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Be careful of office relationships says Shirley Glass. |
Title:
Not Just Friends: Protect Your Relationships from Infidelity And Heal the
Trauma of Betrayal
Author:
Shirley Glass
Publisher:
Free Press, December 2002
Price:
$25.00
“I’m
sorry, but I don’t shake hands with members of the opposite sex.” This
line can be heard coming from Muslims working in office settings everywhere.
Islamic
standards of modesty warn against even casual physical contact between
unmarried men and women. This, of course, can cause uncomfortable situations
in places of business where it is customary to shake hands with colleagues.
But Muslims have long known that even casual, seemingly innocuous contact as
well as casual behavior between the sexes can lead a person astray into
either marital infidelity or inappropriate pre-marital relationships.
Until
recently, it seemed that it was only Muslims that felt this way. But in her
book, Not Just Friends: Protect Your Relationships From Infidelity and Heal
the Trauma of Betrayal, Shirley Glass gives credence to time-honored Muslim
traditions on the issue of inter-gender office relations.
Glass’
main thesis is, for all intents and purposes, Islamic in character. She
asserts that unguarded, casual office relationships between men and women
often lead down a slippery slope towards extra-marital affairs. And
according to Glass, this phenomenon does not apply solely to the spouse with
a wandering eye; even strong, nurturing marriages can be rocked by office
romances.
Glass,
who has studied martial infidelity over the last 25 years of her career as a
psychotherapist, found that 25 percent of women and 44 percent of men have
strayed from their marriages. And although the cliché of the office romance
has been around for quite some time, Glass says that the typical lustful
physical relationships that often develop are but one aspect of illicit
office behavior. For Glass, it is the more personal friendships that
develop in the office environment that pose a greater threat to marital
stability.
Speaking
recently to Connie Chung on CNN, Glass noted, “The crisis is that … men
and women are working with people that they respect, people that they have
intellectual interests with, people that they share excitement over
projects, frustration over deadlines. And so the relationship begins
as a platonic friendship that's very deep and rich. And what happens
is that, over time, they begin to share more and more of their personal
lives together.”
This
type of intimate sharing of personal thoughts and feelings is, Glass
asserts, more detrimental to marriage because, unlike casual sexual
encounters, these interactions create strong bonds between the people. And
once this level of personal intimacy grows, the dreaded sexual affair is
just on the horizon.
For
Glass, the answer to this problem is to establish what she calls “walls
and windows” by which married couples agree to keep emotional distance
from people outside the marriage while keeping open channels within the
marriage.
The
resemblance to Islamic standards of modesty is uncanny, although Glass does
fail to call for the true Islamic solution, which erects clear boundaries
between the permissible and impermissible.
Glass
is just one of several authors to recently take a more conservative tack
regarding marriage and relationships. And in many instances, themes that
have elements of solid Islamic common sense are finding favor over the more
liberal trends that have predominated in popular culture.
