Should you get off with someone at the Christmas office do?

Christmas parties are like bandit country

What if getting off with that person at the office Christmas party was the best thing you could do?

I have a friend who's funny and the kind of person you want to drink and chat with until the early hours. What I didn't know – because we'd not had these kind of conversations before – is that she met her husband at work. And where did they first, erm, hit it off? The office Christmas party.

I know, I wasn't expecting that either. Usually, office-party romances amount to a drunken, ill-advised lunge (or worse) and then – this is also a true story – next-morning utterings of: “I shouldn't have done that. I'm a manager.” Regret is a theme, embarrassment a symptom. It's these stories we hear about. This is the gossip. The oh my God, can you believe so-and-so left with so-and-so? They were so drunk!

Christmas parties are like bandit country – there are no rules, there's way too much alcohol, and often a period of time off afterwards.

I once snogged my superior at a work Christmas do. I was new to London, new to clever Scandinavian guys with angular glasses, and new to the realisation that I probably didn't love my university boyfriend as much as I thought I did. I spent the next two weeks up north thinking, what the eff was that? I didn't even think I fancied that bloke! Etc. I learned something from it, though – it was time to move on from my relationship.

Back to my friend though. This thing with her guy had been building up for months, pre-party. “He'd asked before but I told him I wouldn't date somebody from work!” she says. Then Christmas came, with all its silliness, alcohol and devil-may-care, and here they are, one marriage and two kids later… The Christmas do may have plans for us we don't yet realise – you just gotta go with it.