The office romance is having a strange little moment. We have spent the last decade making workplaces safer, more professional and increasingly conscious of boundaries, and yet we still cannot stop fancying the person sitting across the meeting room.

A 2025 YouGov survey for dating app Ashley Madison found that 40% of Indian respondents had dated or were currently dating a colleague, putting India second among the 11 countries surveyed. The caveat, obviously, is that Ashley Madison is a platform built around discreet relationships, so this isn’t exactly a census of Corporate India. Still, 40% is difficult to dismiss as an HR aberration.

“Workplaces have always been a breeding ground for romance, and I don’t think that’s about to change anytime soon,” says Radhika Agrawal, author of Not Safe For Work (HarperCollins). “Where else do you even meet people offline these days? We spend 8-9 hours a day, 5-6 days a week at the office with the same group of people, so it’s only natural that we get to know our colleagues inside out and often develop feelings for them.”

But what has changed isn’t necessarily our appetite for office romance. It is our tolerance for the mess that follows.

A former HR executive with the Tata Group tells me that employees would........

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