735  Another man vs woman relation debate

Date: Mon, 9 Sep 2002 15:12:49 +0200
From: skoc <skoc@NOOS.FR>
Subject: Another man vs woman relation debate

Hi everybody,

The subject comes on and on, no matter where you might be located.

Men and women !

So many things have been stated already and it might seem repetitive.

Nevertheless, I started thinking on the general plot and wondered

"We usually do collective debates on the matter of men who do not invite the
women on their behaviours, good dancers bad dancers and so..."

Before coming back to it, I would like to get out of this matter for a
moment and simply talk about the relations in couples in life and who happen
to dance together :

In my point of view, it is very difficult to learn how to handle a couple in
Tango, simply because Tango brings to light whatever is going wrong in your
relationship.

If you are a man, you can think of all these little stresses, communication
problems, the woman not listening, not being with you, or thinking that she
knows your thoughts better than yourself and therefore anticipating, etc.

As a woman, it is usually the man being to harshe, too much into the
performance, not paying enough attention to the partner, but rather to
himself, etc.

Am I wrong?

All these, are magnified during the dance and can sometimes degenerate (but
why? after all it's just a dance?) into a fight and I've seen many couples
torn apart just because of this.

When you think of it there can be only 3 situations :

1) You think the problem in the dance comes from your partner but YOU are
the problem : That is because you imagine that just because you've been
dancing with another man or woman who leaded or followed better that your
partner is slowing you down and you expect your partner to be the one with
whom you dance the best. That will get on your partner's nerves the answer
will be "who the hell do you think you are?"

2) You think the problem comes from your partner and it is very true : Than,
your partner can opt for a defensive attitude (no, you are the problem !) or
your partner can admit the fact, than it will generate an unhealthy
superiour-inferiour-master-slave relationship.

3) Both of you are responsible of the problem and figure out that, maybe,
you may not be cut out for each other as you should be.

You see, in any of the situations, you loose! The problem is that this can
happen no matter how good the couples might be.

In my view, all these blaming situations are in fact the materialisation of
what I previously stated. It is not the problems you encounter in the dance
that are the problem but the fact that you feel that the nature of these
problems are exact replica of what is wrong in your life with this person.

After all, there is a 4th possibility which which consists of being
tolerant, to smile when there is a mistake, to show comprehension... this
happens only rarely when couples in real life are involved.

It takes a lot of time to understand this mechanism and even longer to solve
it. Actually, there should be specific workshops on this subject!

I was thinking that maybe the general debate (Men and Women in Tango) wasn't
so different.

What does it mean when 2 men or women dance with one another? Perhaps a
message sent to the opposite gender such as "I'm tired of your behaviours
and I do not need you to spend a good time" or "Most of you, people of your
gender, are just too poor dancers, look how better we are than the average"
or "someone like me knows better what I am looking for when I dance"...

Whatever it may be, during the milongas we might be encountering the
materialisation of social and universal problems that exisit between men and
women in general. It seems to me that learning how to solve them is the real
"hidden issue" of tango and this is also what makes tango so interesting.

E un beso la vida!
Stiphane


I know, I'm not being very constructive
- Both of

>
> For the good dancers, if they prefer to dance with a woman rather than

with

> you, that is a statement you should think about ! Not that we want to

loose

> yet another man, but...
>
> Waiting for constructive ideas.
>
> Astrid
>