My friend Jennifer is “in love” with her boss. For now, the attraction is simmering in the background of their work days, which are long and intense. She often spends 10 to 12 hours in his exclusive company and the situations are often intimate. (There’s a lot of business travel and shared room service while going over daily schedules and planning strategy.)

Jennifer is the first to admit the attraction is partly fueled by boredom and inspired by hormones, but the attraction is real and growing and is, apparently mutual. The flirtation is ferocious. Her boss is charming, charismatic and single. So Jennifer doesn’t understand why her friends are not delighted for her.

What she doesn’t realize is that she and her boss are already the subject of animated office gossip and those room service breakfasts a deux have not gone unnoticed. And that, in a nutshell, is what’s wrong with office romances. What ought to be nobody’s business but the couple in question becomes fodder for lunch room discussions and, if you’re not careful, boardroom discussions as well.

And ladies, it’s still a man’s world when it comes to office romances that get outed. If your company has a policy against it–and many still do–it’s going to be the partner with the least important job who’s let go. And even in 2007, that probably means the guy will keep his job while the gal will get the boot.

“It’s unrealistic to assume people aren’t going to hook up at work,” Samantha Farris of the employment agency SFA says. “If you’re working 60 hours a week, where else are you going to meet people?” She tells her clients to go ahead and make that love connection if they keep a couple of rules in mind.

Don’t tell anyone your secret. Not your co-workers, your best friend or your mother. You may confide in your dog.

Don’t send lovey-dovey e-mails to your sweetie. Yes, it worked for Bridget Jones, but this is real life. Don’t do it.

Keep your hands off the mail boy. In other words, avoid entanglements where the balance of power is severely one-sided. If you’re a CEO and the object of your affection is more than two pay grades beneath you, it’s not an equal relationship and there could be complications.

Stay away from each other at office parties. Particularly if booze is served. Body language is a dead give-away where covert relationships are concerned and if the individuals are tipsy, they might as well be wearing a sign that says, “Yes, we’re a couple.”

Finally, keep a safe distance. An inter-office relationship has the most chance of success if each party works in a different department. Not only will that minimize the stress of working together day in and day out, it will lessen the chance of being outed as a couple.

“Office romances can work,” says Farris, “but you’ve got to have a taste for intrigue.” And, she suggests, you need an exit strategy in case it all goes wrong.

But try telling that to Jennifer.

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