When Argentine Tango is good –when the partners are able to maintain a sublime level of connection, moving as one– it is absolutely rapturous. It feels like [Hollywood] Movie Sex looks: smooth, passionate, consuming. This experience is so intense that it can trigger romantic emotions, the sensation of being in love – even though we don’t know much (or anything) about this person. It’s possible the partners have never even spoken, or only superficially. And when we are inside this feeling, such trivia doesn’t seem to matter. We feel a deep intimate knowledge, a timeless and incomparable connection.

Experienced dancers know:

1. That these emotions are a by-product of physical skills.
2. That anyone who has the skills to do this with you, is also having equivalent (or better!) experiences with others, many others.
3. The sense of profound knowledge of another person is false. Lots of people who meet you in the dance as you feel you have never been met before in your whole life, once you get to know them, fail to sync with your values and life, often dramatically.

Who is this person you are dancing with?

After 10 years of dancing 4-6 nights a week, living in 5 countries and visiting others, befriending and loving many dancers, I can tell you some things about the person in your arms.

A single man who has worked hard and long enough on his tango to give a woman the Sublime Rapture Experience is a man who is aware of and managing a personal vulnerability which drives him to seek a form of intimacy other than {option 1} having a girlfriend/wife or {option 2} seeking casual sex. He may have emotional or sexual problems, emotional trauma after a failed relationship, social insecurity, a financial crisis, or he may simply have realized that he finds relationships burdensome and has decided to avoid them. He has discovered that if he cultivates a great embrace and a sweet personality, he can have all the girls he wants up to exactly the point he wants to go. Whatever that point is, he has the hard-won confidence to know he can always and easily get another girl.

A single woman who is willing to suffer the humiliation of sitting in a room waiting to be chosen by one of a bunch of men (who, let’s be honest, would never turn her head on the street) is a woman who has become addicted to an experience much different from sex. If she is smart, she knows that subtle evocations of sexual availability during the dance (the famous Polish nose-nuzzle is a perfect example, but she can use various parts of her body) will keep a man dancing with her, or coming back to her. This evocative promise is her skill, comparable to the man’s embrace.

Tango is “better than sex” for men and for women, but that means something very different.

For men, tango is better than sex because it allows them to cut off emotional engagement at any point. Some men cut it after the tanda. (They are off promptly to find the next girl.) Some men focus on connection with one partner for an entire evening, and then cut it at the end. (The next time you see them they may act like it didn’t happen.) Some men use tango to find an endless stream of casual sex partners (or even an endless stream of inconsequential girlfriends, with whom they never partner).

For women, tango is better than sex because the average tango experience is more tender and passionate than the average sex experience. Of course some men are really great at sex, but many women have never met such a guy, and searching for this is something she may be unwilling to do for lots of reasons. In tango she may be having the best romantic physicality of her life, and she is aware that the sex which could follow is unlikely to be as tender, attentive, and dignified.

Nevertheless, the romantic feelings which are stirred up by the tango experience often cause us to want more. If the tango is good, we fantasize that the person is good, and that the relationship we could have could be as superlative as the dances. For something so promising, we are willing to risk everything for a chance to find out. In the moment that we heedlessly open our hearts, we are forgetting: If s/he has the skills to create these feelings with me, s/he is also creating them with many others.

Tango is an alternative to being a partner or a supplement to an existing commitment. It offers a constant drip of fresh desire and sensuality. If you yourself to fall in love with a tanguera/o you will soon be mainlining suffering.