By “party”, I mean a physical social gathering of people for the purposes of having fun. It may be used in a sentence as “I am throwing a party!” or “Let’s party!”.
Basically what I am trying to say is the default “party”.
I’ve never been to any, and I have no idea how people spend their time on parties, so I am curious how you did.
(Sorry I kinda alternate between second and first person, between recounting experience of what I do and giving advice, may make for a weird read so apologies in advance)
For me house party or bar it’s usually:
There’s a bit of ebb and flow at the start of the party as the vibes settle in. As you probably noticed there’s a lot of making polite excuses to move around the party or draw more people into your convo if you prefer that. Once convos get big enough and people have put away a few drinks you may get people suggesting drinking games or Smash Bros or a dip in the pool or whatever it may be. It’s fun to get involved.
For me, if I’m drinking, I may hit a point of being buzzed enough that it feels like second nature, I become a lot less self conscious, and enough stuff is happening around me to react to that things don’t require effort to get going.
If however I’ve had a few drinks and things don’t take off, and everything still feels stilted despite my best efforts, I’ll probably just call it a night. I’ll find the host if I can and make an excuse (Have to feed the cat/last train home/visiting my parents tomorrow) if it’s a good friend I may say as much “Hey man just not feeling it this evening, gunna make an early mark, thanks for throwing the party”. On the way out, if there was anyone I particularly enjoyed talking to, I’ll make sure to say goodbye and if I haven’t already I’ll ask for their contact.
As dasharezone says, if you’re not feeling it you can just hit the bricks.
Hope this makes sense, it’s kind of a base format that is essential to most kinds of standing party, alcohol or none, daytime or night.
How did you learn all this? I’m 41 and still have no party skills. My go-to is to make friends with the host’s pets.
Yeah pretty much what @[email protected] said (thanks, I was snoozing so couldn’t reply).
I wanted to learn because I’m introverted and have social anxiety too.
I kinda forced myself to be sociable during uni: I volunteered, I went to clubs and societies parties, I went to faculty networking events. After uni I hosted a couple of meetups and continued with some voluntary roles in the organisations I’d joined during uni. In my early stage career I had to attend some work events too. Over that time there were friends’ birthdays, impromptu parties etc. I live in a large city so there’s always something going on.
Throughout this I wanted to find a low friction approach that helped me meet people that didn’t leave me totally wrung out at the end of the evening (just less wrung out). I find intense one on one convos to be interesting but more draining. If I went to a party and hit a half hour intense convo out of the gate, then I wouldn’t last long. I found if I didn’t move around then there would be a high chance I’d get engaged in a long convo, or find myself on my own getting increasingly self conscious. So I had to find out something that worked for me.
But yes, for me it was practice. It’s also important not to get too formulaic. You don’t want to turn the party into a networking event where you try to meet as many people as possible and grill them with a stock list of questions. (You also don’t want to do that at a networking event, either…).
It’s also kind of a like that Groucho Marx quote but taken positively vis “I’m happy to be a member of any party that will have me”. If you’re there, then you’re the kind of person who belongs there. There’s all sorts of people at a party including people like you who are making an effort™ but you won’t know who they are until you meet them.
Hanging out with the host’s pet is fine :) for a party ultimately it’s just a chance for the host to bring their favourite people together to enjoy themselves, if you’re the kind of person the host is friends with, then you’ve got a good chance of having something in common with the host’s other friends you haven’t met yet.
I’ll say again, it’s kinda horses for courses at a party. My way of navigating a party is a rule of thumb I’ve devised for myself over time, and some other people follow a similar vein for their own reasons. If you do find an activity you enjoy lots, or get into a really interesting discussion with only one person that evening that you both enjoy, then that’s cool too! Nobody’s really there to enforce everyone has to enjoy it in the same way. If you had fun, then you came out ahead.
Oh, hello there, future me
I’ll step in, failures. A lot, and I mean a lot of failures. It takes a while to learn that there’s and ebe and flow to a party, a lot of people feel pressured to always be interesting at a party. Not possible, embrace the flow and learn to let the ebe pass by. I have done sooooo many embarrassing things at a party but you know what, I’m not dead. I’m not an outcast. None of those predictions happened.
Also know when to go home. Every party will hit one of two points late into the night, either the party will run out of gas or it’ll rev up. Either way, go home. Nothing good ever happens after 3:00 am.
This reminds me of a fun story:
I have this super extroverted friend that I would sometimes take to parties. He was from another town and he would visit me while I was in university. I’d roll up to a party where I knew maybe a handful of people, and this mf by the end would be friends with everyone there.
His fun little party trick was introducing himself to everyone and then remembering their names and then introducing everyone else to each other. “Oh hey Jackie, have you met David?” Either they didn’t and he became a big social hub at the party or worse-case they’d already known each other for 10 years and it was this hilarious joke. It was very fun.
He introduced me to so many people that would ask after him, like “where’s your crazy friend? He was funny.”
Basically, if possible, I highly recommend taking an extrovert with you.
Definitely! Wingmates aren’t just for hookups.