No, this is true. However, I would like to stretch your analogy a bit:
Some people are natural dancers, and don’t really encounter the problems you’re describing. Some people just know they want to dance, and deal with them.
The person in question is more of the former. In dozens of relationships she’s never acted jealous before (I’ve known her for 10 years). She’s never seemed to have an issue with it. This time, the first time I’ve seen her act jealous, she rejected the notion that jealousy could be the source of the problem because she was proud of the fact that she’s never jealous.
I’m a dancer too, a really lousy one. By contrast, my other SO is a great dancer. Within six months of starting blues dancing, she was being paid to travel to other states and teach at blues workshops (by the way, if you like swing, you should really try blues). She picks up new dances all the time; I’ve worked for years on swing dancing and feel barely mediocre. If she encountered a dance style and had our experience with it, she might just give up. She doesn’t deal with those difficulties because she doesn’t have to.
In poly, I’m somewhere in between, but closer to “natural”. I’ve felt jealous pangs a few times, but never felt them long enough for me to get a chance to talk them over with someone. I always mention them to the person they were regarding after the fact, but they’ve always gone away before I need to take action to get rid of them. If the next time it happens it lasts a lot longer, I think I’d know what to do, but it would also be so unusual and unpleasant that it could perhaps shake my commitment to poly. If it did and if my self-image was so wrapped up in poly that admitting that was unacceptable—I’d like to think better of myself, but maybe I’d just ignore that instance and move on.
Oh. I now feel really quite silly for not having immediately guessed that where there were naturals there would be a Curse of the Gifted.
I’ve heard really good things about blues—basically I’ve heard that swing originates from a cleaned-up version of blues? -- and your comment is tipping me further towards “oh for goodness sake check this out already,” so thanks for that ^_^.
I’ve heard that blues originates from a dirtied-down version of swing; at least, I think it’s genesis is later. I just got back from an all-weekend blues workshop. Campbell and Chris were two of the instructors, and you can get some idea for what it looks like from the videos on their site. You can see that competition blues often looks a lot like (competition) lindy; maybe a little more varied, but a lot slower, fewer lifts and generally lower energy.
In practice (when dancing for a partner rather than for an audience), blues is generally much smaller and closer. Most dances are usually at least partially danced in close embrace, where the chest to chest and inside thigh to outside thigh connections are the main lead—so it can be a very sensual and intense dance. I’ve noticed a lot of overlap in the poly and blues communities, in that both are heavily populated by very physically affectionate and openly sexual individuals. Not that those attributes make someone poly any more than they make someone a blues dancer, but there is a strong correlation to each.
No, this is true. However, I would like to stretch your analogy a bit:
Some people are natural dancers, and don’t really encounter the problems you’re describing. Some people just know they want to dance, and deal with them.
The person in question is more of the former. In dozens of relationships she’s never acted jealous before (I’ve known her for 10 years). She’s never seemed to have an issue with it. This time, the first time I’ve seen her act jealous, she rejected the notion that jealousy could be the source of the problem because she was proud of the fact that she’s never jealous.
I’m a dancer too, a really lousy one. By contrast, my other SO is a great dancer. Within six months of starting blues dancing, she was being paid to travel to other states and teach at blues workshops (by the way, if you like swing, you should really try blues). She picks up new dances all the time; I’ve worked for years on swing dancing and feel barely mediocre. If she encountered a dance style and had our experience with it, she might just give up. She doesn’t deal with those difficulties because she doesn’t have to.
In poly, I’m somewhere in between, but closer to “natural”. I’ve felt jealous pangs a few times, but never felt them long enough for me to get a chance to talk them over with someone. I always mention them to the person they were regarding after the fact, but they’ve always gone away before I need to take action to get rid of them. If the next time it happens it lasts a lot longer, I think I’d know what to do, but it would also be so unusual and unpleasant that it could perhaps shake my commitment to poly. If it did and if my self-image was so wrapped up in poly that admitting that was unacceptable—I’d like to think better of myself, but maybe I’d just ignore that instance and move on.
Oh. I now feel really quite silly for not having immediately guessed that where there were naturals there would be a Curse of the Gifted.
I’ve heard really good things about blues—basically I’ve heard that swing originates from a cleaned-up version of blues? -- and your comment is tipping me further towards “oh for goodness sake check this out already,” so thanks for that ^_^.
Thanks for that amazing link… is there an LW article on the curse of the gifted?
I’ve heard that blues originates from a dirtied-down version of swing; at least, I think it’s genesis is later. I just got back from an all-weekend blues workshop. Campbell and Chris were two of the instructors, and you can get some idea for what it looks like from the videos on their site. You can see that competition blues often looks a lot like (competition) lindy; maybe a little more varied, but a lot slower, fewer lifts and generally lower energy.
In practice (when dancing for a partner rather than for an audience), blues is generally much smaller and closer. Most dances are usually at least partially danced in close embrace, where the chest to chest and inside thigh to outside thigh connections are the main lead—so it can be a very sensual and intense dance. I’ve noticed a lot of overlap in the poly and blues communities, in that both are heavily populated by very physically affectionate and openly sexual individuals. Not that those attributes make someone poly any more than they make someone a blues dancer, but there is a strong correlation to each.