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Suddenly I have something in common with Angelina Jolie. Sadly, it's not Brad Pitt. And, if you passed me in the street, you'd be unlikely to mistake me for Lara Croft.
What I and thousands of other women (including Angelina's nemesis, Jennifer Aniston) share with Ms Jolie is that we met our partners at work.
In Jolie's case, it was on the film set of Mr And Mrs Smith; in mine, it was — rather less glamorously — in a lift in a rundown building, just off London's Oxford Street.
Neither of us was very good at keeping our relationship secret. While Angelina and Brad's first date made the tabloids; mine, with Steve, was gossiped about at the water cooler by colleagues who had seen us together leaving a bar.
In true paparazzi style, somebody even took an incriminating photograph.
I didn't discuss my new relationship with my then boss. I didn't need to. The fact that Steve kept appearing on my floor to use the coffee machine, when there was a perfectly good one on his — four floors above, and the lift was broken — rather gave the game away.
And if my boss had a problem with it, she didn't mention it. She was probably delighted that I breezed into work every morning looking pleased to be there. Even if sometimes I was wearing yesterday's clothes.
But not all bosses have such a laissez-faire attitude. According to a new study, workplace romances are under threat from bosses who fear they're responsible for nepotism, disruption and charges of sexual harassment.
Some firms are making employees sign 'love contracts' that oblige them to report relationships with other members of staff, while others are trying to ban office romances altogether.
Long gone are the days when we worried about people taking their work home with them. Now, conversely, what alarms those in charge is that we're conducting our personal lives in the office.
Such attempts to curb workplace relationships are futile. Having an office romance is like stealing the office stationery: everyone acknowledges it goes on, the powers-that-be don't approve, but it's seen as inevitable.
After all, simply everyone is at it. The latest statistics show that 70 per cent of us have had an office romance, while one in three of us has set up home with a work colleague. As for what goes on at the office Christmas party, thankfully no one's keeping count.
40 hour weeks
But is it any wonder? On average, we work a minimum 40-hour week and commute for a couple of hours each day. Add time for sleeping, shopping and eating to the equation, and you're left with about an hour a day in which to meet and romance your future life partner. Some of us take more time choosing our shoes.
The point is that nowadays, if you don't meet your other half in the office, where — and more pertinently when — will you meet them?
The modern office is an ideal venue, in that it resembles a compact dating agency. It's an environment where you can find people of the opposite sex with similar interests, abilities and ambitions, who share your educational background.
Unlike most dating agencies, not only is this dating agency's services free, you actually get paid to use it. I didn't realise it at the time but, within our company, my husband was something of a workplace lothario. Before we met, he'd had two previous office romances there.
He tells me that on one occasion, he and his then girlfriend had arranged to meet after work in a quiet bar a couple of miles from the office, as they were attempting to keep their relationship quiet.
They walked into the bar to discover their — married — boss in a rather compromising position with another member of the team. He'd had exactly the same idea.
I don't believe my old company is unique. Most workplaces are like giant chemistry sets, with endless amounts of testosterone, adrenaline and pheromones flooding through the air conditioning system.
To those who want to curb office romance, I say this: you can no more legislate over hormones than you can rid a company of office politics. And you'd be foolish to try.
I have no doubt that office romances boost staff morale.
I'll never forget the day that an amorous colleague sent an e-mail to his secret office lover, which read: "I see you're wearing a scarf this morning. Is that because of the love bite I gave you last night?"
The reason I (and everyone else who worked in the open plan office) know this is that he accidentally sent it to the next person in his address book, a bespectacled, single man in his 40s who had a rather loud voice.
People gossiping about their colleagues' affairs are far less likely to discuss their poor working conditions or their boss's inadequacies.
They're less likely to complain about missing EastEnders, because they're still in the office at 8pm, if a real-life soap opera is going on.
I'd also like to point out that people enjoying office romances take pride in their appearance and rarely take sickies.
So long as they do their jobs properly, what staff members do between the sheets is not the boss's concern. It's illegal for an employer to ask an interviewee whether they're married, so how can it be permissible for a boss to demand an employee informs them who they're dating?
Practically speaking, too, the whole area is a bureaucratic nightmare. When exactly are you supposed to inform your boss of your latest squeeze?
Do you tell them after the first date, when you move in together or when it's time for them to buy a hat? What if your relationship is of the on-again/ off-again variety? And what if it's the boss you're dating?
It's more than 10 years since I left the office where Steve and I worked together and I'm happy to tell you that we've just celebrated our eighth wedding anniversary.
Not only has our relationship outlasted our careers at that company, it has also outlasted Steve's department, which was disbanded and sold off a week after we returned from our honeymoon.
These days I work from home. I have to say, I miss the office gossip.
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