Omaha City Wire

It certainly might be surprising to be told that you are a “work husband. "Chad McBride, PhD, was told the same some 10 years ago by a student who observed his close working relationship with a colleague. A work husband, or a work wife, according to McBride, whose interest was piqued by his student’s observation, is “a special, platonic friendship with a work colleague characterized by a close emotional bond, high levels of disclosure and support, and mutual trust, honesty, loyalty, and respect. "McBride, a professor of communication studies at Creighton University and a past president of the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language and Gender, has researched the topic for the past 10 years, along with Karla Mason Bergen, PhD, an associate professor of communication at Omaha’s College of St. Mary, and Allison Thorson, PhD, a professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of San Francisco. The “platonic friendship” definition, culled from research conducted by McBride and Bergen, was used by The Atlantic magazine to provide the framework for a discussion of the “work spouse” phenomenon last month. “The Bizarre Relationship of a ‘Work Wife’ and a ‘Work Husband’" suggests that McBride’s definition had given substance to a relationship that previously had been “slippery” of definition.

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