The Essential Guide to Having a Work Husband or Boyfriend

He knows you like your coffee black with three sugars. He knows you have a serious addiction to Ryan Reynolds and that you and your best friend talk every day on your way home from work. He tells you when you're having a great hair day.

"He" is otherwise known as your work boyfriend, aka the work hubby!

You can't imagine clocking in or out without seeing your favorite co-worker, the work hubby, and he's frequently there to join you at lunch break, talking away as if you two have known each other for life. But is your relationship with the work hubby appropriate, especially if you're involved with a man (married or dating)? Let's discuss the right and the wrong way to have a work boyfriend or husband.

A work husband should stay your work husband: at work.

It's OK if you feel like chatting here and there with your WH on Facebook or what have you, but the constant communication should come to a halt after 5 p.m. Do you really think your actual boyfriend or husband wants to share all of his time with you while you're texting and chatting with the work hubby? No, he doesn't. Besides, our time is precious. If your work boyfriend needs time after the clock is punched, perhaps you're dating the wrong guy.

A comment here and there about your body is harmless, but if the two of you are constantly exchanging innuendos, then guess what, girlfriend? You are in the wrong! If you find yourself needing to send a selfie shot of you in your bikini for your work dude to see, then you are crossing the line in a major way. No, no, no!

If you and your WH are constantly complaining about each other's significant others day in and day out, you're creating a level of intimacy that borders on an emotional affair. This is no bueno, my friend. It's OK to share some private details once in a while, but if every time you and your SO get into a fight, you run crying either literally or metaphorically into your work boyfriend's arms, you're creating an intimate dynamic that will end up ruining your actual relationship. Watch yourself!

Other than hugs or handshakes, physical contact is not OK. Period. Don't fool yourself. The office work party is no excuse to misbehave. Control yourself.

Your WH doesn't need to know all your sexual proclivities and desires OR issues and habits you may have with your actual boyfriend. That sort of opens a Pandora's box of serious flirtation and complication.

If you two are truly appropriate, then your actual husband or boyfriend should have met the work husband by now, and the two of you won't be excluding other co-workers from joining you for lunch, for example. You and the work husband ask others to join you, and the two of you have met each other's significant halves. There are no secrets, and you never hide talking or seeing or your habits with your work boyfriend from your actual man.

Don't do anything with your work husband that you wouldn't want your actual boyfriend to do with someone else.

And remember: do you really want a complicated emotional affair at work that can end up getting you A) fired, or B) losing an important connection, or C) blowing a friendship? Nope! Not worth it! So take inventory of your actual feelings for your work husband and be sure to keep proper boundaries, lest you feel like getting dumped by your legitimate, real-life man!