On April 7th, the New York Post published photos of NFL journalist Dianna Russini and the head coach of the New England Patriots, Mike Vrabel, holding hands and embracing like a couple on a romantic getaway, despite being married to other people. Although both parties claimed the photos were taken out of context and no cheating occurred, the fallout from the fumble disproportionately affected Russini, who resigned from her position as Senior NFL Insider at The Athletic. Vrabel reportedly had some “difficult conversations” with his family and team and is seeking counseling, but otherwise held on to his eight-figure salary.  

While fellow football commentators like Tanya Ray Fox have described the reaction to Russini as “outsized, sanctimonious, and sexist,” others have cited different standards for reporters than coaches. As sportswriter Jeff Pearlman puts it, Russini is facing harsher consequences because, as a coach, Vrabel is only expected to win games. As a journalist, Russini is expected to maintain ethical boundaries with sources. “Your job is to cover the NFL. You cannot fool around or have these kinds of relationships with coaches, if you did,” Pearlman said in a video. “Mike Vrabel can have sex with a reporter. It doesn’t impact his job. But a reporter fooling around with a coach, it does.” 

That said, when another office affair was captured on a kisscam at a Coldplay concert, Kristin Cabot, former head of HR at the tech company Astronomer, endured more online shaming than the company’s former CEO, Andy Byron. Though both parties resigned, this is another example of a double standard in office affairs. For CEOs and head coaches, alleged infidelity is seen as merely a way for powerful men to manage stress. However, when successful women do the same thing without falling into the trope of the submissive secretary who takes very good care of the boss, they are seen as homewreckers, ostracized and punished.

But workplace affairs happen all the time. According to a recent Forbes survey of 2,000 workers, more than 60% had an office romance, and 40% cheated on their romantic partner with a colleague. At the same time, a meta-analysis of over 300 studies on infidelity prevalence found that approximately 14% of women and 25% of men admit to sex outside of their relationships, and divorce attorneys cite the workplace as the most common setting for affairs to begin. Infidelity is not necessarily justifiable, but when Americans spend an estimated one-third of their lives at work, and women and men think about sex about 10 to 19 times a day, it’s not shocking that two horny people might occasionally cross boundaries. 

To fully grasp the temptation of such affairs, it’s important to understand the appeal of workplace relationships in general. For decades, researchers have studied “personal workplace relationships” (PWRs), defined as voluntary relationships “marked by a strong emotional component,” which involve “the partners knowing and communicating with each other as unique individuals.” In other words, they are relationships with a lot of depth that can be particularly intense due to the shared stress, proximity, and blurred boundaries. Clearly, that’s hot because an impressive 72% of people who’ve had a workplace romance would do it again — a strong stat that a football coach can appreciate. 

Human resource departments can attempt to limit these bonds with anti-fraternization policies, but they are hard to enforce because “romantic relationships do form and oftentimes flourish in the workplace, and an employer’s efforts to discourage them may be perceived by employees as paternalistic and as an encroachment on their personal lives,” an article published in the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance explains. Anti-fraternization policies might also be difficult to adhere to because HR representatives like sleeping with their colleagues as well. One survey of 8,784 employees found that 42% of HR personnel had dated coworkers at some point, a rate higher than in any other department.    

To be fair, that does not mean that workplace romances are entirely inconsequential. Although they did not specifically examine workplace romances, multiple studies have found that such romances can undermine solidarity and trust among coworkers, particularly when a subordinate is involved with a superior. Additional research that combined samples of workplace couples and their coworkers found that women were more likely to report drawbacks of dating their colleagues, even though coworkers viewed these relationships as advantageous and associated them with special treatment. 

One could assume that the rise in remote work following the Covid-19 lockdown would reduce the convenience of a workplace tryst, but it has somehow made them sexier. A 2025 survey of 1,000 employees in the U.S. revealed that 86% said remote work made it easier to form romances, something 79% of respondents had experienced. It’s not the largest sample size, but the findings underscore that as daily life moves more toward screens and people feel more isolated when trying to connect through Zoom and Slack, people crave face-to-face flirtation more. If that is the case, the appeal of the workplace romance will only increase, regardless of whether those involved are in relationships.  

It is probably not a coincidence that the careers with the highest infidelity rates are high-stress professions with long hours, such as pilots, CEOs, physicians, and yes, people who work in sports. While the only people who know for sure what happened between Russini and Vrabel are the two of them, the lack of work-life balance facilitates infidelity just as much as infidelity can facilitate long hours. Instead of having an above-board romantic relationship in the workplace, where interpersonal drama can impact productivity, a sexy secret can compel colleagues to work late and overcompensate professionally. That kind of arrangement seems to work out better for employers than the people getting laid… as long as they don’t get caught. In the end, if your job cared about your relationships being healthy, they’d probably let you go home earlier.