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I was enjoying the party, but she wanted to go home.

It's known that "want" isn't used in Progressive tenses. So, we can't say how long she wanted to go home during the party. We don't know when it happened: in the beginning, in the middle or in the end of the party. Right?

Is it idiomatic to say like that if she wanted to go home from the very beginning of the party?

Sergei
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    We can't determine when she wanted to leave: just after somethings happened (i.e. at some point) or for a long time (e.g. since the beginning of the party). – Graffito Jul 09 '23 at 14:09

2 Answers2

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It says that the two states "me enjoying the party" and "her wanting to go home" were at the same time. It doesn't say exactly when she started wanting to go home, or if she'd been enjoying the party earlier.

Pragmatically, if she'd wanted to go home from the very beginning, you'd say "She didn't want to go to the party". So I'd understand that she'd been happy to be at the party at first, but at the time referred to, she'd become tired, or wanted to go home for some other reason.

James K
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That's correct, there's no information about what point the party is at, so it would be correct at any time.

If you want to express that she had wanted to leave at the beginning of the party, you could express it like this:

I was enjoying the party, but she had wanted to go home since the moment we (had) arrived.

gotube
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