Shall we Dance?

[fyffer]

This is difficult to write, and perhaps more difficult to answer, as it is may sound like I'm asking for marital advice, but really I'm just looking for either similar experiences and/or opinions.

I've been married for 14 years this July. We have a great relationship, and many of our friends (some still married and some not) have commented for years that we seem to have the "perfect marriage" - whatever that is. We're very supportive of each other's needs and dreams, and have managed to continue to grow together while many couples around us have grown apart.

Enter the conflict:

My wife is, and always has been, a dancer. It is one of the ways she expresses herself and her passions best. When she dances, heads turn, including mine. The problem: I'm not. I'm a get-drunk-and-dance-at-weddings kind of guy, and feel uncomfortable at best, dancing in most circumstances. I show my passions through playing music, not dancing to it.

For years my wife has been trying to convince me to take ballroom dancing lessons (either with or without her), and we watched a movie last night (title = subject of this thread) which she intended to use to inspire me to do so. The issue: It didn't. It was a good story, in which the husband - very happily married - suddenly has the urge to take ballroom dancing classes, but in secret from his wife, who of course begins to think he's having an affair, etc. A bit predictable, but it wasn't too horrible.

Anyway, after the movie last night, we talked a bit and it came down to her basically saying she needs to dance again, and she wants to dance with me - not someone else. My problem is - I have absolutely no desire to learn to dance like that, though I love my wife more than anything in the world, and I want her to be happy. So do I just suck it up, bite the bullet and do it? It's beginning to feel like quitting smoking - where you can't get a loved one to quit - they have to want to do it for themselves.
There's some deepset fear and discomfort I associate with dancing, which I can't really put my finger on, though I do like to watch it, and especially my wife.

Please discuss, and please try to keep the sarcasm to a minimum. This is rather a big deal, and of course, anything I get from you all will be taken at the real value it has: anonymous advice from anonymous people with nothing to gain or lose from their input. That said, anyone with any *real* insight, I would love to hear your comments, either here or via PM.

Thanks so much.

[jim stone]

Dance. My wife boxes--real boxing, mouthpiece, wrapped fists,
brain damaged trainer. She started saying to me,
'I love you so much I just want to smack you one,'
and 'Punching you would sure make me happy.' So I
learned to box, sort of, being utterly miserable at it.
I was 59 and the brain-damaged trainer was bouncing
a medicine ball off my gut while I did sit-ups.
My God!

If it were me and it really mattered to her, well,
I'd give it a college try. Giving of oneself
and all that...

[chas]

Is there room for compromise? Are you into Irish music? How about Irish dancing? It could combine your interest in Irish music and hers in dancing. It might make you a better musician, too, learning what's intended for the music.

Best of luck. My wife mentioned the "D" word several weeks back. It could be fun, just not the additional hobby I want to take up right now.

[Denny]

There's some deepset fear and discomfort I associate with dancing, which I can't really put my finger on, though I do like to watch it, and especially my wife.

I tink ve need to look at this deepset fear.

Vas der some repressed childhood trama?

[emmline]

It's easy for we casual commentators to say "Go on, try it!"
But we also don't really understand what your issue with trying it is.

My first thought is, at least give it a try.
My second thought is, ultimately your wife may need to find a way to satisfy her creative and physical need to dance without requiring that you participate. It would be a rare lifetime partnership in which two people meshed so ridiculously well that they always enjoyed/needed the same stuff.

It may be, if you try it and really don't want to continue, that the best support you can offer your wife is to be accepting of her pursuing dance without you. And the best support she could offer you would be to allow you to be who you are, a non-dancer, without resentment.

[dubhlinn]

I don't dance.Never. No matter how much booze is running through my system I will not dance. My other half loves to dance and will spend most of the night on the dancefloor when we go to a place that plays dance music.
Now in all fairness to her she has never tried to get me out on the floor because she knows I have a deep seated fear of being seen on a dance floor.
Both of us just accept that this is one area where we will never see eye to eye - or cheek to cheeek, if you like.

I believe that every relationship will have these little situations where the two sides will never meet. As much as I would like to make her happy in this way I know that it ain't gonna happen. Such is Life.
The trick is just to accept this and not make an issue of it.

It's not much of an answer I admit but it's all I have.

Slan,
D.

[emmline]

Dub, I think you just gave a real-life example of my hypothesis.
How's your head today?

[Wombat]

So long as you don't mind her dancing with other partners, I can't for the life of me understand why she must dance with you. I mean, you play. Do you insist that she take music lessons so she can play with you? Have you explained how you feel in those terms?

In general, my experiences of people trying to change me or me trying to change them in a relationship have been uniformly bad. It's never worked. This is has been the case even when part of me wants to change but I'm not yet ready. I really love having a relationship in which we do some of the same things and some different things and are both comfortable with that. Friends of mine who operate on that principle seem to do well too. I absolutely loathe being pushed into things I don't like and I would never push my partner.

If your relationship is so good that you would contemplate giving in to the pressure, then surely you can probe really deeply why she is so insistent and you so reluctant. Also you could ask things like: if I were a really bad dancer would that be OK? Why would you want to dance with me badly rather than someone else well? At least you would get to the bottom of the issue.

[Congratulations]

Not that I've ever been in a relationship of any kind...

but it seems to me that the most likely outcome of you reluctantly trying to dance is that both you and your wife are going to become very frustrated very quickly. Except on the chance that you take to dancing, and really begin to genuinely like it, I would think it would end badly.

As a disclaimer: I'm 18 years old and have never been in a relationship.

[dubhlinn]

Dub, I think you just gave a real-life example of my hypothesis.
How's your head today?

I went out to the shops after posting and have just got back..The head is fine, it's the wallet that took a beating

Slan,
D.

[missy]

Even if you really WANTED to dance (which it doesn't sound like you do), there is some inborn talent that is needed to get beyond the "putting one foot in front of the other" stage of dancing.
So -you may try it and find out you just can't DO it. Nothing wrong with that, as long as your partner understands it's not that you don't want to - it's that you can't.

But if you really DON'T want to do it, I wouldn't even try. You'll probably (as already stated) just make both of you frustrated.

[Doug_Tipple]

I like dancing, but I dislike having to ask someone to be my dancing partner. I guess it is the fear of rejection that I learned at an early age.

However, there are many types of dancing, and some may be easier to begin than others. I like international folk dancing, which is usually done in a line or circle. I like not having to have a partner and being able to feel that you are one with the whole group. However, the problem that I have with international folk dancing is that the steps are not called. The dances are taught, and you are supposed to remember the steps, because when the music starts, you are on your own. Of course, you can watch what other people are doing with their feet, but it is more fun if you know what you are doing. I am sorry to say that I am a perpetual beginner, because when I come back to the dance two weeks later, I am back to square one. For several years I had a lot of fun taking international folk dancing from the city parks department.

Another type of dancing that I can recommend is contra dancing. This is usually done to live music, bands that play jigs and reels, mostly. The good thing for me about contra dancing is that all of the moves are called throughout the dance by a caller, similar to a square dance caller. With contra dancing you do need to start with a partner, but as the dance progresses, you end up dancing with everyone along your contra line. For several years I played in a contra dance band and would alternate throughout the evening with participating in the dance. For a person who is interested in Keltic and Old Time music, I think that contra dancing is about as good as it gets.

From my personal point of view, ballroom dancing has the least appeal.

[Jack]

One day you might find yourself too sick and/or old to dance, and you'll regret not ever learning to do it. Dance! Dance! Dance!

[BillChin]

A friend of mine has a similar problem. She gave up when her husband tried some dance lessons and could stumble along, but not really dance.

If NFL Hall-of-Famer Jerry Rice could do it, funny outfits and all, there is no shame in it. Maybe you don't like it, or even the idea of it. However, there are a hundred other things you don't like to do that you do for the sake of the relationship. You will probably be bad at it, and she will want to dance with real dancers again.

At this point it is more about the power in the relationship than about dancing. I suggest you go to the prosecutor and ask for probation. Cut a deal, instead of serving 20 years of hard time, which is what may happen if you keep saying no. In other words agree to take an eight week course or some other set amount of limited time. Really try, like Mr. Rice did, no sandbagging. The worst will be over after that. There may be still be some arguments but the worst of the storm will have passed.

A useful exercise in any decision making process is to think about what you might say to a friend in a similar situation. This depersonalization helps with objectivity.

Let me add that a person will learn something from the dance lessons. They may not learn how to dance, but they will learn about discomfort, facing fears, not worrying about what others think and many other valuable lessons. Even if a person has no talent, they can acheive some level of proficiency. Putting the time and effort in count for a lot, and will earn you any number of brownie points with the wife.

[Cynth]

To me there are certain activities that make some people feel like he or she is exposing himself--I don't mean literally of course, but the feeling is close to that. Dancing, playing an instrument in front of other people, singing in front of other people, writing something creative (as opposed to a term paper) and having other people read it, doing some kind of artwork and having a group or even one person see it, reading a poem in front of others, giving a talk, asking for donations, being in a play. A person could do some of these things in front of people and not other ones. A person could enjoy doing these things alone, but rather die than do them in front of people. Or a person might be able to do something, but greatly prefer not to. Sometimes a person can do something in one situation but not at all in another.

Ball-room dancing is a particular problem though because it requires a partner. The fact that your wife is a natural dancer and makes heads turn can only make your problem even more difficult---you are even more exposed in a number of ways when you dance with her than if you were with an average dancer.

My feeling is that adults should pretty much get to choose how they spend their free time once the money earning and chores are reasonably well taken care of. If one person goes off all the time and leaves the other alone, that isn't so good. But it is quite possible to have a happy marriage and to do separate things a good deal of the time. Life is too short for anyone to have to use leisure time for an activity that person does not like, let alone one that is actually really unpleasant for them. The way you have described feeling about dancing would put it in the "really unpleasant" category to me.

So it seems to me that if you are quite happy to have your wife dance with anyone she pleases, as you should be, then you have really done your part.

I wonder if you could explain that dancing makes you actually feel unpleasant, it's not just a matter of not fun, but it is uncomfortable and creepy. I don't know if there is something that makes her feel a similar way that you could compare it with. If she loves it, she might not be able to imagine how it feels to dread being caught on a dance floor. She might think that once you got good at it, then you would enjoy it. She may not understand the self-consciousness problem that being good at it won't solve. Could you try talking about how you would always be not having as much fun as she would, and wouldn't that, in the long run, be not as fun for her as she envisions? I think she is imagining that you both would really be loving it. Dancing with someone who is just there because they love the person but not the activity wouldn't really the type of fun she is looking for I don't think. For her to really dance, she needs to dance with someone who also is really dancing, not someone who is doing his best to live through the experience.

If you don't dance with her, then who would she dance with? Maybe this is a problem. Can she find someone else to be a partner? Is she associating dancing with romance and feeling that you would be the only appropriate partner?

Is your wife trying to find something for you guys to do together? It doesn't really sound like this enters into because this is something she has always loved.

You could cut a deal to take a set of lessons (if lessons are less unpleasant to you than going out on a dance floor at a club) with the agreement that after one course you would be free to decide whether to continue or not with no pressure or hard feelings from the other party. My fear is that this could cause a bit of resentment on your part and the problem might come up all over again in spite of the "deal".

I got married when I was quite a bit older, and I did tell my husband about certain things I just would not be able to do---he doesn't dance either so that wasn't one of them---and we worked it out. Each person is perfectly free to do those things alone, without complaint, that the other is not interested in. But I had the advantage of being old enough to know which things even love could not make me do. Because having to do those things would injure the relationship in the long run, being forced to do unpleasant and unnecessary things to make someone happy (I'm not talking about the once in while thing a person does to humor the other person) does create some feelings that over time can be injurious I think.

My own feeling is that this is one of those things that every marriage runs into. It can definitely be very hard. I honestly can't say I think you should start dancing. Yet I understand the concern about disappointing someone you love. You really need to get your feelings made clear to her. How much you love her, that's why you are having the problem, you want to see her happy but you really, really do not want to do this. You can't do this and be happy. You would be doing it only to keep the peace. I don't think that is really what she wants. You'd give her your kidney if she needed it to live with no thought required, but this isn't saving her life and somehow she could find another dance partner. Maybe there is some fellow who loves to dance and his wife hates it. That would be perfect.



I have to tell you a horrible dancing story about me---maybe it will explain my strong feelings about this. Many years ago I visited my sister. She was fond of going to clubs and dancing. I could not bring myself to do this. I happily stayed home at her place and read if she had arranged to go out with friends. She was happy too. One year there was a country music craze in LA and people were all into various sorts of dancing to country music. She knew I loved country music and she had been to a place where---she swore---I could just listen to the music and not have to dance. No one would bother me, etc. So I got my little skirt and blouse all ironed, she put on her boots and cowboy hat, and off we went. The music was great, the dancing was really fun to watch. A couple of times someone asked me to dance and I just said thank you so much, but I don't dance. It was a little weird, but okay. Then there was this dance where the partners split up and each one asked someone still sitting to dance. So I was thinking God help me, but I didn't panic and I just told fellows thanks, I don't dance. Finally I was the only one sitting at a table, but it was dark, and I thought I was okay. So the announcer suddenly goes to the microphone and shines the spotlight on ME!!!! and says "There is still one little lady out there without a partner. Now who is going to get her out here dancing?" I remember the look of horror on my poor sister's face from clear across the dance floor. She was mouthing something like "Cynth, I'm sorry!" So some poor dutiful dude came over and asked me to dance. Well, I figured the only way to get the spotlight and the eyes of every person in the whole dang room off me was to smile and get up and go out on the dance floor. I attempted to move appropriately with this fellow until the announcer was satisfied and then very shortly afterward I just told him I really didn't dance and that I appreciated his asking ...and then I fled to the bathroom. I did come out eventually. And it was basically so hilarious (afterward) that I really couldn't be mad at my poor sister. She was suffering enough already. So I definitely can relate to the problem.