how do you balance being a nice person, but keep away the creepsters that hang out at the church dances?
i remember my mia maid adviser telling our class that we should never turn down a boy who asks you to dance. she explained that its difficult for boys to muster up the courage to ask and we should do our part to encourage them and help strengthen their egos.
ok. maybe that was good advice when i was 14, but now that i am in my 40's i need a new strategy.
any ideas? i dont want to offend or hurt anyones feelings nor do i want to be flung across the dance floor by some man who considers himself the swing king. i would prefer not to discuss his plans to build a perfect community (under his direction of course)or see huge scars bestowed by an unfortunate marriage of motorcycle meeting tree at a high speed.
is it too much to expect?
I think it needs some adjustment, even for the 14 year-olds, but needs to be something that leaves the door opening to saying "yes" to someone you find harmless but unattractive.
ReplyDeleteBut even that has its limits. I don't have a solution for the problem of the terminally unattractive or awkward, and it's a problem everywhere. All that comes to mind is the thing about kissing frogs.
I've not usually been the one pursued by someone more interested in me than I am in return, but the few occasions it's happened have been very uncomfortable, so I have a limited ability to relate, but I didn't find those few (and far between) moments very comfortable. I can't imagine having them happen multiple times in the same year (or night, whatever).
Good luck.
i have been hearing the kissing frog analogy a lot.
ReplyDeletethe "game" is so different. we arent kids anymore and everything is more serious. grown up rules, you know? higher stakes.
Okay, I'm going to give you my side of these kinds of conversations, because they're kind of amusing. Beginning at the start of this post:
ReplyDeleteInner voice 1: Just do what you need to do, and don't worry about "nice."
Inner voice 2: But it's nice to be nice to the nice!
IV1: Thank you, Frank Burns. I can see how this would be a problem.
IV2: But I don't want to tell her to just say "no" to any guy she doesn't like. I could be the guy, and she sounds really cute.
IV3: And you could do something about that if you got your divorce finished.
IV2: How did he get out? Somebody tie him up and throw him back in the closet!
IV3: [Mrfl! Mrf!....]
IV1: Doesn't matter. She needs to do what she needs to do to stay safe and not get bogged down by the loser crew.
IV2: And I don't have to find out if I'm part of the loser crew until after I get divorced.... Hmm....
So, part of me wants to get the divorce finished so it can hit on you, and the other parts find the stories you're telling about the MMM scary enough that nobody wants to get there and see it.
My head is an interesting place to live, sometimes. Consequently, I don't think I have anything to offer here, other than sympathy as I try to imagine what your experience must feel like.
blain, blain, blain. your head is an interesting place to live! loser crew. lol. i doubt you are part of that. i hate labeling anyone that, we are all children of God, right? does that mean that i am obligated to dance with men that make me uncomfortable for legit reasons? the 2 men i mentioned would make most people uncomfortable, i believe. i am not the belle of the ball, but any stretch of the imagination, so maybe i am viewed as being part of the loser crew. something to think about. i actually have thought about it and it seems like a logical conclusion, but...now all of my inner voices are turning me into sybill.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to pin down the voices to make a dialogue, because it goes much more quickly than the typing indicates -- that whole exchange took less than a second to be done. So some paraphrasing was involved.
ReplyDelete"Uncomfortable" is a hard standard to judge by. It can be that someone is potentially dangerous, or that someone can be potentially very hung up on you, and you don't want to give them the wrong idea about reciprocating their feelings. Or it can just be that they're socially awkward, and that interacting with them just never seems to work right. Or that they're just very unattractive, for whatever reason.
I don't have a simple standard to apply. I think that we need to be ready to dance with the less-attractive and awkward, because they have just as much claim to enjoying themselves at a dance as anybody does. But there's a valid point in avoiding someone who has been grabby, or somebody who is trying to convince you that you're the one for him.
In my kind of dancing (which I will be doing much of today/tonight, and the rest of the weekend), there is no expectation among experienced dancers that asking for a dance has an undertone of asking to marry and have children together (although new people can have a problem with this). But there are still people that are more and less fun to dance with, and, sometimes, you find yourself partnered with someone less fun. In those cases, I make whatever adjustments I need to to keep this from being painful, and just remember that this will all be over in a few minutes, and I can try for a better partner next time.
I don't know how much that helps or not, but it's about all I've got.
i am not an experienced dancer at all. i wouldnt say i am bad-like elaine from seinfeld is bad, but i am very conservative on the floor. i somewhat envy people who are really good dancers and just dance because they know how and the love it so much. i dont step on toes, but it all feels kind of awkward to me.
ReplyDeleteno one was grabby or inappropriate that way, but they really didnt tune into my skill level. which is low. lol