Go to your office holiday party and risk being put on Santa’s naughty list.
A third of Americans were tempted to cheat on their partners at winter workplace festivities, and almost two in 10 actually did, a scandalous new survey found.
People search engine Spokeo polled 1,158 American adults about infidelity in October and found 35% had nearly been enticed to betray on their partner at the office Christmas shindig, while 17% admitted to hooking up with a party paramour.
The salacious stats didn’t surprise Big Apple therapists, who said people tend to form intimate bonds with colleagues under workplace stress.
“A lot of people bank more hours at the office than with their spouse, and there’s all kinds of intimacy and tension that builds up in that for sure,” Matt Lundquist, a couples therapist at Tribeca Therapy, told The Post.
“I suspect most hookups at holiday parties are ones that have been brewing for a while,” he said.
Respondents didn’t specify whether their illicit holiday party flings were sloppy hookups at offsite bars or in the office break rooms, but the company did highlight a number of reasons people are indulging in their extramarital trysts.
Of those surveyed, 22% said they fooled around with someone other than their partner because they liked the attention, while 20% said they lacked trust in their significant other.
More than 11%, however, said they have affairs for the rush of the taboo, which Manhattan-based psychotherapist Lesley Koeppel said is likely intensified in a workplace setting.
“People do affairs for … the excitement of getting caught, the risks that you’re taking,” she said. “That’s particularly heightened in an office, where you have an expectation to be professional and respect certain boundaries.”
Koeppel noted the heavy amount of booze consumed at December gatherings has a clear influence on office-party liaisons.
The wintertime also “is a time of self-indulgence, where we’re supposed to have what we want, get what we want,” she said, adding that some pencil pushers may think to themselves: “I’ve always been attracted to this person, and it’s the office party, and it’s the holidays. And so I’m gonna give myself this little gift.”