COMMITMENTS : To Love, Honor . . . and Work Together : Whether they’re business partners or just happen to clock in at the same place, some couples say being co-workers as well as lovers can be good for a marriage.

A typical workday morning for John Culpepper and Lisa Heidel sounds like that of most married, two-career couples: She gets up. Half an hour later, after she’s done showering, he gets up. Whoever thinks of it first makes coffee. They car-pool to their respective jobs, which are close by each other.

Sounds fairly routine so far, right?

But here’s the unusual part: Culpepper and Heidel work really close by each other. Employed in different departments at a 20-person computer software company, they work within the sound of each other’s voice all day long. They even eat lunch together. That’s eight or more hours a day, five days a week, 50 weeks a year of relating to each other as colleagues, with all the stresses any work relationship brings.

Such a setup might sound like a fast track to divorce court. But to Culpepper and Heidel--and a surprising number of other couples whose wedding vows may well have read, “To love, honor and obey proper copy-machine etiquette”--working together works just fine. Whether they’re full-fledged business partners or just happen to collect their paychecks from the same place, these couples say being co-workers as well as lovers can actually be good for the marriage.

“In a culture in which time is so precious,” Heidel says, “if you can increase the amount of time you are around the person you love the most, there is a real benefit to that.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t keep numbers on married co-workers, but most people can name at least one couple that fits the bill--which hasn’t always been the case.

“There was a time when companies would not hire husbands and wives because it was considered nepotism,” says magazine editor Sharon Nelton, whose 1986 book “In Love & In Business” (Wiley) profiled entrepreneurial couples.

Nelton attributes business’ shift in attitude to the influence of the women’s movement. Other observers guess that it’s because small companies--which made up more than 99% of all employers in 1990, the last year for which statistics are available--are more flexible and liberal than huge corporations.

But big businesses seem to be loosening up too.

“Many companies have a policy against hiring relatives. We prefer it,” says David Spartin of MBNA America Bank, a Delaware-based company with 11,000 employees worldwide, including about 300 married couples. (Like many companies, however, MBNA does not let relatives work directly for relatives.) MBNA’s carefully cultivated family-oriented environment, Spartin says, isn’t just good for morale: It’s good for business. “We’ve been very successful over the years,” he says, “and people are the reason.”

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Another reason for the growing number of married co-workers is that work has become a, if not the, key place to meet members of the opposite sex.

“It’s a consequence of the social age in which we live and the possible negatives of being single or promiscuous,” theorizes Sam Tillery, a research assistant with the Office of Economic Research at the U.S. Small Business Administration, who admits his organization has no hard data to back this up.

But even though romance may be as commonplace in the office as fax machines, not all couples who meet through work choose to stay there together. It takes a special kind of couple to handle the complex politics that can arise from this kind of arrangement.

“A lot of people find it hard to work with couples,” says Dennis Jaffe, a partner with his wife and others in the San Francisco-based consulting firm HeartWork Inc., which helps solve problems in family businesses. Jaffe says it’s up to couples to make co-workers feel comfortable around them, although this isn’t always easy to do.

First, there can be the built-in pressure of other colleagues who don’t quite know what to make of you, especially if you’re married to someone high up.

“It’s really difficult, because I do get preferential treatment. I take my work seriously, and I feel I shouldn’t be treated any differently, but I am,” says an accountant at a company that works for her husband’s firm across the street.

Even when they don’t suspect preferential treatment, co-workers sometimes treat couples as a single unit, feeling free to gripe about one spouse to the other, in hopes the complaint will be passed along.

Spouses should resist the temptation to fight each other’s battles at work, Jaffe adds. Often, he says, “One person tries to protect the other or tries to take care of the other.” He cites a restaurant in which the chef-husband “was very gruff,” which put off other workers. “His wife would keep running interference for him.” Better to let him learn on his own.

John Culpepper, who has been at his company longer than his wife and has a fair amount of clout, knows how hard that is to do.

“One of the issues I had to deal with was letting her fights be her fights and not my fights,” he says.

There are other hurdles spouses must overcome to work well together, not the least of which is learning to relate to each other as business associates, not as a couple.

Allen Rubenstein’s wife, Jackie, went to work a year ago as office manager for his showroom-design firm at the Pacific Design Center. He says the shift in the relationship was a little surprising at first. Jackie had had her own successful career for years but knew little about Allen’s line of work, and he suddenly found himself in the role of teacher--and boss.

“In our marriage, I’ve always felt that we are equals,” he says, “and there is never a hierarchy at home. In the office, where there are deadlines and pressures, I function differently.”

Jackie, too, had to adapt to the new roles. “There weren’t so much disagreements as there were adjustments,” she says. “A loving spouse at home may be all business in the office. That is something you have to get used to.”

Married colleagues also need to learn when not to be colleagues. That’s often difficult, especially with a demanding job.

“The majority of our relationship is a very rosy picture, but if there is a downside, it’s that this is our whole world,” says Rhonda Rickel, who works in real estate with her husband, Warren Wixen.

“If you know there’s a spouse waiting at home for you, you might try to leave the office a little earlier, but we tend to take really late hours,” Wixen says.

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Many couples have rules, either spoken or unspoken, about not talking business after hours; others admit that they haven’t quite mastered that skill.

“We work late, and then we come home and talk about it,” Rickel says with a laugh.

Surprisingly, though, Jaffe says talking shop can actually strengthen the bond between married colleagues. In his case, “I’m a person who loves to work, and I love my work. Having a wife who works as hard as I do as a partner--it’s fun.”

On the other hand, this kind of arrangement is not for everyone. “One drawback to working together is the stress and the tension in the relationship that the business brings,” Jaffe says. “If your business is under stress, then both of you are in trouble.”

Conversely, if the marriage is under stress, working together certainly doesn’t make it any easier. “We’ve spent more time in the same room than most people married 50 years. It’s really hard to stick yourself in a closet with somebody for 12 years and not have something go wrong,” says a small-business owner currently separated from, but still working with, his wife. Ironically, even though they spend so much time together, work prevents them from really talking about what is going wrong with their marriage.

But if a couple can communicate both at home and on the job, working as a team can cement the relationship. In fact, some of the management skills that couples learn on the job--particularly the ability to compromise--can be directly applied at home.

“I found myself envious of some of the couples,” says editor Nelton, “because they had such an ability to talk about things with each other.”

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Personal Business

Sure, you love each other, but could you work together? A few qualities of successful married colleagues:

Mutual admiration. “I think work becomes the most fun when you feel appreciated. One of the things that makes our job rewarding is that we express that to each other.”--Rhonda Rickel

Complementary skills. “Even in something like writing a business letter, Jackie adds those warm people skills that I have learned to appreciate. I’m a good technical writer; she adds a human dimension to the writing.”--Allen Rubenstein

Professionalism. “During the day, I might kick her under the desk or wink at her, but we do keep our relationship businesslike at work. We don’t want to gross other people out in the office.”--Warren Wixen

Friendship. “I would say we have a true friendship. That would sum it up. Any time there’s something that comes up, I know I can go to her and talk about it.”--Ed Nelton

Shared commitment to the business. “When we set a deadline, he’s the type of person who will do whatever it takes to meet it. He’ll stay up all night, make sacrifices in his personal life.”--Sherry Nelton