Analogies of Dating Relationships in Ballroom and Latin Dancing
Starting, maintaining, and growing a relationship is a lot like ballroom dancing or Latin dancing. Have you ever seen a couple dancing on the floor moving through complex motions with such effortless grace that it seems some magical spell has been cast causing the two beings to share perfect consciousness? I was puzzled by this phenomenon and was forced to take classes myself. As an engineer, I had to analyze everything I was taught about dance in order to break it down into all of its constituent parts and then understand how they all fit together and work together. Enlightenment came about largely as a result of having a patient instructor at the local YMCA who was also an engineer by trade. As he suspected, there was much more to being a good dancer than just being able to memorize a pattern of sequential foot placement.
In both ballroom and Latin-style partner dance, one person has to lead and the other has to follow. This works best if the man leads and the woman follows. Initially, he wasn’t sure why this was, but it eventually became clear. In one class he was trying to waltz with a woman and he couldn’t seem to spin her very gracefully. The instructor came over and asked me if whatever he was trying to do could I stop him? I explained my difficulty to him and he asked me to look at it with my partner. He placed her hands, palms up, in front of her and asked her to place her hands on top of his. She placed her hands, palms down, on top of his, at which point he yanked her hands away and told her to keep them on top of his, not touching, but maybe an inch above. her. After she placed her hands over his, he simply said, “Now, follow me,” and began maneuvering her around her room so that she looked like a princess endowed with her. Keep in mind that she didn’t really know anything other than the basic step (she only learned it less than half an hour before) and neither played at all. Magic, right? Maybe magnets? As I recall, he explained it to me like this:
“The key is to always have in her mind exactly where she wants to be in three moves and exactly where she wants her body to be in three moves. If you provide safe guidance with that in mind at all times, she’ll be able to ‘feel’ where your body will move next and respond accordingly.”
This is a lot like dating in that a woman not only likes to have a confident man, but she needs to be able to feel him to give him his perspective on the relationship. The woman wants to feel that confidence so that she can surrender to her leadership knowing that she is safe. In many spins and pirouettes, he can initiate her spin with one hand, but often wraps the other around her waist for support and stability as he spins. It is not an independent movement on her part, but she depends on the clarity, strength and security of her direction. It’s the same in a relationship. She needs to know where he is emotionally so she can decide how much to commit emotionally. If he is ambivalent or not sure where she stands in the relationship, she (if she is emotionally healthy) will become frustrated or impatient and soon lose interest. Sometimes a man with weak dance leadership can cause a woman to stumble, step on her toes, or otherwise make her uncomfortable. This will naturally cause her to lose trust in him, making it more difficult for her to follow any direction he gives her. If a woman in a relationship discovers that he is not as invested in the relationship as she has been led to believe, she will at least be more cautious and reserved with her emotional investment thereafter. She won’t take too many mistakes from him for her to lose interest again and move on.
Some women will get frustrated with a guy’s weak leadership and “lead” them on the dance floor. If the guy has any guts, this will create a lot of conflict and confusion, as she will push him to tell her what he wants to do at the same time that he’s supposed to tell her what’s coming next. This never looks good and I can guarantee that the woman does not enjoy this as much as if she had a competent leader that she could feel safe trusting and following. Just like in a relationship, she really wants to dance or be with someone and therefore she will often put up with this non-committal, dysfunctional surrogate, if only to avoid being alone.
I have wondered why the roles cannot be reversed. The man’s job as a leader is many times more complex than the woman’s job as a follower. Usually, women tend to want to dance a lot more than men, so why can’t we have the less demanding role? I believe the answer lies in natural male and female preferences and internal wiring. Given the choice of being unloved or wanted or of feeling inadequate and disrespected, most women will see being unloved and wanted as the worst option, while most men will see feeling inadequate and disrespected as the worst choice. the most painful (ref: For Women Only, Feldhan, 2004). ). Giving leadership to a man makes him feel trusted and respected, while a woman who can follow good leadership feels loved and cared for. Understanding this in the analogy should help two people who are dating to see that both people have different but complementary needs. For example, if a man chooses a place to eat for a date and pays for dinner, his caterer will have to accommodate her needs, especially if she tells him that he enjoyed his choice. Likewise, she will feel much more loved and desired if he spends the time and money to help her have a pleasant evening. While many women sometimes seek control in a relationship, if the man relinquishes her leadership, becomes passive, and puts all of her heart on a plate for her, both of you are likely to be seriously disappointed. To quote Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence (1995), “…and everyone knows that nothing will drive a woman away faster than knowing that she is in complete control of the relationship.”
In terms of the natural wiring of men and women, the woman is naturally more capable of following than the man due to her heightened sense of intuition. Studies show that women have far more neural connections between their two cerebral hemispheres than men, possibly explaining why men are stereotypically such jerks when it comes to intuitive deduction and empathy.
Another interesting dance dynamic arises when studying the best way for each person to support the other in the classic ballroom position (her right hand extended to her side and resting on his extended left hand, her right hand behind her on the bottom of her shoulder blade and left hand on her right shoulder or upper arm). A casual observer might surmise that the man is only gently touching his shoulder blade, his left arm is resting on his right arm, and they are simply holding outstretched hands. Quite the contrary, if done correctly there is always a slight but definite tension between the three points of contact. This provides a more stable geometry for the dance so that he can more effectively communicate what her intentions are and so that she can more clearly detect the subtle changes in that tension that indicate where he needs to move. Women have a natural need for this tension because it is the means of communication. Have you ever wondered why men are content to say (if not think), “Honey, on our wedding night I told you I love you, if that ever changes I’ll let you know,” and why it seems What man that when everything is stable in the home, the woman will seem to do something to create drama and disturb that peace?
The reason is that most women tend to be naturally insecure about their attractiveness and need constant reassurance. In dance, security is provided through communication through hold tension (no one likes to dance with a rag). In the relationship, maintaining respect for each other as distinct and whole beings is provided, while the man often goes out of his way creatively and personally to let her know that he could do many things with his time and energy, but he choose. to spend it with her. Notice that I say frequently and not constantly. Provide security and then step back and let her enjoy it. Spend time on other routine things or independent activities (chores, family things, hobbies, work, etc.) and wait for that insecurity to come back (times vary by woman, but IT WILL). Don’t let it become a problem, but wait long enough for the question to arise in your mind. So, she knows her love language, and re-communicate clearly and creatively that she is special and that you, this day, choose her. To the pragmatic male mind this may sound like a game. It requires planning, strategy, intelligence, and keeping track of both the clock and the score, but it’s definitely not a game; it is a relationship between two people with unique and wonderfully created connections with hearts capable of love great enough to unite continents (cliché but true) and at the same time capable of such levels of depravity as to render another unable to love or even lose the desire to continue living.
In most of the dance classes I’ve attended, we rotated partner dances so that I could learn to dance with other people instead of just developing a series of bad liking habits with just one person. Each woman she danced with was different and at first she could only think of them as better or worse dancers. However, as I got to know these women better, I began to notice correlations between their dance style/ability and their life experiences. For example, one woman was tall (about six inches taller than me) and very beautiful, but she wasn’t sure how tall she was. She was like dancing with a limp wrist. It was hard to guide her because I couldn’t find any resistance to feel where she was.
Another woman was married but came to the singles class because her husband was not interested in spending this kind of time with her. She would often put her body unusually close to mine and had a habit of touching her breasts with whatever part of my body she could grasp or manipulate into the correct position. I can only assume that she was probably lonely and very hungry for affection. Another woman I had to remind multiple times to let me lead, as she would compulsively try to back down. She was a beautiful and intelligent woman, but many years ago she had gone through a very abusive and ugly divorce and she had been a single mother of several children for a long time. She was very used to being independent and not being able to trust men. Another woman had a similar tendency to try to back off when I was trying to learn a new move. She would get frustrated and impatient with my mistakes while I was learning and would try to “help” me by taking matters into her own hands. As it turns out, she was a bit of a judgmental perfectionist and had routinely gone through relationships and marriages.
To be fair, I had my own myriad of problems that showed up in the way I tried to lead and dance, but this further illustrates the point that not only is dance an apt analogy for relationships, but that problems in one have a direct relationship. related corollary in the other. Want to quickly get to know your date and what kind of emotional mapping they come up with? Take them out dancing or to dance classes, and then pay close attention to how they respond to you. I have primarily illustrated from the perspective of a man to a woman, but similar principles apply in the other direction as well. If those women wanted to, they could have seen very deeply into my soul just by dancing with me for a few minutes. They may not have seen many details, but they could certainly pick out the main landmarks.