Find someone who wants to leave the party when you do—so goes the saying about long-term commitment. It’s a different kind of hell when you say, “Let’s have one drink and go home,” and your partner asks, “Where’s the after-party for this after-party?” That’s a party gap—the violent difference of social batteries between two people allegedly in love. The soulmate-system insists on syncing circadian rhythms; it’s called compatibility.
This is how Hinge relationships get tested offline—jump into a social setting with your match and take notes. Yes, like everything in the whole world, dating is also rigged for extroverts. But is it so bad if the extrovert in the relationship pushes you to experience the most magical thing in their life—other people? The Frances Ha (2012) moment makes it all worth it—you look across the battleground of UNO cards and lock eyes with your person. Sometimes, you might find them making out with your best friend, and that is still useful information.
The point is to discover your significant other’s public personality. Imagine being head over heels, introducing your dating app success to the friend circle—and wanting to break up right there and then. Watching your boyfriend shout at the top of his voice, defending Nikhil Kamath, and banging his glass on the table every time he wants a refill can break you like that. It’s also not fun to babysit your partner when all you want to do is let loose on Laila Main Laila.
My friend in Noida doesn’t have a party gap with her guy. She tells him every time that she wants to leave in an hour, and he knows that means they’re heading home sometime around sunrise. He doesn’t finish her sentences in conversations with others—he’s too busy starting entirely new ones with strangers in the crowd. And he always refreshes her glass at regular intervals, without even asking. It’s a grown-up kind of romance.
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Smooth socialising
Do all ragers need another rager to live happily ever after? Not really. Sometimes a rager needs a snoozer to park them home in time for the dreadful Monday on the horizon. And a bed-rotting introvert needs a party animal to pull them out of the dark indoors and show that a whole world exists outside their room.
A 27-year-old in Bengaluru wouldn’t expect her boyfriend to refresh her glass. He’s the good boy who can’t tell the difference between vodka and gin. And the rager girlfriend prefers him that way—there needs to be a designated driver (strictly sober) in the relationship.
They also have a few unspoken rules for smooth socialising. If she’s hanging with his friends, she decides when it’s time to leave, and if he’s with hers, he makes the call. The idea is not to push each other to their limits. Another couple in Mumbai decided early on what kind of gatherings they could drag each other to—and why it’s not going to be one with the doctor girlfriend’s colleagues. Apparently, medicine experts are too full of themselves to laugh at a marketing boyfriend’s whimsical jokes.
Many who identify as the life of the party have been told to be “less intense” to make their partner comfortable. It’s a different kind of heartbreak when your hot-takes make the whole room roar with laughter—and your insecure, overshadowed other looks at you like you just committed a crime. I’ve been there, ignored that. “Don’t act like a heroine,” a girl was told by her partner when she was riffing with his flatmates. “I’m not a heroine,” she shot back. “I’m a clown. Deal with it.”
A Gurugram-based engineer recently confessed a peculiar problem: he hates going to parties with his girlfriend’s friends because one couple in the group is way too touchy-feely. “I feel pressured to keep holding my girl’s hand even though I get really sweaty,” he admitted. May this kind of performative love never find me.
I am honestly relieved as a boyfriend-free girl. Show up, party, leave, or be awaara all night, I answer to exactly one person: myself.
This article is part of a series of columns on modern dating in India—the good, the bad and the cuddly.
Views are personal. The author tweets @ratanpriya4.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)