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ChristianKl comments on Procedural Knowledge Gaps - Less Wrong
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The reason to go into environments where you interact with a lot of women isn't only an issue of having a lot of opportunities. It's also a matter of practice.
Even if you don't like to date the woman at a dance class the class will still teach you basic skills about interacting with women.
If you don't have the practice with regularly interacting with women than you are unlikely to have success when you find a woman who would be a good match because she fulfills your criteria.
But the skills about interacting with women platonically aren't all of the skills about interacting with women romantically. The infamous so-called “friend-zone”, anyone?
(How comes I'm making a point nearly diametrically opposed to what I said 21 hours ago, anyway?)
The point is a good one. That said, as far as interacting with girls platonically goes dancing is rather far from the most emasculating influence.
I don't think it makes much sense to seperate skills into platonically/romantically.
If you look at some PUA who goes for a one-night stand "romantic" isn't the label I would use to describe the interaction. On the other hand it's a word that I could reasonable use to describe an intimite Bachata dance between two people who just meet.
The ability to be physically intimite with the opposing sex without getting tense is valuable.
In dance the man leads the woman. For a shy male that's a valuable skill to learn.
Dancing doesn't teach you everything. It doesn't teach you having good conversations. The things that it teaches you are still valuable.
In that context, I meant “romantic” as ‘leading to romance’, rather than the colloquial meaning. So I wouldn't call a dance between two people who aren't looking to sleep with one another “romantic”.
As was pointed out before in this thread, physically intimate while dancing != physically intimate while having sex. (And ISTM that the latter is the more common meaning of that phrase.)
Does that transfer to domains other than dancing? (And anyway, IME it's more accurate to say that the more experienced partner leads the less experienced partner. There are certain moves where from the outside it looks like the man is leading, but that's not necessarily what it feels like from the inside.)
In my scale of “platonic” vs “romantic”, having good conversations is even more platonic than dancing.
Disclaimer: I have taken extremely few dancing classes in my life, extremely few of which were partnered dances. OTOH, when I improvise people often ask me if I've been taking classes (but I'm not sure they are serious).
Getting good at sex and getting good at the things that lead to sex are two different things. The problem of nerds isn't that they have a lot of one-night stands but are bad at sex and therefore the girl doesn't want to see them after they have sex.
No, I don't think that many people think that sex is the only action that can be described as physically intimite. While sex is more physically intimite than dancing you can't conclude that dancing isn't physically intimite.
You might be right that the stuff that you dance in your first dance lesson isn't intimite. At the beginning you have to learn to move. When I dance I do have to be aware of the level of intimacy that the girl I'm dancing with is comfortable with.
On the one hand you do have girls that find a lead where the hand of the guy touches their hips too intimite for them. On the other there are girls with whom I can dance in a way where both of our arms are wrapped around each other and the whole body from face, chest, hips and legs touches each other.
I don't think that you can reasonably deny that dancing with full body contact is intimite.
The man chooses which moves happen at which time. If you are at a beginner class where the techer calls the moves, you know nothing about a dance and the girls who are there haven't yet learned that they aren't supposed to lead. It takes some time for a girl to learn to follow just as it takes time for a guy to learn to lead.
I meant A != B as in “A doesn't imply B or vice versa”. IOW, my point was that dancing doesn't necessarily lead to sex and sex isn't necessarily preceded by dancing -- especially the kind of dancing taught in classes, as opposed to the kind of dancing people improvise in night clubs. (Let me see if I can find the previous comment about this... EDIT: here.)
I said “more common”, not “only common”, but... [googles for
physical intimacy] Fair enough. But then again, stuff like hugging is also described as physically intimate, so it seems an overly broad concept to use in this context. (For example, I have no problem with being “physically intimate” in this sense with men even though I'm straight; or, women are often “physically intimate” with me in front of their boyfriends/husbands. (OTOH, I realize that there are cultural differences with this kind of stuff and what applies here in Italy needn't apply in (say) Canada -- but these are probably more about where the thresholds are than about the qualitative differences between the ends of the spectrum.))The point is not whether a given English word can be used to label a given behaviour, but whether skills learned in one domain (dance classes) transfer to another (trying to start a relationship). To some extent they do, but they are nowhere near either necessary (I know people in LTRs who pretty much can't dance at all) or sufficient (see the comment I'm going to link above).
And most women (I guess) haven't taken many dancing classes, so if you're taking dance classes to “basic skills about interacting with women [outside the class]”, you can't rely on a random woman knowing whether or not to lead. (Nor can I see what the big deal about this is -- indeed because they don't know that, they probably won't particularly care if you follow rather than leading.)
That's not something I argued.
If you take the average nerd and put him into physically intimicy with a girl he tenses up. It takes time and effort for him to relax.
Romantic chemistry that created in a dance context doesn't lead with the same probability to sex than the same chemistry outside of a dance context.
It's still romantic chemistry and when your brain learns to become comfortable with it in one context it can also handle it in other contexts much better.
You can learn the same skill through hugging. Basically you run around with a free hugs sign and do 15 minute hugs with the people who are willing to hold the hug that long.
Dancing isn't the only way to learn the useful skills that you can learn in dancing. The fact that someone doesn't dance in no way implies that he hasn't learned the same skills in other context.
That said a billionaire won't have much trouble getting into a long-term relationship even if all his skills relating to attracting woman are awful. There nearly nothing that is a necessary condition for getting into a relationship with a woman.
I don't advocate to rely on anything. There are woman who might lead. If you have however inhibitions to leading yourself you won't have success when a woman doesn't lead.
People don't feel emotions because of the knowledge that they have. Successful leading demonstrates power and power is sexy for evoluationary reasons.
Does it? IME, dancing with someone doesn't magically make me that much bolder in non-dancing situations than I already was (I can even remember at least one case when it actually made me more awkward), and I'd expect the effect to be even smaller if we were made to dance together in a class than if we did so on our own accord. I guess YMMV.
That would mainly teach me resistance to boredom (and it would likely kind-of make me look silly, though that's not necessarily a negative because counter-signalling). Probably not the best use of time.
Then why learn them by dancing (and in dance classes, rather than (say) night clubs), of all things? If it isn't the only way, it's unlikely a priori that it's the most efficient way.
(I was going to say “if a billionaire won't have much trouble getting into a long-term relationship, then making money is a skill related to attracting to women”, but the billionaire might just have inherited it or something.)
You only had a few lessons and that alone doesn't have much of an effect on your interaction with woman in general.
If that's true and you actually would find it boring you lack in the ability in the realm of perceiving the other person. Dancing helps with the perception part. For most people with asberger there a lot of anxiety that comes up during the process that can be worked through.
I know multiple guys who thought that a single 15 minute hug with another guy was an experience that was very worthwhile to overcome some of their anxiety.
The point I want to make is that two people who are both successful with woman might be successful due to different skills. One very strong skill allows you to succeed even if you have some weak points.
Is you dance something like Salsa, Bachata, Tango or Swing as a man you need to take dancing lessons before you go into night clubs where you can dance those dances. Once you moved actually can dance, I would advocate to go to the night clubs to also dance outside of lessons.
Why structured partner dance over a regular nightclub with pop music? Approaching in a nightclub enviroment is more likely to lead to stressful rejections. Those rejections tell your brain that it's right to show anxiety in those situations.
Why do I recommend it over the hugging route? Signing up and going to a dance class is relatively easy compared to print a free hug sign and go around with it. People have more resistance to doing the free hug exercise. Getting a stranger to practice a 15 minute hug isn't as straightforward either.
I wasn't talking about dance classes, I was talking about ‘improvised’ dancing -- as I expected the second part of the sentence to make clear (but on re-reading it I can see it wasn't as clear as I thought). Why would lessons have more of an effect than improvisation? I'd expect it to be the other way round, especially given that you mentioned the “chooses which moves happen at which time” thing before.
Or maybe I have other things to do with 15 minutes than hugging a random stranger. Opportunity costs, anyone?
Yes, but wouldn't that apply more to improvised dancing than to beginners' dancing classes?
My AQ as measured by the online test linked to in the latest LW survey (FWIW) was 25, and still I usually feel little to no anxiety while dancing; if anything, I usually feel less anxiety while dancing than the rest of the time.
False dichotomy. Those aren't the only two places you can dance.
So, when you said “the fact that someone doesn't dance in no way implies that he hasn't learned the same skills in other context” you were thinking of going around wearing free hugs signs? That sounds even less plausible to me.