt. The jails are full of character disordered folks: “I didn’t do it.” Higher functioning character disordered folks can do very well in things like politics, even get elected president (or in present case, vice president).
If you can get a copy of this show, just watch Fred slip and slide, or at least try to, while he evades getting pinned down in lies and inconsistencies. Phil does pretty well keeping up with Fred, but you can tell that Fred simply doesn’t get Phil’s side of the discussion, he is so character disordered and convinced of his view of the world.
Then, for dramatic contrast, stay tuned for the second guest, Linda. While Linda too is a con and deeply disturbed, she is not character disordered. She knows what she does is wrong, feels guilt, and wants to change. Far different than the way Fred presents. As crazy as Linda’s behavior is, you can feel some empathy for her.
Not Fred. People like Fred make the rest of us feel crazy. They are master manipulators. Watch Fred carefully to see how a good one does it.
If you wonder what folks over 50 do for fun, here’s a great article about a new study published recently by the “New England Journal of Medicine.” Looks like those folks (and I’m in that age group) are having sex.
Best, Kathryn
Survey: Seniors Have Sex Into 70s, 80s
August 22, 2007 - 11:06pm
BY MARILYNN MARCHIONE
AP Medical Writer
(AP) - An unprecedented study of sex and seniors finds that many older people are surprisingly frisky _ willing to do, and talk about, intimate acts that would make their grandchildren blush. That may be too much information for some folks, but it comes from the most comprehensive sex survey ever done among 57- to 85-year-olds in the United States.
Sex and interest in it do fall off when people are in their 70s, but more than a quarter of those up to age 85 reported having sex in the previous year. And the drop-off has a lot to do with health or lack of a partner, especially for women, the survey found.
The federally funded study, done by respected scientists and published in Thursday’s e, overturns some stereotypical notions that physical pleasure is just a young person’s game.
“Most people assume that people stop doing it after some vague age,” said sex researcher Edward Laumann of the University of Chicago.
However, more than half of those aged 57 to 75 said they gave or received oral sex, as did about a third of 75- to 85-year-olds.
“Bravo that the New England Journal of Medicine is publishing something like that. It’s about time,” said Ruth Westheimer, better known as sexpert Dr. Ruth, who has long counseled seniors on sex.
The survey involved two-hour face-to-face interviews with 3,005 men and women around the country. Researchers also took blood, saliva and other samples that will tell about hormone levels, sex-related infections and other health issues in future reports. They even tested how well seniors could see, taste, hear and smell _ things that affect being able to have and enjoy sex.
Some results:
_Sex with a partner in the previous year was reported by 73 percent of people ages 57 to 64; 53 percent of those ages 64 to 75, and 26 percent of people 75 to 85. Of those who were active, most said they did it two to three times a month or more.
_Women at all ages were less likely to be sexually active than men. But they also lacked partners; far more were widowed.
_People whose health was excellent or very good were nearly twice as likely to be sexually active as those in poor or fair health.
_Half of people having sex reported at least one related problem. Most common in men was erection trouble (37 percent); in women, low desire (43 percent), vaginal dryness (39 percent) and inability to have an orgasm (34 percent).
_One out of seven men used Viagra or other substances to improve sex.
_Only 22 percent of women and 38 percent of men had discussed sex with a doctor since age 50.
The survey had a remarkable 75 percent response rate. Only 2 percent to 7 percent did not answer questions about sexual activities or problems, although a higher percentage declined to reveal how often they masturbate.
Why do this research? Sex is an important indicator of health, said Georgeanne Patmios of the National Institute on Aging, the study’s main funder.
Sexual problems can be a warning sign of diabetes, infections, cancer or other health woes. Untreated sex issues can lead to depression and social withdrawal, and people may even stop taking needed medications because of sexual side effects, the researchers wrote.
Some of them did a landmark study of sexual habits in younger people a decade ago, but little is known about X-rated behaviors beyond Generation X.
“This subject has been taboo for so long that many older people haven’t even talked to their spouses about their sexual problems, let alone a physician,” said the lead author, Dr. Stacy Tesser Lindau, a University of Chicago gynecologist.
Many doctors are embarrassed to bring it up, and some may not know how to treat sexual dysfunction, said Dr. Alison Moore, a geriatrics specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who had no role in the study.
“Even among geriatricians, there can be an age bias that this is not as big a deal as some of the other things they come into us for,” like heart problems or dementia, Moore said. “It gets lost in the shuffle.”
The National Opinion Research Center, a university-affiliated private research firm, did the surveys in people’s homes. Laumann, its chairman, has received research support from Pfizer Inc., the maker of Viagra.
Hundreds of questions were asked face to face; others, like the number of lifetime sex partners and frequency of masturbation, were asked in a questionnaire, and 84 percent of those were completed.
Most participants were married. But by the time they were 75 to 85, only 37 percent of women had spouses compared to 71 percent of men. Roughly 10 percent of those in the survey were black and more than 6 percent were Hispanic.
The proportion of each gender reporting giving and receiving oral sex “matched up perfectly,” Lindau said. “This gives us pretty good reassurance that men and women are telling the same story.”
Older people were generally sexually conservative. A small minority had more than one partner, and very few said they paid for sex.
Researchers also used state-of-the-art technology and products donated by several companies to test people’s senses. Taste strips were used to see if people could distinguish between various tastes (sour, salty). Special devices were used to test the ability to smell certain scents, including a suspected pheromone _ a smell thought to evoke sexual responses.
Scents and tastes “get under the skin to influence biology,” and scientists wanted to know whether these senses diminish as people age, Lindau explained.
Niels Teunis, an anthropologist and researcher at the Institute of Sexuality, Social Inequality, and Health at San Francisco State University, said the survey bolsters the “use it or lose it” factor seen in previous studies.
“If you are doing it, you keep doing it. If you slack off in marriage like when you’re in your 40s, it’s hard to pick it up when you are older,” he said.
Jack Menager, 83, and his wife, Elizabeth, 84, agree. The suburban Los Angeles couple say they have had a good sex life for nearly 60 years.
“It gives a person relief on any burdens or problems. It makes us forget everything _ escape,” he said, admitting that as physical endurance wanes “you have to work at it harder.”
The couple takes twice daily walks, drinks wine in moderation and talks a lot, said his wife.
“I think it’s important,” she said of sex. “It just makes you feel close.”
More men than women felt that way. Only 13 percent of men but 35 percent of women said sex was “not at all important.”
Menopause has a big effect on women, and the drop-off of estrogen makes many of them less interested in sex, Dr. John Bancroft of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University wrote in an accompanying editorial.
But menopause also means women no longer have to worry about getting pregnant, and many have more time and feel freer after children are gone, notes Westheimer, the sex adviser.
At age 79, she said, “I don’t ever answer personal questions” about sex. But she added, “I certainly have a zest for life.”
Was it just last week that we’d all accepted workplace romances as taboo? Now it seems that “on the job” is again becoming the place to meet and mate, at least according to this article below…
Love on the Job: Breaking the taboo at Bay Area companies
Stephanie Losee,Helaine Olen
Sunday, November 11, 2007
“We met on my first day of work; we were friends for about 3 1/2 years before we started dating. He grew on me.”
- Esther Pearl, Pixar
“We were all basically 25 and single, and we worked long hours and went out for drinks as a group afterward - the lines between work life and social life were blurred.”
- Jessica Sisto, Virage
“I started joining this group of people at work who would get together at lunch and Dana was one of the regulars. We sat and had lunch every day and talked about what was going on for about five years.”
- Sharon Hanna, Schwab
These are the standard beginnings of every great office romance story in the Bay Area. And there are legions of them. A 2007 Careerbuilder survey reveals that almost half of all American workers will date a colleague at least once. And as the three no-longer-single women above discovered, 1 in 5 such couples will end up married or in some other form of a committed long-term relationship.
You’re not alone if this surprises you. The phrase “office romance” is so stigmatized that its very mention can elicit smirks. But the reality is about as far from its sleazy reputation as one can imagine. Workplace dating is the taboo that wasn’t. Finding a mate on the job has become downright respectable. After all, if Bill Gates can meet Melinda French at the office, what’s to stop the rest of us from doing the same thing?
It’s likely that the greater acceptance of workplace romance has a lot to do with its inevitability, given the changing nature of American society. The most recent figures from the Census Bureau show that the median age of marriage for women is just shy of 26; for men, 27. In 1970, those numbers were 21 and 23, respectively. It follows that the older you are, the less likely you are to marry your college sweetheart. Says Renee Banks, human resources director at Chronicle Books (no relation to The San Francisco Chronicle): “I definitely think it’s a reality that work is where people meet these days. When you don’t meet at college, that’s a pool of people that’s taken away from you.”
After college, the pool of candidates moves to the office, and since Expedia.com statistics show that 40 percent of employees log more than 50 hours of work a week, their personal lives are chopped down to virtually nothing. Work is the place where people spend the majority of their days, make their friends and yes - meet mates. Said Ann Fishman, president of Generational Targeted Marketing, a New York- and Louisiana-based marketing firm: “People move to New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco for work, so they are disconnected from family and friends. Where else are they going to meet people if not the office? A health club?”
The Internet, you might respond. But even bloggers - many of whom spend their lives online - are beginning to dismiss online dating services as an ineffective way of meeting a significant other. “People my age are sick of the impersonal nature of Internet dating,” says Jessica Valenti, 28, the voice behind the popular blog Feministing.com and author of the book “Full Frontal Feminism.” Valenti is now dating a man she met through work; he hired her to write for the Web site where he works. “It’s nice to be around people who care about the same things as you do. My blogger boyfriend understands if I am on a computer at 2 a.m., and isn’t offended.”
Office romance gets a bad rap because the phrase conjures up images of Christmas party hook-ups and Clintonesque gropings, but potential couples tend to take months, if not years, to recognize and act on the vibe between them. (This is in no small part because of an understandable instinct to protect their paychecks.) As a result, people who form an emotional attachment at work often won’t make a move until they’re absolutely sure there’s something substantial between them that might go the distance, which is precisely why it so often does.
Since office couples are colleagues first and friends second, their relationships turn to romance so slowly that it isn’t a surprise to discover that many couples find that rumors of their liaison precede its actual occurrence. So it was with Jessica Sisto and her husband, Mike Heilmann, who met at Virage in 1999 and married last year (Sisto is now at the Gap and Heilmann at StrongMail Systems). Sisto would cry on Heilmann’s shoulder about her romantic mishaps, so her colleagues concluded they were dating on the sly. “We were just platonic friends,” Sisto said. But when Heilmann was invited to the wedding of a co-worker, he asked Sisto to come with him. They kissed for the first time that night.
They kept the relationship a secret for a year - or so they thought. “There was no company policy against it; we just wanted to keep our personal life separate from our work,” Sisto said. “But when the CEO asked me about a trip Mike and I had just taken, I thought, ‘Well, when the CEO mentions it, you’re keeping up a facade that’s completely transparent.’ “ So Sisto and Heilmann started openly commuting together and making casual references to their relationship.
Companies are the unwitting matchmakers, putting the Sistos and Heilmanns of the Bay Area together. Their assistance begins when they vet every person who is hired at the company - assembling a group of like-minded, talented people whose references have been checked. Then companies promote both a collegiate and collegial atmosphere by calling their office parks “campuses” and adding lifestyle enhancements to support their hardworking employees. This is a particular factor in the spate of office couples represented here. Google provides its employees not just with the usual on-site cafeteria/health club combination, but with a doctor, a dentist, a dry cleaner, a masseuse, a mechanic, a financial adviser and lunchtime entertainment in the form of book readings. Genentech’s campus has a gift shop, a florist, a hairstylist and an oil change shop. Pixar’s campus has an atrium containing a cafeteria, a separate brown-bag-lunch kitchen, a game room, and tables and sofas where employees can mingle.
Acknowledging that its workers need hardly go home creates an environment where employees feel more comfortable not only doing their everyday chores at the office but also finding love on-site. Office romance is so much a part of the company culture here that it has worked its way into the vocabulary. At Genentech you’ll find “Genen-couples” and at Charles Schwab you’ll hear about “Schwupples” going to each other’s “Schweddings.”
When Esther Pearl was hired by Pixar to be the story coordinator on “Monsters, Inc.,” she joined a department so tightly knit that after working long hours, the employees would extend their time together by going out for drinks as a group. One of the gang was Nathan Stanton, a storyboard artist.
“Nate and I didn’t have anything more than a straightforward friendship, a good friendship,” Esther said. She was surprised when Nate asked her on an actual date years later, while both were still working there. It took her several weeks to say yes. “My only hesitation was that I didn’t want us not to be friends anymore, and when I weighed the pros and cons that seemed like a really silly reason not to have a relationship,” she said.
They became engaged in the summer of 2003 and didn’t feel the need to notify their supervisors about their relationship until shortly before they were married in 2005. They knew many couples who met and continued to work together at Pixar without difficulty, and several married teams had been hired together because of the creative nature of the work. “Pixar basically has a town square feel with lots of places to congregate and chat; they want people to communicate in that way, so not only is office romance not looked down upon, there’s a very supportive atmosphere. As long as it’s not going to get in the way of the work that you’re doing, no matter what you do is not going to be looked down upon, including wearing your pajamas. It’s not an atmosphere of anything other than creative encouragement.”
When Pearl and Stanton mentioned their relationship to a supervisor, it was because “castings” for crews who would work on the next film were going on and they decided the couple didn’t want to talk about nothing but Pixar at home. So Pearl went to her boss and said she preferred not to be cast in the next film with Stanton. They were married soon after, and even though only 25 people were in attendance, so many of the couple’s closest friends are co-workers that several of the guests were from Pixar. They continued to work at Pixar until March of last year, when Pearl went on maternity leave and subsequently resigned. Stanton still works there.
“I think my husband and I censored ourselves more than Pixar would have because of our own fear that working together would mean we spent too much time together. We recently held an Alzheimer’s benefit together and we discovered, ‘Hey, we could have worked together after all!’ “
Pixar, like most of the companies we contacted for this article, would not discuss its workplace romance policy, if any. But if Pearl’s and Stanton’s perception that there is none is correct, Pixar is in the majority. Nearly 70 percent of companies have no policy at all. Sometimes emphatically so. Said Netflix spokesman Steve Swayze: “We like to think of ourselves as rule-averse. We hire adults and we expect adult behavior. Personal stuff is personal, and if it isn’t interfering with work, it’s not worth spending any time on.”
Very few companies ban workplace romance entirely, probably for a very pragmatic reason: Enforcing such a ban is nearly impossible. Says Robyn Zazulia, 27, who met her fiance Alex Rogin, 34, when they worked on a project together at Wells Fargo: “I have a very good girlfriend who worked for a small company of 200 people, but there were very clear rules, explicit rules prohibiting intercompany dating. But nobody followed it; there was a lot of inter-company dating there because they worked together at far-flung places without friends or family around.” And why would companies want to try to outlaw behavior that enhances so many employees’ lives? Each couple interviewed for this story said that they were only one of many at the same firm.
The companies that do have a written policy on office romance commonly prohibit supervisors and subordinates from being romantically involved in an effort to avoid conflicts of interest and charges of sexual harassment. For example, Schwab restricts management or supervisors from having a close personal relationship with employees they supervise. In the event such a relationship forms, the parties are required to report it to their superiors or to human resources. Said Sarah Bulgatz, Schwab’s director of corporate PR: “They can work together - absolutely - as long as one is not the direct or indirect supervisor of the other.”
Nevertheless, as we found when we did the research for our book “Office Mate: The Employee Handbook for Finding - and Managing - Romance on the Job,” there is an enormous disconnect between the attitude of HR directors toward office romance and the paranoia of corporate attorneys and public relations departments when it comes to discussing the topic, which may be why people believe that companies frown on interoffice dating. In the example of one company we contacted for this story, an executive said that in-house counsel would not allow him to discuss the firm’s office romance policy on the record. We had intended to interview a young female employee of one of the company’s subsidiaries, but when she sought permission she was told she couldn’t even voice her opinions on the topic - let alone talk about her own experiences dating colleagues - if we said where she worked. Which means that it’s fine to date the people you work with, but talking about it could get you fired.
Chris Edmonds-Waters, head of HR for SVB Financial Group, a diversified financial services firm of 1,600 employees in San Francisco, says companies should stop being afraid of talking about office romance, whether within or without the company. “It’s good corporate hygiene,” he says. “All companies should have a policy on workplace relationships and should communicate that policy because it guides people’s behaviors and gives them a resource to use if they run into a sticky issue. It’s the fair and right thing to do.”
Policy or none, managers who find couples forming where they see potential risk occasionally ask them to sign a legal document pioneered by a San Francisco law firm called - you can’t make this stuff up - the “love contract.” According to Stephen Tedesco, a partner at the firm of Littler Mendelson, they do “steady business” writing contracts that confirm there is a romantic relationship between the two parties, that it is consensual, that no offensive conduct has occurred and that they agree to conduct themselves in a professional manner. Says Tedesco, “The love contract does prevent someone from rewriting the past if the behavior goes from non-offensive to offensive.”
It also guards against the possibility that an office romance - particularly between people who are highly placed - does not become fodder for a claim of sexual favoritism in response to the sort of behavior made famous in the early 1980s by William Agee, CEO of the manufacturing conglomerate Bendix. Agee hired a fresh grad from the Harvard Business School named Mary Cunningham and proceeded to promote her up the ranks so quickly that a national scandal ensued. They later married. Thanks to a 2005 California Supreme Court ruling, co-workers who witness such favor-granting are free to file a third-party claim of sexual harassment.
But outside of such blatant misbehavior, colleagues have no problem with co-workers who couple. According to a new survey from Yahoo! HotJobs, almost half of the respondents said they don’t really care if two co-workers become involved. If anything, they approve; 56 percent say they support colleagues becoming romantically involved, as Jennifer Taylor and Eliza Laffin discovered. When Jennifer Taylor was hired at Macromedia in the spring of 2003, her boss kept talking about a colleague named Eliza. “You and Eliza are going to love each other,” the boss would say. “You’re from Vermont; she’s from Vermont; you went to Brown; she went to Brown - you’re just going to love each other.”
Says Taylor, now 35: “I don’t think she realized how much we were going to love each other.”
In spite of their supervisor’s cheerleading, the two colleagues initially kept to their corners. “Eliza is super smart,” Taylor explained. “I was kind of intimidated by her. She had been at the office longer than I had and I was the new kid on the block, so I was afraid of crossing her. When you’re curious about someone but also afraid of them, you give each other a wide berth.” But after working together for a few months they filled in the details of the long list of commonalities their boss had described. They had grown up 45 minutes apart and gone to rival high schools. They had been at Brown at the same time while Laffin was completing a combined bachelor’s-master’s program. In San Francisco they owned apartments a block and a half apart.
“It’s amazing we didn’t meet earlier,” Taylor said.
At the office, the two friends would sometimes get signals that they didn’t know how to interpret. They were scheduled to go to a business conference in Los Angeles, and the assistant who arranged the travel asked if they wanted to share a hotel room. “We had gone from giving each other a wide berth to being inseparable, but it was before there was something to pick up - right before we admitted having feelings with each other.”
Their first date was after Laffin’s 35th birthday party, six months after they met, when Taylor asked if she could take Laffin out for a drink after the dinner. “It was then we acknowledged what was going on and we’ve been together ever since,” Taylor said.
“I’m so thankful that I live in San Francisco and that I work in high tech at places like Macromedia and Adobe (Adobe acquired Macromedia in late 2005) because they’re so accepting. We’re not just an office couple; we’re a queer office couple.”
At first they kept the relationship under wraps so that they could see where it was going. “But after a while we started to get excited about telling people,” Taylor continued. “We told someone on our team and she was really excited. Telling our boss, we said, ‘Remember when you said we’d love each other? Well, we do!’ And she was thrilled.” A year after their first official date, Taylor and Laffin gave up one of their neighboring apartments and moved in together. When they noticed they were bringing work home too much, Laffin moved to a different business unit in the company that drew more on her strengths, and they continue to work at Adobe without a hitch.
Such ease can continue for years and years after a couple meet, marry and remain working for the same employer - especially if they treat their situation with respect. Marvi and Gary Choy met at Genentech back in 1991, when Gary moved into Marvi’s department and she was asked to train him. They worked side-by-side wearing white jumpers in a clean environment for three years, taking care to keep public displays outside the department and marrying in 1994. Marvi moved to a chemical-free department after having their first child in 1995; they are both still working at Genentech. “We’d never show affection even now, and when we got married we didn’t say anything officially, but they knew.”
The benefits of all this discretion? Their supervisors make it possible for the Choys to schedule their vacations at the same time so they can take longer trips as a family. Then there’s the daily couple time. Says Choy: “We have one-on-one time in the car because we carpool, and my boss would sometimes say, ‘I have to come late to work because my husband and I have to have a meeting since we haven’t talked in a week. You’re so lucky.’ “
In a city where single women chronically complain about the shortage of available men, the matter-of-fact acceptance of workplace relationships by Bay Area companies offers unattached workers a new way to look for love. And interestingly, it’s just as effective for older singles - men and women, gay or straight. When Careerbuilder.com broke down its office romance stats by age, they found that the numbers of workers who said they have had an office romance is virtually the same from ages 25 to 64. Schwab’s Sharon Hanna, 56, is living proof. She had met Dana Jones, 52, back in 1990 when Jones joined the department where Hanna worked as a supervisor. They were lunch-break friends for years before she launched into a dinner-party-giving phase immediately after breaking off a relationship. “One night the date I’d invited for myself was a total dud and after the party my girlfriend said, ‘Ditch him; the interesting guy at the dinner was Dana!’ That was a pivotal moment; until that moment I was oblivious.”
They had been friends for so long, Hanna didn’t know how to initiate the transition. “Dana was still in platonic mode, but now I’m starting to get butterflies,” Hanna said. “It was absolutely one-sided for quite a while, but I didn’t say anything. It was excruciating. I’d go to work and hear his voice somewhere and I’d get a tingle. It was maddening; I felt like a teenager. And since I had a very strong feeling that an office romance was the wrong way to go, this was red lights going off everywhere - warning, warning, warning.”
Hanna bought a GPS for a backpacking trip and claimed that she didn’t know how to use it. Says Jones: “I, of course was intrigued by this - she was a friend, a colleague, but as a computer support person I had something to prove by showing her how it worked.”
Soon after that, Jones invited her to Burning Man, where they became a couple. Not that their close-knit office gang noticed. “What was so funny is that our colleagues did not have a clue,” Hanna said. “We were kind of an unlikely couple just in the fact that I appeared a bit more conservative than Dana. Even when we went to Burning Man nobody thought a bit about it.” After a year, they told certain intimates about their relationship, but they kept it under wraps to the rest of the department for nine years, until the day they eloped. That night, they e-mailed wedding photos to the entire department with the subject line Sharon and Dana XOXOX. “People told me afterward that it was one of those e-mails that everyone opened at the same moment and there was an audible collective gasp,” Hanna said. “Our bosses, our co-workers, they were all really happy for us. The other day somebody said, ‘You know, when I first knew you guys I thought you were the most unlikely couple in the world, but after I got to know you, it makes sense.’
“If we hadn’t met at work we would never have gotten together,” Hanna added.
And that’s the ending of every great Bay Area office romance story.
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