Not everyone can (or would want to) spend endless hours with their significant other in an office. But some devoted duos are at it and say when they signed up to be partners, they didn’t mean it just for cuddling on lazy Sundays. They go for their goals sideby- side, day in and day out. Neelima, who works along with her husband Sivaramakrishna at Deloitte, believes couples who work together understand each other better. “They know when there’s a bad day at work because they were there and saw it happen,” she points out. The couple, who have been happily married for six years, first met in an office. “As we used to stay on the same route, our cabs were also the same.
Now, this gave us almost 13 hours together in a day (working and travelling) and eventually we fell in love,” she recalls. Both of them later changed jobs but ended up in the same company again! She concedes that working at the same place means bringing office conversations to the home.
“Office becomes our world. Even if we develop some friendships, other than common friends, in the office over time, we find it very difficult to sustain a relationship with them. But I believe we have a fair understanding of each other’s stress as we both work in a similar work environment,” she opines.
like Neelima and Sivaramakrishna , Raghavendra Chowdhari and his wife Lakshmi work in the same place Arth Media. “There are tremendous challenges and tremendous rewards for couples that work together,” the couple say without hesitation.
Raghavendra points out, “working together heightens the intensity of a relationship, so more effort must be made to be kind, caring and loving.” According to Lakshmi, it has been a smooth sailing for them. “Raghu has excellent creative and visual skills and a commendable sense of design and balance. I initially started by putting his work in words and today, I handle all communication, scripting, conceptualisation, content creation and branding aspects for clients and Raghu handles every creative design and visual details in print and multimedia,” she explains. The trick, according to these working couples, lies in staying out of each other’s space. “I firmly believe that the key to working together as a married couple is to stay out of each other’s area of responsibility,” Neelima stresses. In her own words, she never tried to “mess with him” in office.
But there’s a danger too. When both work at the same place, one’s prospects reflect upon the other. “Sometimes when there is an issue in office, we both get affected. The bottom line is we’re both trying to get the best out of each other.
If you can work together, marriage is not that tough,” the Deloitte employee asserts.