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

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.