The sexual harassment rules keep changing. Am I too old to understand?

On the latter point, the answer is yes–I am too old to adapt to the ever-changing mores.

But as an aspiring geezer–not yet 60, so I am far from old, right? Right?!!–I can issue a warning to the younger set being lured in by articles such as the one I am about to discuss.

Don’t talk about your personal life at the office, especially not about sex. It is a trap. A minefield. A way to get fired if somebody wants to “get” you.

That’s not the gist of this Wall Street Journal article, though, in which we learn the new mores at work allow for or even encourage discussions about sexual practices, fetishes, marital infidelity, and the like.

Hot dates, birth control, polyamorous relationships. Intimate topics are now fair game for some at work. https://t.co/aeUCPNhxlS

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) July 5, 2023

Don’t be fooled. It is a trap.

IT IS A TRAP!!!

Of course it’s not only a trap, but it is a terrible idea in almost any work environment. A small business can be very flexible based upon the culture, but once you get more than a few employees who come and go it’s time to keep the intimate out of the workplace. And any business that can be of interest to the Wall Street Journal is too big to have people survive long in such an environment.

When Vanessa Van Edwards told a group of workers to ask their colleagues about the most exciting thing they did over the weekend, the communication trainer wanted to spark chitchat and collegial bonding.

She didn’t expect that one co-worker would be treated to details of a colleague’s Saturday-night sexual escapades in response.

Maybe it’s our newly casual attitudes after the pandemic, maybe we’re more determined to be ourselves at work, but some office conversations now include details of sex lives.

Workers accustomed to posting secrets on Instagram and TikTok, or who just have lower personal filters, are dropping risqué emojis in team Slack channels, asking bosses for advice on condoms and detailing the rules they use for “swinging” with other couples, unprompted in the hallway, according to employees and managers I talked to.

Some say sharing about, say, a polyamorous relationship, is less about sex than defining their identity and being fully themselves—whether others want to hear about it or not.

With more Americans single than in past decades, conversations about dating apps and first nights with new partners are happening in the office, says Justin Garcia, executive director of Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute, which studies sexuality. Young people feel especially comfortable sharing, he adds.

“We’re all trying to figure out, where are the lines?” he says.

See what I mean? No small business hires “communications trainers,” and no larger business with an HR department will let you skate if somebody complains about your discussing your polyamorous relationship. You may or may not get away with it, but you are on thin ice and will fall through if somebody doesn’t like you.

At the office, we’re sharing our mental-health issues, fertility struggles, politics and salaries. The only intimate thing left is, well, intimacy.

“Should we be talking about this at the workplace?” one manager in her late 30s told me she thought when a conversation in a meeting turned to birth-control methods. Others said the chatter makes them uneasy about whether a dirty joke or explicit anecdote could tip into sexual harassment.

“I would just rather not know,” says Anthony Zambataro, a marketing consultant who said he was taken aback by a colleague’s talk about their extramarital affair at a prior job.

How times have changed. When I was getting my first in a long line of sexual harassment training, we were advised to just stay away from any talk like this in the workplace. At the time I thought they went a bit overboard, making the rules a bit too tight to allow for genuine friendships to develop.

Apparently, pendulums swing too far in both directions. So it goes.

Now the advice is, I kid you not, “Keep the tone playful and casual.”

Frank sexual conversations at work, just a few years after the #MeToo movement, give many workers whiplash. Some employees counter that view: Listening to the juicy parts of co-workers’ lives makes workdays more fun, they say, and helps them feel like flesh-and-blood humans, not corporate robots.

“You feel like you have a friend over and you’re having a coffee,” one remote sales professional told me of company online and video chats where colleagues trade spicy memes and, on occasion, share how many times they had sex on vacation.

Some admissions can be freeing, says Jasper Prince, a 27-year-old graphic designer, who is based in Oklahoma and uses the pronouns they and them.

Don’t be lured in. It’s a trap. A lot of #metoo allegations were about things that happened years or even decades in the past. Talk too much now, pay quite a bit later.

IT IS A TRAP. Mark my words.

Besides, fewer people want to know how many times and what kind of sex you had on vacation. Trust me on that.