If you have to become someone else to enjoy the party, it isn’t your party.

A party where you have to run a different personality costs more than it gives back. The giveaway is the effort: watching how you sound, laughing a beat late, keeping track of a version of yourself you then have to maintain all evening. That is work, and work dressed as fun is the most tiring kind going. Fitting in and enjoying yourself are not the same achievement.

Notice it in the moment rather than on the drive home. If you have been performing for an hour, you are allowed to leave. Then put the next free evening somewhere you do not have to do that.