Let’s say you found out that a prospective date doesn’t like sex. Would that be a big deal?
And if she said “I’ve tried it and it was like bowling,” what could you say other than “It’s important to me”?
And yeah, before the analogy police come, sex isn’t dancing. Insert disclaimers here.
No, but dancing is like any other activity you expect to do with a partner. Take camping. Vacations, Going to sporting events. If you like going to basketball games you might imagine that you’ll find a partner you can share basketball games with. That the two of you will discuss players and strategies and teams and coaches. And it probably won’t be a dealbreaker if you partner turns out to not like basketball, but it would increase your enjoyment of the time spent with her/him if she/he did. You can still go to basketball games alone or with a friend, or you may just give up being a basketball fan except in the most casual sense.
Now if your partner actively dislikes basketball, dismisses your interest in it completely, and makes comments about it, and not only doesn’t go to games with you, but tries to prevent you from enjoying games - your partner had better be spectacularly charming in other ways - or basketball had better be of only minor importance.
I got really mad at my boyfriend when we were at my brother’s wedding and he wouldn’t dance with me. I spent most of the night on the dancefloor by myself doing the said “solodance” and I was just really irked when he stated “I do not dance and I will not dance with you.”
It just made me feel really shitty that here I was at a wedding all dressed up with an actual date and every time a slow dance came on everyone else got to dance with their date except me (yes, I did get to dance with my dad and my friend and my brother. But it’s not the same.)
Eventually my friend roped my boyfriend into dancing with me, begrudgingly, and I really enjoyed it and he danced just fine. All I wanted was for him to acknowledge that he would do something that was important to me, onlookers be damned.
You were probably being a pain in the butt just like my girlfriend is being about it. She really wants me to dance at her sister’s wedding next month, but I just don’t want to.
“Onlookers” has nothing to do with it. His feelings towards you had nothing to do with it. You probably made him feel just as shitty for constantly badgering him to do something he wasn’t comfortable with doing and didn’t want to do.
I feel awkward out there. I don’t care who is watching to be honest with you… I also feel awkward dancing by myself (I’ve tried) or alone with my girlfriend (tried that too). I just don’t enjoy it, so why is it okay for you to pester him about it? Why is he the bad guy for not wanting to do something he doesn’t enjoy doing?
What if he wanted to have anal sex. You’ve tried it, you don’t like it, and you’re unwilling to try again. Would it be appropriate for him to keep bugging you about it?
This is true.
Things you can find out about a person when you ask them to dance, if they say yes:
To me, you could be already “into something” before you really get to know any of these things, and sometimes it’ll make for an unpleasant situation. You can avoid it all by one simple dance.
If she says no, well, who cares anyway?
My gf has horses. They eat hay. Once a year it is necessary to buy a load of hay and stack it in the barn. It is hot, sweaty work that I do not enjoy one bit. But I do it. And, knowing that I am doing something I do not enjoy, my gf typically shows her appreciation. :eek:
Your girlfriend must really bug you about it a lot to make it matter this much. At least two dancing girls in this thread are in serious LTR with non-dancing guys, so it’s not a life-or-death thing!
All I really ask of my SO is once in a while he dance with me, and only if we’re in a place where dancing is happening anyway. And for him to be OK with the fact that I’m out once a week at dance class, that I will dance with other guys (though not slow dance or dirty dance, but I’m not interested in that), and to understand that dance in and of itself means a lot to me. I don’t see how that’s different than any other hobby.
Where does one go to learn to freestyle dance? Does one simply practice in a mirror until the dorkiness goes away? Are there such things as lessons?
Looking up the local adult ed site, I see lessons in ballet, flamenco, ballroom, tango, etc. Surprisingly, it’s really affordable. I might sign up for something.
The SCA is a GREAT place to start. True, it’s not freestyle and they teach specific dances, but:
a) it’s free
b) fairly nice if geeky people
c) they don’t care one whit if you have two left feet
d) it gives you ideas for steps, and teaches you how to dance in a loose group
They have couples dancing too, but it’s never very romantic-type.
I love to dance (though I’m not the best at it), and Himself used to, but not so much anymore. So when we do go somewhere that there’s dancing, he’ll usually dance one or two slow ones with me, and the rest is me dancing in a group with girls. I don’t pressure him or pester him, because as wasson says, not wanting to dance doesn’t make him the bad guy. Dancing one or two anyway actually makes him a really good guy.
He doesn’t pressure me to do things I don’t enjoy, such as hunting (yech), and I don’t pressure him to do things he doesn’t want to do. But because we care about making each other happy, I do go riding in the woods with him in the pre-hunting (no weapons allowed) phase of his season, and he dances one or two slow ones with me. It’s called compromise and caring.
What the hell fun is that?!?
As far as having two left feet, I’m not the most coordinated guy, but I don’t think I’m entirely hopeless. I think I could hack a beginner’s level ballroom class.
Ballroom dancing is not my preferred, though I have some idea of some of the dances. It’s just so stilted. I’ve done plenty of that and much more difficult with Kathak, thankyouverymuch!
But yes, there are plenty of cheap ballroom dancing schools in most medium sized towns.
But with dancing you have to pretend you enjoy it. In front of an audience. If you fake it at the start of the relationship you have to keep faking it forever. Or have the inevitable argument about ‘why you don’t take me dancing anymore.’
It’s easier just to be up front at the start of the relationship. I hate dancing, I won’t do it and if it’s really important to you, best move on to someone else.
wasson, I can’t speak for ZipperJJ, but I love it when my husband slow dances with me. It’s romantic (to me); it’s sexy (to me); it makes me feel cherished and precious. It means something that he’s willing to hold me close in front of a room full of other people.
Your analogy strikes me as inappropriate. She’s asking you to participate in a non-painful, quasi-public social activity, not an extremely intimate, possibly painful, sexual act. It’s more like, to use your earlier analogy, if you asked her to go bowling once a year. Say that this particular bowling event is really, really important to you. Don’t you think it would be a bit churlish of her to refuse, even though it’s not her cup of tea? She doesn’t have to bowl 300, she just has to smile and make an effort.
My husband and I took a ballroom dance class at our community college. It was a lot of fun. The dance partners rotated regularly, so you got a chance to dance with everyone in the room, and plenty of people in the class signed up without an SO. Go for it!
I have had exactly the opposite experience. I signed up with a partner; they said it was OK, and there wasn’t anyone else without a partner. That’s just fucking depressing and I stopped going. They are cheap classes, and I’ve tried a couple of times, but around here I guess people don’t go alone.
It’s mostly couples about to get married, practicing for their first dance I’ve found. However please note that I live in a medium sized town and the Albany area can be a bit of a bumblefuck at times. I’m sure it’s different in bigger towns.
I love to dance and always have, but it’s not as if my wife and I go out dancing just for the sake of it. If we’re at a wedding or other function where there’s dancing, we’ll be out there shaking our groove thangs. Fast or slow. I learned way back when that some women use it as an indicator of a guy’s ability to move with respect to other activities. A woman I met at a club in college flat out told me the next morning that she knew from watching me dance that I’d be a good lay, so that’s why she took me home that night. Of course, this was the 80’s so my dancing was along the lines of Bruce Springsteen and Courtney Cox in the *Dancing in the Dark * video, but whatever- it worked for me then, and many times since.
But I can identify with the awkward feeling- if the music isn’t right, aren’t enough people on the dance floor, the vibe isn’t hitting me just so, I won’t be able to move and will feel ridiculous. Eventually though, something will click, and I’ll know it’s time. And the slow dances with my wife are extremely sensual, especially when we’re surrounded by friends/family, we’re sweaty from the fast dances, and pressed tightly up against each other… we’ve had to take advantage of the hotel lobby bathroom on more than one occasion.
I didn’t bring it up before the wedding and I brought it up just once at the wedding. I was already peeved at the wedding because they had a nice dancefloor and a DJ and no one was dancing. I was literally dancing by myself on the floor (like, the only person). I was upset about it and I told him so. And I said “I really hope you at least do one slow dance with me.” He gave the whole blanket “I never dance and I hate it.”
Later on I apparently shocked him when we were sitting with my mom and she asked why I was so glum. I said “No one is dancing and asshole here won’t dance with me at all and it just makes me crabby.”
I wasn’t pestering him - that’s childish. But you’d think that on an extremely important day for me where I spent a lot of time and money to look good and he looked good and it was the one romantic thing he could ever do that would make me happy up to that point, he’d get his head out of his ass and take 3 minutes to dance with me.
Like I said, he did end up dancing with me, just for one half of one song, and I loved it.
For the record, I’ve told him I have tried anal and I didn’t like it. But I’ve never tried it with him, so I offered to go for it one night. And it was blah so we won’t be doing it again. I didn’t act like a big baby and say “no I don’t ever want to do this so deal with it” - I thought about how much HE might like it and we did it.
EDIT: To be clear, people did end up dancing on the dance floor, way later in the night. It’s not like I made him dance a little solo couples thing up there. The last half of the last slow song is when he finally danced with me - amongst a packed dance floor.
But on the other hand, she’s asking me to do something that’s very awkward and uncomfortable for me in a huge room full of people. And why are you saying “intimate” as if it’s a negative in this situation when it’s considered a good thing in dancing?
If I was way into bowling and there was a big bowl-o-thon (for the record, I’m not into bowling at all), I’d ask her if she wanted to join me. If she said she hated bowling, wasn’t good at it, felt awkward doing it, I’d say “okay” and find someone else to join me.
In fact, if she told me how awkward and uncomfortable it made her, but told me she was still willing to try it, I’d probably say “Ah, forget it” because, really, why would I want to make someone I love do something they’re really not into?
A voice of reason!
For the record, my girlfriend and I have a similar deal. I told her I’d absolutely dance a couple slow songs with her as long as she didn’t bug me about all the fast ones. And in return, I won’t complain or make an issue out of it if she finds another male to dance with.
But this is something that’s come up in, literally, every single relationship I’ve had, and I think it’s totally ridiculous.
My next post was going to be “OK. I start on Monday.” But their registration page is currently not functioning. :mad: