It's difficult to rate this one. If you look at it from far away, the show is pretty cute. But if you look at it from close up, there's a pretty problematic message there.

I understand the appeal: Lee Jun has been hurt by love in the past and thusly, completely closed himself off to feeling any romantic emotions. Ha Ram, the new employee at the company, falls in love with him at first sight, and is eager to change Lee Jun's mind about love. It sounds sweet when you put it that way, and they definitely pushed a sweet narrative with plenty of cute moments. The issue however is, that sexual harassment in the workplace is not cute. Ha Ram is pretty aggressive in his pursuit of getting Lee Jun to fall for him, even if Lee Jun turns him down plenty of times, and tells him to stop his behaviour. If this happened in real life, it wouldn't be cute or swoon-worthy at all, and it wouldn't be comedic either, like the show often portrayed it to be. It would be an absolutely horrible situation to be in, and action would need to be taken. But because this is a BL, the show just looks right past that and romanticises the harassment. We've seen this happen in so many BLs before, and it's about time that we stop just accepting this as something that is cute or normal. It's disgusting behaviour, and even trying to hide it in-between adorable scenes, cute boys and comedy does not make it okay.

The story could've been a heartfelt tale of regaining hope if they had handled it differently. Had Ha Ram and Lee Jun started off as friends, and then gradually fallen in love simultaneously, this could've been extremely adorable. They had all the ingredients to make this into something really great: The acting was really solid, the two main leads had plenty of chemistry, the side-characters were likeable (aside from the villainous ex, of course), and they know how to create comedic as well as cute moments. Everything was there, they just needed to create a story surrounding it that doesn't push a toxic narrative. Because the message of this show ends up being "Just harass your co-worker for long enough, and they will eventually fall for you as well!" which is obviously extremely messed up.

There's something I really did like about the show though. Right now, there's a boom of office romances. They're kinda replacing campus BLs at the moment. I don't really take issue with office romances if there isn't an inappropriate power dynamic at play. But what I do generally dislike about office romances is that the characters still feel like college (or even high school) students most of the time. It's like they had all these ideas for campus BLs, but people got tired of those, so they just put the characters they had come up with into an office setting, without altering the characters to behave like actual adults. With Love Mate, I was positively surprised about how the characters actually felt like adults, especially Lee Jun. He was hardened by life, behaved maturely, and kissing as well as sex weren't played up to be a huge deal. I really enjoyed that, and I hope we'll see more office romances that take into this direction. Hopefully with less problematic messages though.

The best thing about the show was Lee Jun's female co-worker. I have a massive crush on her. She's so kind, pretty, and cute. This has nothing to do with my review of the show, but I just needed to get that out of my system.

I cannot in good faith rate this any higher than a 2 since it promotes such a problematic message. I do want to give credit to the acting, the chemistry and the comedy though. With a less problematic execution, this could've easily been a 7 or 8.
Would I recommend this to people? Given the toxic message, not really. But I do know that many viewers look past problematic behaviour in BLs, just to enjoy the sweetness of two cute guys falling in love. So if you're one of those people, you're probably gonna like this. If you want BLs to stop romanticising toxicity, then maybe don't support this show in any way. If you want a cute office romance that is way less problematic, watch Our Dating Sim. Both shows were produced by the same studio, so they have very similar vibes.