The romantic novels are full of these romantic scenes in the office – usually between the boss and a working girl. And it always ends well: the girl gets him. Chick lit has added a little a bit more critical voice in it with Bridget Jones and her unhappy affair with one boss and trying to avoid tentacles of another.

Love at the work place – a cliche that most wise women should avoid. Yet how many of us are truly wise when it comes to love. Our best intention fall apart, when interesting man walks to the scene.

When you put single (and maybe also not so single) men and women under the same roof, five days a week at least eight hours a day, the romantic feelings are prone to appear whatever is done to prevent it. Another question is, what people in the question do with those feelings. Do they act on them or do they try to work them out - rationalise. Would it be wise to stay in so little contact as possible? Are they wise? 

In the office romance there is always available the possible harassment angle – as well as accusations of favoritism, if either of partners is in higher position and able to make amendments to other. This is why many office policies are against the dating between colleagues.  Romantic feelings are also likely to take thoughts away from the work to be done.

Yet in the personal level there are even more avid concerns. If the romance does not work the way it is hoped and either partner gets hurt – the working relationship is not going to stay intact. Also other’s attitudes towards the partners may change and however discreet they think they are – people will know.  And they will talk.

I know one happy office love-story – at least happy in the field of love – not so happy in the question of work. My friend fell in love with a collegue in the office christmas party, a very nice guy that she did not work with daily. Now it is creating problems with other people in the work places. They cannot work together, because of this. She is inclined to change the work.

My own experiences on the office romance are at least as grim. Determined to not to act on them I’ve still got my feelings. And it has not made working relationship easier and people do notice, even if one would not want to – and they do talk – believe me. And I thought I was expert on hiding my feelings, which nobody seems to be in the end. 

I’ve also been witnessing rather immature man playing with a woman’s feelings at the work place in very tiny office. And I don’t doubt women can do that too. Not very nice business I assure you.

And yet I never had to change my work due to this. The unluckiest event would be the need to change the work like in the “In Her Shoes” where the heroine needs and wants to leave her job. It good if you can do it – but financially it may become a catastrophe. And this only if you are rather calm and professional personality.

There is one place I have to say the romance seems to work at least somewhat: at school. A lot of my teachers were married couples and some of them were known to have met in school. Like my computer teacher and domestic science teacher – as well as two of our science teachers. And I have to say it seemed to work, but one must agree that teachers’ work is so independent, that it is less affected.

Most of us have heard of the romantic rulebook for women by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, the book most men loath and some women too. My own very narrow experience in the male-species implies that its practicality is poor.

Already when I red the book the first time, I was very unsure. It seemed to change my very worst relationship weaknesses to sudden virtues. See, I am a natural Rules-girl, and I am that because it is my nature, not in that manipulative way the girls imply. And nothing frustrates men so bad than coolness and undercover shyness, in my experience.

I was just over twenty, when a guy told me, that my mysterious nature was so interesting and that men found it a challenge. What I am afraid of is that when they crack my code – that is: learn to know me intimately – I stop being so interesting, as I am no more mystery.

I’ve learned my way of being woman from my mother. She has been cool woman too. So is my sister. I suppose my granny was too. My sisters first steady boyfriend used to complain her not opening up. It made him nuts and probably broke their relationship.

The more: I think the book could be basicly condenced  in just one sentence. Be independ cool girl and take good care of your appearance. If I would add anything to that it would be old-fashioned advice of not making the first move. But for this you don’t need a whole book. Yet much better dating and relationship advice would be to be yourself and not try to pretend something else. The only thing that book could advice me is to take care of ones appearance, but it is a message our society oozes anyway.

No man is an island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were
any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee.

- John Donne-

This poem or aforism has always touched my heart. It is strange, because the modern society seems to promote the idea, that we are truly islands, entities in our self, dependless of others.

It brings my mind the song of Simon & G that is about the person, who thinks he is a rock or an island. It is sad song about walls between him and humans. They say that pessimists are disappointed romantics. It seems that we live in a society of disappointed romantics. May be our state of marriage is a reflection of that.

Hilarious book of Maria Headley tells a story of her dating experience in New York city that resulted of her getting hitched. She said yes to everyone that asked her out, and her experiences in dating made me think of becoming more yes-girl myself.

I bought this pocket-book out of whim in a pay-day. Maybe it was the frog in the cover or the idea of opening towards men. I know it is my personal problem.

Maria had spent a lonely Valentine, when she decided to give men a change. No more tight rules or criticism. She would smile to men, be open towards them and date them. The Year of Yes.

Her rules were that she would go out with anyone she asked, but not necessary further. She had few awful setbacks with that one, but generally her book told about her finding men she would not have touhght dating, but some of them were interesting and sweet.

The book made me think about my own attitude towards gents. Am I enough open-minded. My “mature years” have tought me that the nature of relationships are as important as the qualities of man. What I have lately dreamed of is to find a man I can feel comfy and relax with, who respects me and gives me a change to be myself.

I found myself starting of thinking about my own year of yes. About dressing nicely, being smiley and not being overly critical. Some men have called me scary in my former life. I know my brains scare men too, but that is their problem and what I truly want to find, is a man not scared of a little lady’s brains.

Jane Austen is as a personality suprisingly modern and as a writer timeless.   Her vivid characters and wise stories continue to inspire, as it has done for 200  years, both men and women as well.  She was not just a writer but also a thinker and one could even call her philosopher. And she is not culture relative as Bollywood-style filmatisation “Bride and Prejudice” has shown us.

She was once engaged for just a day, for it seems that the fiancé was not satisfactory for her in the end. She was tempted of having her own home, but not at any price, as so many today’s single women do as well.

One can symbatise with Jane’s want of her own home. She was living with her parents and later with widowed mum, who has not been supposed to be the easiest personality. I know how it is like as I lived one painful year with my parents as an adult.She seems to have had a true love as younger, but It was not success story, as his family was wanting for better than poor daughter of vicar. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But there are also other connections with her life and especially youth in her books.

And we can be grateful, as her “children” have been great source of enjoyment and blessing for so many. It would be unlikely that she could have continued her writing, in case of becoming a housewife. She would have liked to marry tough, but on her own conditions, too.

Jane’s sister destroyed a lot of her letters after her death, so we know only a one side of her life. She was self-made writer, who developed her skills to extensive reading and writing since her teen-years.

An amateur like me can see her as true forerunner of more realistic literature in the times of Romantic-movement. When Dickens, godfather of Realistic-movement, was born, she had already published her first and sold other to be published just little after. And Austen was much more down to earth than Dickens.

Besides the writer, Austen has also been respected as an ethical thinker. Alasdair McIntyre considers her the follower of Aristotelian tradition and last great follower of Virtue ethics. He thinks that ethical thinking is clearly visible in her novels. By the way Aristotle too had a book called “On Sense and Sensible“.

She is suprisingly universal, as I tought after seeing Bride and Prejudice. These Indian girls of modern days seem to be even more related to her reality than modern western women are. But even the modernity has not moved them very far either. We can share the life – and experiences throug her.