What Learning to Dance Can Reveal About You…
He has agreed to take Private Dance Lessons. He’s been working diligently one-on-one with his instructor to be a great leader on the dance floor, just so that he can sweep you off your feet one day. Now the time has come for him for him to take you out dancing to your favorite Country bar. Tonight is the night! The pressure is on, and boy can he feel it!
You get on the dance floor and he freezes. So what do you do? You begin pulling him around the floor, like you’ve always done before. In no time, he’s ready to leave. “What’s the point of taking lessons if you can’t use what you’ve learned?”, you ask. Here comes the beginning of the end of any chance you have of your man wanting to dance again. What a shame that you two are going to miss out on the joys of spending your date nights out dancing!
Before you start scratching your head and wondering why, can you relate to this story? Are you the woman who has been trying to “help” your man to be a confident social dancer by turning yourself or pulling him along the dance floor? If this is you, please know that you’re not alone. Of course you want to enjoy Country dancing with your man! Of course you wish he could just be comfortable enough to want to join you anywhere, anytime for a dance. Of course he’s sick of watching other guys Two Step the night away with his wife. And of course it is not your fault that you have to take over on the dance floor because you are just trying to help, right? Well, maybe not.
Unknowingly, and quite ironically, you are both the reason why he started taking dance lessons, and the reason why he still cannot dance with confidence, both at the same time. As a result of his night out Country dancing with you, he feels inadequate and defeated, and may not want to venture out onto another social dance floor anytime soon. In his best efforts to please you, he did not reach his goal of putting a smile on your face on the dance floor, and has therefore failed. Did you know he felt this way? I doubt you did or I’m betting things would have played out differently.
The wonderful experience of learning incredible social dances like Country Two Step, Swing and Argentine Tango is that you are not only exploring how to move properly on a dance floor, but you are seeing things about yourself in the process of gaining a new skill, so you can grow as a person. This is the best part, in my opinion, of stepping outside of your comfort zone and trying something new and challenging like adult dance lessons.
In the scenario above, she may have learned that her need to control the situation at the Country bar in order to have a good time may have overshadowed his need for a calm and patient partner on his first night out dancing. Had she given him a minute to settle in and shake off his nerves, he may have been able to perform better. This is quite common, as I mentioned before, and it is most probably something that she would be willing to fix if it were brought to her attention.
Teamwork is a huge aspect of social ballroom dancing that is key for developing a successful partnership on the dance floor. Sometimes, though, we can stand in our own way by not supporting our other half, or by blaming each other when things don’t go quite right. As your guide through this process, I take this as an opportunity to help bring a couple closer together, which will in turn help you to make more progress on the dance floor. That’s a great thing! With a few ideas and recommendations, it can be a simple fix. And this is why I like to think of myself as a dancing therapist. 😉
Lastly, social insecurities can hold you back in a big way from having fun with social dancing. If you’re looking to push past that, take Private Dance Lessons and learn your stuff so you can have the confidence to get onto any dance floor without caring what anyone thinks. Partner or not, you absolutely can be an amazing social dancer!
Many insecurities and issues that we have can be not only revealed, but resolved through the process of learning to dance. My best advice is to find a local dance studio for adults that takes a true interest in the real reason why you want to begin learning to dance. You may not even know the deeper reasons that you have been drawn to this new hobby, but if you find the right place to learn, you should be waltzing out of that studio down the road with your head up high, full of confidence and proud that you know the coolest hobby ever…social ballroom dancing!
