A whole 1 1/2 years? Took me a lot longer than that.

I think on of the turning events was for me my first Bachata Congress in Berlin. I didn't know too many Bachata patterns and after hours of dancing the brain just switches off and let's the body do it's thing.

But you are right that it might well take longer for the average guy. That means it's not a good training exercise to pick up the skill of letting go control for man.

For woman on the other hand it's something to be learned at the beginning.

Yes, the unfortunate fact is that most leads are taught to "lead moves" when they start.

At the beginning I mainly thought I didn't understand what teaching dance is all about and that a bunch of teachers have something like real expertise.

The more I dance the more I think that their teaching is very suboptimal. A local Salsa teacher teaches mainly patterns in her lessons. On the other hand she writes on her blog about how it's all in the technique and about traits like confidence. It's also not like she didn't learn dance at formal dance university courses for 5 years, so she should know a bit.

Things like telling a guy who dances with a bit of distance to the girl to dance closer, just aren't good advice when the girl isn't comfortable with dancing closer. Yes, if they would dance closer things would be nicer, but there usually a reason why a pair has the distance it has.

Leading should be leading, to the point of manipulation, and not signaling a choreographed maneuver.

Manipulation is an interesting choice of words. What do you mean with it?

I remember a Kizomba dance a year ago where I didn't know much Kizomba. I did have a lot of partner perception from Bachata. I picked up enough information from my dance partner that I could just follow her movements in a way where she didn't thought she was leading but I was certainly dancing a bunch of steps with her I hadn't learned in a lecture.

To use sort of what "manipulation" means in osteopathy I think you could call that nonmanipluative leading. In Bachata I think there are a lot of situation where a movement is there in the body but surpressed and things get good if they lead can "free" the movement and stabilize it. I think such nonmanipulative dancing is quite beautiful.

Unfortunately I'm not good enough to do that in Salsa and even in Bachata I'm not always having good enough perception.