Going to the party where you only know one person is a bet on meeting a second.

The person you already know is a door, not the destination. Walk into a room with one name in it and you are not hoping to be adopted; you are hoping to find a second person, which is a much smaller thing to hope for. Most of the people there are doing the same arithmetic, which is why the odds are better than the dread suggests.

Go, and set a floor rather than a goal: stay forty minutes before you let yourself leave. Ask the one person you know to introduce you to somebody they like.