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Sex

Stories of Women Finding Love (or a Reasonable Approximation of It) at the Office Holiday Party

According to one survey, one in seven women find love at the annual office get-together.

Illustration by Ella Strickland

Who's found love at their annual work Christmas party? And by love I mean, you know, a sloppy makeout or a bit of what you might be able to classify as sex. Just some human contact to make you feel less alone at the end of a cruel, tiring year. Come on, hands up. Because while on paper it might be one of the least sexy events of the whole year (cheap booze, awkward company, and regrettable conversation being the order of the evening), there's a fair few of us who have touched bits of our coworkers that we never thought—never hoped—we would.

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But office parties aren't always about clumsy fumbles that will haunt you forever. According to one (completely reliable and absolutely scientific) survey that plopped into my inbox this week, one in seven women have entered into a long-term relationship with a colleague following a furry-tongued snog at the office party. And, apparently, the same number have "their eye" on someone they work with, hoping that things might take an intimate turn over a warm beer and a couple of handfuls of Chex mix.

In my experience, the only slightly "naughty" thing that's happened at a work Christmas outing was a female colleague flashed her bra. And I don't think it was even in my direction.

So can office parties really be the breeding ground for romance? We asked four female writers to share their experiences of The Office Christmas Party.

I MET MY GIRLFRIEND AND FELL IN LOVE

December 16, 2006. I was working as an usher at a West End theater and our Christmas party was being held after hours at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.

I'm sat on the sweeping staircase of the theater, feeling pretty jazzed about the new Rip Curl hoodie I had on, with a plastic beaker of cava in my paw. A girl—let's call her Denise—meanders over and sits beside me. Denise is heart-skip beautiful, heterosexual, and had once gotten off with the boy from a peanut butter ad—so obviously I was out of my depth. I should also mention that I was wearing flared corduroy trousers and I hadn't figured out how to tint my blonde eyebrows yet, so I always looked like the shocked, wide-eyed, and open-mouth emoji.

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Anyway. We chatted, we vibed, and then came the question that I now know to be A FLASHING RED WARNING SIGN. Denise says, "So, you're a lesbian? I just can't imagine, like, going down on a girl…"

Now that I've been out and lezzing around town for over a decade, I know that on the whole properly heterosexual girls don't ask this question. They don't spend much time thinking about performing oral sex on women because, I don't know, I guess they're just hungry for sausage. But the straight girls who are harboring a secret desire to have it off with another girl? They love getting drunk and cornering lesbians and asking them this question. Twenty-year-old me didn't know that yet though, so I just answered honestly, "I dunno. It's just normal. I like it."

We stayed there on the stairs, talking, all night. In a matter of hours I went from not really knowing her name, to learning everything about her, to realizing that even if I could download her brain into my own, I could NEVER learn enough about her. And then she kissed me.

I fell in love with Denise like I've never loved anyone or thing before. She came out as gay. We made it official. We grew up together. We made each other better people. And then after five years together she proposed… Jokes. She cheated on me and tore my heart in to bloodied ribbons of flesh.

But shock twist: We worked through it and years later she's one of my dearest friends. Classic lez behavior.

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And all that from a work Christmas party. —Kayleigh Llewellyn

OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTIES ARE THE WORST

I've never in my life been able to imagine an atmosphere less conducive to fairytale romance than a work Christmas party. For some people, these things are laced with romantic possibility. I have clearly never worked in the same places as them. In my office, our Christmas celebrating will begin on the rough carpet tiles around our desks pincering a corrugated plastic cup of warm M&S cava, while making agonizing small talk with a woman from accounts you would really rather internally email.

If you work in the "creative industries" the party may take on more ambitious delusions of glamor. Things will inevitably relocate to a cheap-to-hire cocktail joint where you will be released like pack of sequinned greyhounds on the bar. Wherever your party's held, the only person you have ever fancied in the office will leave sensibly at about 11 PM muttering something about getting up for Winter Wonderland with his girlfriend—a woman who you have never met but deeply resent. After this time you'll be left to work the room, gently sabotaging your career in a way that will only become clear over the next year. Despite the fact that absolutely nobody is having what is popularly known as a "good time" the lure of the bar is certain to draw everyone back in like burnt moths slowly drowning in the wax of a church candle.

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Outside the social smokers share rebellious menthols and swap titillating anecdotes you absolutely never wanted to hear. Your boss conducts her line management from the top of the a toilet cistern, a guy from accounts with Jagerbomb admits to you he's always hated his wife and you start doing weird flirting with the IT guy. This may or may not end in eggnog-fueled half-sex at his place. Through the window you may spot a man in his mid 40s in that palpable experimenting-with-hats phase of a midlife crisis who is attempting to impress the office manager by showing her he can still do the worm. This heartbreaking display marks the beginning of a countdown clock to the 2AM that will end with his vomiting into his corduroy trilby in the back of a cab.
—Lucy Hancock

I FELL IN LOVE WITH MY JOB

For me, romance has always been fairly low on the festive agenda—unless you count the time my old colleague and dear friend Ben pulled a single testicle out through his fly and tried to brush it against the back of my hand while Gok Wan played with his dog on the next table. But I did once fall in love at a Christmas party.

I was 25, had recently moved to London, and was living in a flat lightly coated with black mold, overlooking Lidl. I had not been happy, but thanks to a non-hormone coil and a change of job, I was starting to remember what happy felt like. The party was held at Shunt—the now-defunct club under a railway arch in London Bridge. I had been working at a charity for, at most, a month and took the precaution of eating no dinner and wearing shoes that didn't fit for our annual knees-up. As I walked in, I spotted an entire tray of fizzing wine and my wealthy philanthropist boss in a pair of ludicrously colorful trainers chatting animatedly to a waitress. We drank, I used a number of Christmas trees as ash trays, several slight men in waistcoats snogged up against the coats and I asked each of my colleagues in turn who they'd hollow out and use as a canoe in the case of an apocalypse.

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Right then and there I fell in love. Not with a person, but with my job

For the first time in a long time, I was working with young people—people who made me laugh, who hated Christmas, who did the kind of dancing that can result in a neck brace, and who were happy to get off with each other pressed up against a rail of puffer jackets. I was being paid to write, I wasn't having to sell Ribena any more, and I could afford to get trains instead of the Megabus.

Right then and there I fell in love. Not with a person, but with my job. And it would be months, if not years, before I started having sex with any of them. —Nell Frizzell

PEOPLE ARE FILTHY AND IT'S GREAT

Maybe it's the fumes from 20 canisters of dry shampoo going full pelt inside the ladies' restroom. Maybe it's the fact that, you know, you hate your colleagues. Maybe it's the tinny Christmas music someone's been playing out of their PC since 9:50AM. But there's something about the office Christmas party that turns everyone into a raging hormonal maniac. Propelled by a free bar (until 9PM) and rage at your shitty Secret Santa present, your whole persona changes. Even if you've been in a long-term and loving relationship—like I have—the temperature changes and you start acting, frankly, like a slut.

Take one year that I was working at a newspaper. In a proper woman-from-the-Boots-ad bodycon dress, I decided to slut-drop on the dance floor to Rihanna's "Diamonds" in full knowledge that quite a senior editor was standing one foot behind me, watching with bemusement. At the time, I felt sexy. Empowered by my own womanliness. But that's what 12 glasses of cava will do for you.

That same night I got the most romantic proposition of all time from someone else: "I'll go outside and wait in a cab. Come and find me in ten minutes. Nobody ever needs to know."

But it's just part of the ritual of humiliation that we act out every time. Any and all semi-attractive colleagues are slid up to, beers accepted, appalling flirting engaged in. It's mechanical, barely enjoyable, done mainly out of boredom, and always painful the next day in the office.

No wonder so many of us find love at Christmas parties—we let our guards down and act in a way that we would never normally dream of. Yes, there's the very high risk you'll come off deluded, or a creep, or a problematic drinker, but it's when we take the chance that things can actually happen. So, go for it—let your slut flag fly and see what happens. Just don't try the cab line, it's shit. —Helen Nianias