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Don’t judge me just because I met my boyfriend in a club
It doesn’t mean our relationship won’t last
We’ll all admit to doing it: having a bit too much to drink, hitting the clubs and ending up spending the night with your mouth attached to a stranger’s. The stranger in question is usually far from your type, and in the weeks that follow you look back at your brief one night relationship with a vague embarrassment and relief that you never have to see them again.
But it doesn’t always work out like that. I met my boyfriend in a club- on a sticky dancefloor in my hometown while Uptown Funk was playing- and eight months later, here we are, still together.
Yes, it might not have been the way I would have chosen to met him. If we’d have dated first, we would have found out that we got on amazingly anyway, and we’d have a better story to tell of how we first met than “we were drunk and overconfident and barely actually even spoke to each other that night”. But alcohol definitely helped to get us together, so I owe it to that alcohol that we even met.
He bought my drinks, as long as I promised to text him the next day. It seemed like a pretty fair deal so I agreed to it. It should have been awkward seeing him afterwards, when we went for a meal at Frankie and Benny’s a few days later. But it actually wasn’t, and it was a relief to discover he looked exactly how I remembered him, and not someone my alcohol-induced brain had managed to make attractive. Bizarrely, it turned out we had loads in common- both of us had plans to live in America in the future, and wanted to own a truck (random I know, but weird). We discovered none of us went on nights out all that much, so it was just chance that we’d even crossed paths that night.
Kids at heart
It kind of helped that we’d got so close in the club, too, because it meant we avoided the awkward first kiss after our date because it already felt natural. In fact, the whole pre-date nerves and desperate conversation starters were avoided because I felt like I knew him already, even though this wasn’t true. Every time I tell someone how I met him, I’m always a bit hesitant to admit to it, or pull the ‘ashamed’ face when I tell them. This is because the reactions of those I tell always range from shocked to a little bit disgusted.
‘You met him in a club?’
‘As if that worked out!’
‘That’s so classy.’
Honestly, I’ve heard them all. No one ever believes a relationship that begins by getting drunk and doing things you wouldn’t normally do on a first date can ever last, but why can’t it? Okay, so you might text them the next day and find out the two of you have absolutely nothing in common, but if you actually really hit it off when you’re sober, why not give things a try?
We did Halloween together, of course
It’s true that most people don’t go to a club with the plan to meet a potential future partner, but sometimes things just work out that way. I even know a few people whose long term relationships began with a one night stand. Most of us have kissed strangers in clubs, and some are guilty of doing more than that. So why are people so quick to judge when a night together turns into something more?
My mum met my dad in a pub- I like to think that was the alternative to clubbing in the nineties. People actually met each other this way, before Tinder and social media had even been created, and it was totally normal then. In fact, I believe meeting someone in a club is pretty similar to swiping right on Tinder- just without the cringe chat-up lines. So next time you hear somebody is still dating the guy they met on a night out, don’t be so quick to presume they’ll have broken up by next week. You’d be surprised at just how many relationships started that way.