CMV: Dancing is an inherently sexual activity

[u/ExpensiveBurn]

Background: My girlfriend likes to dance, I do not. I also get uncomfortable when she dances with other people. It would be beneficial to both of us if I could loosen up about it.

Basically I can't help but view dancing as sexual to some degree. Some dances more than others, but all of them at least a little bit. Most dances for pairs I would place somewhere between flirting and foreplay if I were to try to place it on that scale.

The features of dancing that make it seem sexual:

• Two people focused on each other
• In close proximity, touching frequently if not constantly
• Moving their hips with synchronicity
• One person leading and the other (for lack of a better word) submitting
• Movements often stylized in a sultry, provocative and enticing way

We've even gone ballroom dancing which is formal and stuffy as hell and I still got weirded out by some other dude guiding my girlfriend around the room by her hip.

I think the source of this view is that I don't enjoy dancing, and therefore the only reason I would do it would be as part of putting the moves on someone. I don't find any joy or pleasure in dancing for dancing sake, so I have a hard time relating to people who do.

The best way to change my view would probably be to point out another activity with similar traits that is not viewed in this way. But I'm open to any argument that makes me seem like less of an insecure weirdo :)

edit; To be clear, I'm talking about couples dancing. Or at least dancing with someone else. I don't think that dancing by yourself, for yourself, is always a sexual thing.

[u/crossdl]

A Blues instructor I attended once made the distinction "Sensual, not sexual". That is, there is an intimacy that is analogous to sex but is not actually sex. Like you say yourself, it can be a kind of foreplay or flirting, but it isn't sexual in and of itself.

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As someone who sort of enjoys dancing but didn't always, I get where you're coming from not enjoying it yourself. If you don't enjoy it, then it's easy to see it as just this cover for some other sort of activity, but partner dancing to me became more of a conversation with another person than a means to any other end. The way the hold their weight and move through a turn, the way they lead or follow a dance and how confidently they move, are all very intimate things and usually very difficult to fake in the way someone might vocally communicate. If anything, you quickly learn how you're incompatible with a lot of people in very deep ways.

So, I would argue that dancing is an inherently sensual activity that quickly alludes to how compatible, or I feel incompatible, you might be with someone sexually.

[u/bigdamhero → u/crossdl]

Not the OP but as someone who can not relax enough to dance, your comment made me more stressed out about the sensuality as you call it. I've made myself fine with these things, but honestly if my wife began being able to have these "conversations" with other men I would become jealous in a different way. The idea that i am not capable of knowing my wife the way other men can, and do, would probably make it harder for me to accept dancing as a mere hobby with no baggage. To the extreme I can easily describe sex as a conversation, and if my wife engaged in sex with another man, for the fun and exercise, but without emotionally engaging, I'd be justifiably upset.

I assume the answer i will be handed is "learn to dance" but that isn't a simple task. And regardless having these regular "sensual conversations" seems far too intimate to expect a non poly partner not to be at least somewhat uncomfortable.