Your company wants you to sign a love contract.

Your company wants you to sign a love contract.

And that tells you everything about who it is actually protecting.

Every Friday, Kay Reports uncovers global dating scams, emotional red flags, and digital deception — so you can date smarter, not harder. This week: the document your employer invented to manage something it helped cause.

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In July 2025, a Coldplay concert changed everything.

At Gillette Stadium in Boston, 55,000 people watched Chris Martin turn the jumbotron into a kiss cam. Two people appeared on screen. Astronomer CEO Andy Byron had his arms around Kristin Cabot, the company's Chief People Officer. When they realised the camera was on them, they tried to hide. Martin said from the stage: "Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy."

The video went viral and was viewed more than 100 million times. By morning, the internet had identified them both via LinkedIn. Byron resigned as CEO within days. Cabot — even though Astronomer told her she could return — eventually left her career entirely. She later told the New York Times she had received death threats, been stalked by paparazzi, and received 500 to 600 calls a day.

The person who was supposed to be managing the company's people policies was now the story.

Here is the part nobody said out loud: Astronomer almost certainly had a workplace romance policy. Most companies do now. Between 2013 and 2025, the number of organisations with no formal policy on workplace romance fell from 54% to 22%.

The policy did not help anyone.

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The decade of the love contract

After #MeToo, corporations panicked — and correctly so. The movement exposed how badly workplaces had failed to protect people from predatory behaviour dressed up as mutual attraction.

The response was a wave of policy-writing. Companies including Facebook and Google put into writing that coworkers could ask each other out — but only once, and any ambiguity counted as a no. Disclosure requirements spread. HR departments were briefed. And a specific document began to go mainstream: the love contract.

A love contract — formally called a consensual relationship agreement — is a document signed by two employees in a romantic relationship. It formally acknowledges the relationship is consensual, sets out conduct expectations, and typically includes a clause saying neither party will retaliate against the other if the relationship ends.

The intention was not entirely cynical. Some of this was genuine harm reduction. But the fine print matters.

If the relationship is between a superior and a subordinate, a consensual relationship agreement primarily reduces later liability for the employer. Not for you. For them.

The love contract is, at its core, a legal instrument designed to protect the company from the consequences of something the company's own structure made far more likely to happen.

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The part nobody in HR wants to admit

Here is the uncomfortable truth sitting inside every workplace romance policy ever written:

The company built the conditions. It benefits from the long hours, the shared intensity, the sense of team identity, the feeling of being known by the people around you. Then, when two people inevitably feel something, the company produces a document and calls it protection.

A 2024 Forbes Advisor survey found that 60% of adults have had a workplace romance. That is not a rounding error. That is a majority of the working population. You cannot write a policy for something that is functionally universal and then claim the policy is about employee welfare.

Psychologists and HR experts broadly agree that romance among colleagues is inevitable. The workplace is structurally engineered to produce exactly this outcome. So the real question — the one companies almost never ask — is: who does our policy actually protect when it happens?

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What signing a form does not do

Signing a love contract does not change power dynamics.

If your manager asks you to disclose your relationship and sign a document acknowledging it is consensual, you are being asked to put on record that you freely chose this — in a situation where the free choice part is structurally complicated. Within the terms of these contracts, employees are typically obligated to notify their employer when the relationship ends. So the company knows when it starts. The company knows when it ends. And the lower-power person has now signed a document that will be used in any future dispute — a document they may have felt implicit pressure to sign in the first place.

This is not protection. This is paperwork.

The form is designed to protect the organisation from legal liability. Your emotional safety is not the document's primary concern. Read it that way.

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The red flags hiding inside a "policy-compliant" relationship

The existence of a company policy — and your compliance with it — does not make a relationship safe. It may make danger harder to see.

• The policy creates an illusion of legitimacy. Once the form is signed, both parties may feel the difficult conversations are behind them. They are not. Power imbalance and emotional dependency do not disappear because HR has a record.
• Disclosure protects the organisation, not you. If the relationship later becomes problematic, the signed form exists as evidence that you agreed it was fine — at the start, when you may not yet have had enough information to know whether it was.
• "Consensual" is a starting point, not a permanent state. A document signed on day one says nothing about the months that follow — about what changes when one person's professional position shifts, or when ending things starts to feel professionally dangerous.
• The person who benefits most from your signature is not you. In a hierarchical relationship, the more powerful person has the most to gain from formalising things quickly. The more vulnerable person often has the most to lose from signing before they fully understand the implications.

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When the policy itself is the red flag

If you are in the early stages of a workplace relationship and the more powerful person moves quickly to formalise things — to have you sign something, to disclose to HR, to make it "official" before you feel ready — that urgency is worth examining.

Genuine care for a partner includes care for their professional safety. It includes giving them time to understand what they are agreeing to. It includes not using the company's compliance framework as a tool to lock in legitimacy before either person has thought it through.

If the push to formalise comes faster than the relationship itself has had time to develop — that is the red flag. Not the romance. The rush.

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When policy is genuinely useful

At their best, workplace romance policies create a shared language for something people often handle in total silence — and silence is where the real danger lives.

A well-designed policy can genuinely help when:

• It is applied consistently, regardless of seniority
• It requires structural changes — such as removing reporting lines — rather than just paperwork
• It offers resources and support for both people, not just a document to sign
• It is written to protect the lower-power person, not just the company's legal position
• Disclosure is genuinely voluntary and genuinely confidential

The difference between a good policy and a bad one is simple: who does it protect when things go wrong? If the answer is primarily the company — it is not a good policy. It is a liability instrument wearing HR language.

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The Kay Reports rule

Signing a form does not make a relationship safe. Feeling safe enough not to need a form is closer to the standard worth reaching for.

Before any document, ask yourself: does this person understand what it means for me to be in this relationship? Have we actually talked about what happens professionally if this ends? Is the rush to formalise coming from care for me — or from someone managing their own exposure?

The company's policy is designed for the company. Your protection has to come from your own clarity.

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Date smarter: What to do if a love contract appears

• Read it as a legal document, not a romantic gesture. It is protecting them. Understand exactly what you are agreeing to.
• Ask who else has signed one. If it is applied inconsistently, that tells you how the policy actually functions.
• Do not sign under time pressure. You are entitled to read it, sit with it, and ask questions. Anyone who needs you to sign quickly is not prioritising your interests.
• Understand the disclosure terms. Who at the company will know? What happens to that information if you leave, or if the relationship ends badly?
• Remember the form does not change the dynamic. After you sign, the power map is identical to what it was before. The document just means the company has noted it.

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Kay Reports goes out every Friday. We uncover global dating scams, emotional red flags, and digital deception — so you can date smarter, not harder.

If this changed how you think about something, forward it to someone who needs to read it. They know who they are.

Hit reply and tell us: have you ever been asked to sign something like this? We read every response.