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ChristianKl comments on Procedural Knowledge Gaps - Less Wrong
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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.
That's a completely different objection than saying that the activity is boring. If you change around your objections in that way it's likely that you are in the process of rationalizing some fear of intimicy.
What do you mean when you say "improvised dancing"? Do you already have the skills to spend a significant amount of time dancing closely with a women in nightclub settings?
Isn't the feeling that you could do something more fun with your time what boredom is?
For such a broad definition of “intimacy” as yours, I'm pretty sure I have very little fear of intimacy itself.
e.g. this (I'm the tall guy with glasses and a black T-shirt). (That was over a year ago, I may have gotten better --or worse-- since.)
What amount of time would you consider to be significant, and are you talking about women I already know or about strangers? (Also, “in nightclub settings” isn't a terribly homogeneous category IME, women tend to be fussier in some of those than in others.)
I don't advocate doing it primarily for fun but to learn something. Sometimes good learning experiences are boring.
At the beginning of the video you are touching the hand of a girl but expect for the part where you spin her it doesn't look like you have much contact with her. When it comes to the girl on the end you have a bit more contact but not much more.
If dancing like that feels like you aren't leading the girl it's because you actually aren't leading.
Most of the time that this video goes you aren't touching a woman. If you are taking a dancing lesson you are basically all the time touching.
Let me give you a link to a beginner kizomba lesson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbYChD5b9VE Watch that video and compare the amount of physically intimacy that you have in your video with the women and the amount of physical intimicy that you see in that beginner kizomba lesson. Some beginner kizomba lesson might be a bit less intimite but that level of intimicy can exist in beginner kizomba lessons.
If you do a lot of that kind of improvised dancing that you showed in your video, I would recommend you to take Bachata lessons over Kizomba lessons. Beginner bachata lessons are a bit less intimite than beginner kizomba lessons but you learn a bunch of things that will improve your improvised dancing.
Once you learn Bachata decently it looks like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y5YAdHfT9Q&list=PL07372236D9BBFDBD . That an average dance that you could see between two strangers who just meet at a decent social Bachata event.
(I often do have more contact than that (depending on what the music is like, who the woman is, and my mood), though I'm not sure whether anyone has shot any decent videos of that. OTOH, I'm pretty sure I'm a lot clumsier than the people in your videos.)
Thanks for the feedback (people usually say that I am doing great, but probably they just say that in order not to discourage me -- or maybe in a few cases because they can't tell the levels above theirs apart¹) and for the pointers, anyway.
Not in my experience, except in a very degenerate sense. There seems to be some threshold of entertainment below which I'm inclined to describe my state as bored; above that threshold, I may not be having as much fun as possible, but that's not the same thing at all.