In the rush to beat up on Elizabeth Edwards over her book tour this week, for publicly exposing her pain over John’s infidelity, the allegedly, resulting baby (who she insists, strangely, on calling ‘it”) and her reaction to the betrayal, we seem to have forgotten an important point in this saga: The other woman, Rielle Hunter, worked for John.

Now, I haven’t been privy to the technical details of that arrangement – whether she was a full-time campaign employee or a contract worker but let’s just take a time-out on the Elizabeth bashing here, shall we, for a little side tutorial on the dangers of such workplace liaisons for executives who think they can dabble in supposedly consensual affairs with those they supervise. So too thought that first such hapless bank executive to have his case go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Back in the dark ages of the 1980s, Mechelle Vinson was hired by Meritor Savings Bank as a teller trainee. She advanced to the position of assistant branch manager before her ultimate termination, allegedly for excessive use of sick leave. About a year later, Vinson sued the bank and Sidney Taylor, her supervisor, alleging that during her four years at the bank, she had sex with Taylor 40 or 50 times. She never complained, stating that she feared losing her job. Taylor alleged that the relationship was voluntary and consensual. Despite the length of the relationship (four years!) and the lack of a complaint, this landmark case upheld her hostile environment claim in 1986.

I can’t tell you how many times since then I’ve counseled some exec who thought he was in a voluntary relationship with a woman who worked for him who then later turned around and sued him for sexual harassment, claiming that she had to have sex with him to keep her job.

So yes, like most of you, I’ve found the whole Edwards soap opera both too painful too watch and also impossible to turn away from – the proverbial car wreck that you can’t stop rubbernecking as you drive by. But like most public sagas, there are many lessons here, not only the chance to ponder what you would do if you walked a mile in Elizabeth Edwards high heels, but also to remind you that angry spouses are not the only dangers lurking behind workplaces liaisons.