It's probably a bad idea to date a good dancer
Don’t shit where you eat, but in more words.
Anyone who has made social partner dance their hobby has inevitably made long-term connections with people of the other sex. Furthermore, every dancer with any critical sense will rank-order these people by their competency. So then, the question naturally arises: does it make sense to date those dancers with whom you develop a good personal connection and who are so competent that you like dancing with them more than most others? I will argue here that paradoxically, the more you admire someone’s dancing abilities, the less it should determine whether you date them, or even, the less you should consider them for dating.
- What kind of connection does dancing with someone create?
- The first paradox
- Scarcity mindset
- The second paradox
- Conclusion
What kind of connection does dancing with someone create?
All partner dance styles portray some aspect of the male-female dynamic. Something like casino is more playful and peacocky, and not sensual at all. Son and salsa are both romantic. Tango portrays a passionate but unstable love-hate relationship. Bachata and its offshoots are more sexually explicit.
Those who are disingenuous will claim that there is no such distinction. Yet, it’s no accident that the music and lyrical topics for each of these dance genres reflects the energy of the dance. Also, you will find no woman objecting to their young daughters learning casino, but you will find women objecting to their young daughters learning bachata sensual. Neither of them involve actual sexual activity, and yet they are different.
So, if the dance itself has a character and portrays a story, what goes on inside the dancers themselves? I would argue that in a dance where both people put their best foot forward – which is not so much the case during casual practice, which is more mechanistic, like having sex with your spouse while discussing the grocery list – they take on the archetypes dictated by the particular style, akin to portraying a character in theatre. We lose part of our “regular” personality and in part embody a different spirit. The same holds for actual sex, where, if both people put their best foot forward, they partially become actors overtop their regular personalities.
So, in part, the connection you build during a dance is “fake” because it is not you and the other person dancing, but rather the archetypes you embody. Nevertheless, those who have a community they frequent will confirm that despite knowing very little about most of the people they dance with regularly, still some kind of bond is developed between their personalities outside of the dance. You may never talk to them, but when you show up, they get excited to see you and greet you with your name; just by showing up consistently, you become friendly acquaintances. The more and the better you dance, the more excited they will be to see you there. This is not to say that you’d like each other outside of dance socials: indeed, perhaps if they got to know your worldview or your relationship history, they may find you abhorrent. The part of you they like is not the part of you they would date.
The first paradox
This leads us to one important conclusion: you should not project someone’s dancing competence onto the rest of their personality. You actually know very little about the people behind the actors you dance with. (At best, for both leaders and followers, you can perhaps glean their mental velocity depending on the dance style; you just cannot dance casino properly when you are mentally slow, nor can you follow it, and this transfers to intelligence outside of dance. For the remainder of this article, however, assume that you don’t need to dance with someone to figure out whether they are intelligent, so that it doesn’t confound the rest below.)
Mere indifference towards someone’s dancing ability may not be enough when considering whether it is worth pursuing them romantically. To put it another way: I think you may actually want your boyfriend or girlfriend to explicitly not be a good dancer.
It sounds paradoxical: you should want the best for the person you date, and it’s an awesome prospect to think that you’d be able to dance better with this person than with anyone else. In fact, this would solve any potential issues with jealousy from their end, because your goal of monogamy would align perfectly with your goal of enjoying dance and honing your skills. Of course, them being a good dancer does not mean you are a good dancer, and so perhaps you may become jealous that you are not the person they like dancing with most, unless you match them at their skill level. Although a legitimate topic in partner dancing, jealousy is not the reason I say that it is probably a bad idea to date good dancers. The reason is rather the risk involved.
Most people you dance with, you will get tired of. Then comes along this person you really like dancing with, more than with most of the people in your community. High competence, especially in casual communities, is rare. These people don’t come along often. And, since you are only human, the fact that you like dancing with them probably implies that you do not find them a hideous or in some other way repulsive creature.
Yet, most people you date, you won’t marry. The likelihood of success is not ameliorated by the other person’s skill level in dance: indeed, the quality of your dances and the compatibility of your personalities are mostly independent of each other, because if they weren’t, that would mean those who date or marry in your community should turn into all-star dancers on the floor (and in fact, I have only seen the opposite happen around me). When you date a normie outside of your hobby community, you have little to lose when it doesn’t work out. You put nothing at stake. At best, you’ll end on neutral terms, and just never talk to or see each other again.
When you date someone who dances well and thus you prefer dancing with them, you are now subjecting the connection you have on the dance floor to the same potential for failure. It’s the same coin flip, except when it fails, you have now tainted your connection irreversibly.
Notice my phrasing. I did not just write “someone you like dancing with” because indeed, you may like dancing badly with your current girlfriend because she is hot. This is arguably what normies allude to when they say they “like dancing with someone” or “enjoy the connection” – it’s not competence, it’s sex appeal. More interestingly, I also did not write “someone who dances well from your dance community”, because the paradox extends to people you have found anywhere: if you date someone who did not dance before but who takes an interest in your hobby and somehow climbs up the ranks, they will inevitably end up integrating into your dance community. So even if you date responsibly and keep your dating pool and dancing pool nicely separated, the fact that you are tied to your dance community and that the person you date is or is becoming a good dancer and that they are tied to you, means eventually the dating pool bleeds into the dancing pool. The only thing that stands in the way of this is for the person you date to not be a competent dancer, despite you wanting the best for them, despite you wanting to share your passions with them, and despite wanting to be connected to them in that unique way only dance can provide.
Scarcity mindset
It is correct that this conclusion comes from a scarcity mindset. However, that doesn’t mean it is wrong. Scarcity mindsets are not wrong by default; they are only wrong when there is no scarcity. For example, it is wrong to assume that virtually nobody is compatible with your personality, and that hence you should anxiously try to keep around the very first person who shows interest. But competence is scarce. Few people build successful businesses, so economic wealth is not distributed evenly. Intelligence follows a Gaussian distribution. It is not incorrect to think that success and intelligence are scarce. It pays to keep such rare people around.
The second paradox
In a marriage, the above paradox does not exist. If you marry someone who turns out to have any dance ability at all, you should both want to be the one person in your community you like dancing with more than anyone else. The risk a potential divorce poses to the enjoyment of your hobby is negligible compared to the risk it poses to all other aspects of your life, so it is the least of your worries. Hence, it is fine not to worry about it.
But by the first paradox above, there are only two ways to find yourself in a marriage where you are each other’s favourite dancer: either you defy the paradox and you take the risk of losing a good dance partner if it doesn’t work out, or you find yourself in such a marriage by accident. Neither option is appealing. Pursuing either of them is high risk and high reward.
Conclusion
Regardless of how and where you meet someone, it holds that if they are a highly competent dancer, you will risk losing the connection you have with one of the most enjoyable (and hence rare) partners in your community if you reveal your true self to them off the floor. Even when they are not competent nor part of your community when you meet each other, them following you in your passion will inevitably integrate them into the community and they may again rise into the position of being among your few favourite dance partners, the loss of whom would have a significant impact on the enjoyment of your passion.
Footnote: if you are one of the relativists who feel the need to downplay the existence of competence, don’t worry, this article is not for you. Those who have a working compass that points towards greatness will understand. Denial of competence and stagnation in mediocrity go hand in hand.
