The next Brain Game (see previous) was about trust. How strange! I thought - two tango-related subjects next to one another. Later I realised that many mind-related subjects are connected to interpersonal relations which is what the milongas are about.
The programme set up a game between two strangers who are offered a case of money. Each person is given two cards one saying Split, the other saying Steal. Each player can choose to split the money or steal the money. Each player shows the card indicating their choice at the same time. If both choose Split, both get to share the money. If both Steal, no-one gets the money. If one player Steals, only the Stealer gets the money. Most couples, strangers remember, chose to Split. The famous point was made that we are built to co-operate. I remember a friend years ago trying to explain game theory to me and saying that society can only tolerate a certain number of freeloaders.
Here was the other interesting bit. The programme went on to say that when we trust, the brain rewards well-placed trust with the release of oxytocin. It is a reward system for trust. The programme said: Trust is like a currency. You build up this currency by being reliable, generous and consistent. You spend this currency when you trust other people to reciprocate. Trust is the glue that holds the structure together
Yet when you trust a guy you don't know not to crush you, hurt you or do rough, uncomfortable or just plain creepy things to you on the floor, none of that trust has been built up. And it isn't just that he is doing those things to you. If you the girl on your side are committing to a real dance you are giving yourself to him, trusting him to take care of you, so much so that you could hardly be closer to him, that you are even trusting him to take care of you while you close your eyes.
Some girls will try anything once on the basis that trust has not yet been built up. They are giving the guy a chance. But if it is unpleasant they tell you and sometimes you even see they do indeed become suddenly much more discriminating towards that particular guy. This is the kind of girl who knows and acts in the belief that look is not feel and there is truth in that, though less I find as I get better at looking. With a knee problem I can’t risk that approach even if I wanted to. So how do you trust a guy you don’t know? You watch very carefully and for quite a while, everything he does on and off the floor.
And that is also why second, third, fourth chances just don’t work. I find this true in life and dance. A guy who wants a second chance in my experience is almost guaranteed to have no idea about what it is that makes the two of you incompatible and it wouldn’t be my place or my inclination to say what that is especially when they don't ask. Very likely he may not have twigged you didn't like it though he may just get you aren't keen the way you were before. Yet these types are not curious at all about why you were obviously trying hard to avoid his look or whatever his way is of trying to get your attention. In any case they just want a second chance thinking that somehow their awesomeness will blow you away. Very often, if you don't give them that second chance they may try to demand your attention which reveals even more of those true colours and ought to warn you that you were right in your first instincts. If you mistakenly agree, they are liable do something else that make you remember why you dropped them after the first time. And if you give in to second chances they can lead to third, fourth endless versions and all you are doing is compounding an incompatibility. Men are simple creatures, said the Northern Mischief in different conversation. But it is true a lot of guy psychology seems to be of the Me, Tarzan! type, to do with needing to be awesome, which is a huge blindspot.
The programme finished by saying you can manipulate trust to lower your conscious awareness. I thought of guys who "lower your conscious awareness" by walking up, unexpectedly to invite women, who ambush you with invitation, or who blindside you. Or they manipulate you as I was manipulated in De Plantage by a tall man in braces with a rogueish smile coming to stand right in front of me and staying there, grinning, while I squirmed uncomfortably and gave in to what turned out to be - predictably - insensitive handling. They must think we are stupid - that we don't know how things work, or that we are blind. And we confirm them in those beliefs by accepting them. Duh! Don't do it, girls!
Bizarrely though, the programme said this manipulating of trust to lower your conscious awareness was a good thing because you miss opportunities through mistrust. This is where things fell apart for me. Some so-called opportunities are worth missing. One person's opportunity is another person's enfer. I think the programme was saying: don’t always go with your instincts. Look at that key word though: “manipulate” trust it advises. Manipulate. Never a good scenario, that.
Trust is based on experience and experience in the milongas tells you to look, watch and make an assessment about when trust is worthwhile. So I’m sticking to my guns. If some of us miss those close connections that might have been good dances because we don’t trust enough, or we don’t think the risk is quite worth it, maybe it is simply because of a combination of having an expectation we want met, knowledge of what the penalty feels like if it is not met and simply not enough experience in judging the gap between look and feel within the available time and over the numbers present. What is going on there seems pretty complex to me so I am going to stop beating myself up about taking a long time to recognise as compatible for me guys I don't know in foreign places and missing dances. If anyone else finds themselves in that boat, I hope you do too.
One last thing about those expectations - it should be obvious that everyone's expectation of what they want is different to their neighbour's. Yet I have found in the milongas it is a real giveaway when somebody says something which clearly assumes you ought to lower your standards to theirs. You ought to dance ‘socially’ as in “you ought to embrace him as a social duty” (!), two men diminish the leader pool by ‘selfishly’ dancing together, things of that sort. That is very likely to be the sign of someone who thinks they know what is best for you and others at which point the thing I know is best for me is to disengage because to point out the disparity to them could only be in very poor taste.
No comments:
Post a Comment