When your emotions rip and your hormones pump, the last thing that matters is personnel policy. High-profile romances, including those in the Oval Office, have focused national attention on issues of sex and privacy in the workplace. President Clinton first responded to allegations of an affair with Monica Lewinsky with indignant denials. But experience is showing that such rules are all but impossible to enforce. Romance and Harassment Office romance is not sexual harassment.
Romance is about attraction, about wanted advances.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, created to enforce the provisions of Title VII, issued specific guidelines addressing sexual harassment in 1980. The EEOC guidelines speak to unwanted sexual advances or unwanted conduct that affects the ability of people to get their jobs done. Confusion arises when office romance shifts the balance of power in ways that look like sexual harassment. That's why dating between supervisors and subordinates is supervisory suicide. If unequal power relationships go sour, the subordinate could claim the affair was not consensual and file a sex harassment charge.