Kirjahaku

I was a man unaware that his ignorance of others and his need for emotional nutrition was seriously affecting his social life, his health and much, much more. I approached intimate situations the way most men do, by keeping people at arm's length, reinforcing my phobias and building walls around me. After my divorce, I discovered the online dating scene. I found it so appalling that I was forced to reconsider who I was and what I really believed in. I looked in the mirror and did not like the man I saw looking back at me so I made a change. I confronted my fears head-on through an education in the art of Argentine Tango dancing. I applied a homeopathic remedy to an age-old problem; I treated a poison with a stronger but diluted poison. I found that the key to being comfortable in the close proximity of another person, a woman, was to learn how to move with her in sync with the music. To do this I needed to realize that a woman was biologically designed to scramble my radar and that that was okay. I learned that, in order for me to be at ease around the opposite sex, I needed to make them feel at ease around me. Eventually I realized this paradigm could be applied to everyone, not just women. My education has been a continuing journey into a fantastic universe, that of another person, that each person saw the world differently and, if I allowed myself to relax and see this truth, my life would be better for doing so. I had much work to do and a lot of walls to tear down but I did it and I am extremely grateful that I did. I believe that once wisdom has been acquired, it is the student's responsibility to share it with the world and so it is that I present my work. I strongly believe that what I have discovered is essential knowledge for men to carry with them as mankind makes its way into the future. As we explore space and the planet becomes more crowded, us men are going to have to find a way to get along with the opposite sex and other men in a way that doesn't result in the sadness, anger and violence to which we are prone. 'Can we all get along' is the problem; tango is the answer and the answer is 'yes' if we try. Tango is an attempt to choreograph a song simultaneously with a partner. The attempt is all that matters, there is no failure if you try. Read my book. I am confident you will learn something and the world will be a better place for you having done so.

In order to understand a man's feelings it is important to understand the situations in which these feelings occurred. For this book I use my mid-life crisis as the tool to provide you, the reader, an insight to why a man feels what he feels and why he keeps those feelings to himself.A mid-life crisis is a tangent to your circle of life. I was an outdoorsman raising two daughters. I could see one day they would leave the nest and my life would seem empty if I didn't find a way to fill it back up again once they were on their own. Honestly, I thought birding would be the activity that would consume me but I was wrong, it was dancing.Learning to dance was a long and hard journey, the end of which I have not reached. It is an education in balance, self-control, self-awareness and the opposite sex. I am a nervous person and I think most people are though some are better at hiding it than others. I got stage fright simply thinking about asking a woman to join me on the dance floor. If I didn't overcome that fear I was destined to become a monk and might as well strap on my hiking boots, put on my backpack and crawl into a cave somewhere in the hills. In an effort to understand my fear I began writing down what I was feeling........ Tango has been described as the three minute love affair. To get your partner to fall in love with you in such a short period of time is a trick that takes years to learn. To get there I needed to recognize that I was a complex individual but not nearly as complex as the woman I was holding close to me, her chest to my chest, her forehead resting upon my cheek. When I say, "love," I don't mean real love or physical love. The love I am talking about is the comfort of being in a loving relationship; it is a deep trust between strangers; it is a love without fear of reprisal from your partner that allows two people to move together in harmony to the music. It is two people working as a team to navigate a crowded dance floor while simultaneously choreographing dance steps to the rhythms and melodies of tango music. It is a love that is unique to tango and lasts only as long as the music is playing.I soon came to realize that a woman is a fantastic machine configured to reveal things about me that I never knew. This incredible creature is filled with thousands, maybe millions, of sensors that enable her to tune in to everything I am feeling when we embrace. Each woman reacted to my moods with one of her own that was equal or greater to mine. If I was afraid, so was she. If I was relaxed, so was she. When I lost my balance she would grab me for support.....I have invested a great deal of effort into the composition of my words so that they may flow effortlessly into your brain. I strive for the writer's version of the tango connection with each reader who picks up my book. Let me tell you, "I love you," and hope that you will believe it for the time you spend reading the words I have arranged so carefully, just for you.What follows is not meant to be a tango lesson. If however, you learn something about this strange dance consider it a bonus.