You probably remember the feeling from your plugged in dating days. Your precious little LTR flower gets a new job. Hurray!! - you feign excitement for her, but in the back of your mind is the nagging voice of jealousy.

Suddenly, your girl starts to spend the majority of her day with a new pool of people. If it's a career-related job (or, even worse, an administrative or supportive role at a well-established business), you suddenly begin to wonder about all of these new men she's interacting with. In the first week, she's starting to talk about all the new friends she's making (golly gee that happens fast for attractive girls, huh?!). In the first month she's getting invited to happy hours.

It's funny - for you, starting a new job and even moreso a new career means you're starting from the bottom and working your way up both socially and professionally. You're treated like dirt - you have nothing to offer yet, you're here to learn. But that's not the way it works for women in the workplace. Especially young and attractive women who are starting a new job will, just like you, start professionally at the bottom floor. But not socially.

Socially, she's a prize. And even the VPs and CEOs will give her attention if she’s attractive enough. Doesn't matter if she's their assistant or just passes them in the hall, the older, richer, more powerful men of her company will drool over her like dogs eyeing an unsupervised dinner plate. And that’s bad news for the LTR.

The Field Report

I work at a large, world-renowned ad agency. The people who work here are all very high SMV, though most of them don't take care of their bodies. Enter Sheila. Sheila is a relatively young administrative worker who's divorced and lives with her parents. She's not 22, but she's not past the wall yet. She works out. It shows.

Sheila also has a boyfriend with whom she was happy. She was, before she started the job. Not having known about her boyfriend and general life state, I started talking her up at a happy hour in her first week of work. I made a couple of VERY light advances on her (nothing that, if subtly rejected, would be awkward the next day), and she quickly snapped to our favorite line - I have a boyfriend!

As a general rule, I don't get involved with coworkers, but Sheila was temping me to break that rule. Plus, she was just a temporary admin. Our interactions were innocent enough - we'd get coffee sometimes in the morning. We'd chat via messenger about bullshit happening in the office. Eventually, we started going to a workout class with a few other people from our office on the weekends.

About two weeks after she started, Sheila started telling me about all of the things she hated about her boyfriend. Sounds pretty god damn familiar, right? Starting with stupid things like she didn't like the way he dressed sometimes. How he didn't go to the gym with her that week. And not more than two weeks after having met for the first time, she starts telling me how bad he is in bed. How sexually frustrated she is. How she hasn't orgasmed in months.

Keep in mind that these two are, in reality, around the same SMV level. Both live in the suburbs of a large midwest city. He worked in a relatively successful career while she jumped from job to job. But in a day, she entered a new social pool, and her perception of her own SMV jumped significantly as she got attention from the Mad Men that walk our halls. I can only imagine the shit tests this guy was facing at home.

We're about a month down the road now. Boyfriend, probably sensing that things aren't going as smoothly as he’d like, decides to drive an hour from the suburbs to bring her coffee from her favorite local place. He calls her to surprise her with coffee and flowers. It still makes me cringe – it’s something I absolutely would have done in my plugged-in life. Can you guess what her response was?

Total, utter, unflinching disgust. She wouldn't answer his phone calls. She told him she was too busy to walk downstairs. She sent screenshots of his texts to me, mocking him while he waited down in the lobby. She broke up with him that day via text.

Those of you in LTRs with career girls beware. The workplace breeds hypergamy. Be prepared to walk away or dominate a slough of shit tests.