Broken Hearts in Bubble-Wrap

               Recently, several of my lady friends have experienced breakups with their boyfriends. It’s to be expected. The beginning of summer brings an abundance of new skin to sunlight and nature takes its course.  Men will change direction at the flash of a thigh, the flip of the hair or the wink of an eye. Women can be equally nonchalant about losing a mate after finally shedding those extra pounds gained over the winter.

               When I first began dancing tango seven years ago, I noticed there was often a dark cloud hanging over the room. Over the years I realized that many people come to tango wounded. The latest experiences of my female acquaintances inspired me to postulate a more specific diagnosis of the injury.

               Let me preface my postulation with a disclaimer. I have no college degree. I am not an expert on women’s issues. My only qualification to make this statement is that I have a blog….and, that I am a man. I write to expose the mind of a man who dances tango. It is my hope that, through my words, others may achieve understanding, solace or, at the very least, entertainment.

               I believe that women have a greater capacity for loving than men do. This is both a blessing and a curse. This power to love is so great they can protect the men they love who are in danger, they can heal them when they are injured and, as is more common nowadays, provide for them when they can't provide for themselves. Their love shines like a beacon in the night that a man can follow back to its source. When that love is broken or discarded it can leave a woman devastated.

               Because the force in her is so pronounced, she draws other women to her. This is how she ends up in Tango’s living room: on the shoulders of her sisters.

               It is not the same for a man. We can be such dogs; coyotes, actually, content to roam the plains alone, howling internally so that none might be allowed to share in our pain. What draws us to the milonga is not heartache, it is emptiness. We arrive alone, seeking that which is missing.

               When a woman is in pain, she winces at everything that reminds her of the hurt. Not only does she wince, the women near her feel her pain empathically.

               Now, picture a room full of men and women. It doesn’t take many women hurting to cast a cloud over the whole event. What aggravates the situation is the presence of men. Our attendance is both a good thing and a bad thing. The agitation we cause is the catalyst that will spark the chemistry which makes tango so addictive.

               When a man is young, all he can do is break things. If you throw a roll of bubble wrap into a throng of boys of any age, every last plastic bubble will be broken in a matter of minutes. It is as if it were a carcass tossed into a pool of hungry piranhas. If there are rocks, they will throw them. If nothing is at hand, they will wrestle each other and, when that is played out, they will insult each other before finally resolving to grab their testicles and pick their noses.

               Our boyish nature never really leaves us.

               At the milonga, we may break apart a pretzel, or break the silence…we may even break wind. We’re guys, it’s what we do. Some of us break things in a more sophisticated manner than others but the effect is the same: the woman in pain senses the roguishness of the opposite sex and is reminded of her heartache.

               As boys become men, we learn that there is much joy to be had in the building of things. We feel joy because we see it in the faces of the women who surround us. Men are genetically programmed to respond to the emotions of women. The ladies are happy with our accomplishments and this in turn causes us to experience pleasure. Even when we are alone we can picture a woman smiling at the final results of our efforts and receive gratification just from the thought itself.

               Because I am a man, I naturally rebel against the cloud. I’m not sure why but I feel it and I am compelled to do or say something guy-like. I guess that’s why there are so many rules in tango: to protect the women from the brutal nature of men.

               After seven years of mingling at milongas, I’ve learned to hide my rough edges. I do this because I am building something. I am creating the persona of anonymity which is necessary for a good tango embrace with a total stranger. If I am smooth, I can be anybody she wants me to be. If I am in control of myself, she can dance with me unencumbered by her repulsion towards my darker side.

               Experienced tangueros hide their brutal side so well that I think women are actually fooled into thinking that it doesn’t exist. Believe me, it is always there.

               It seems to me that the cloud of the wounded is one of the reasons why tango is so successful all over the world. A milonga is a place for the injured to seek refuge. The music and the dance are the salves that heal them.

               In the twenty-first century, we’ve managed to create all these wonders yet we still don’t know how to care for our spiritual selves. Fortunately, Mother Nature was looking after us when she invented this dance a hundred years ago. In fact, dancing has always been there for us, even before we developed the words with which we use now to cause each other harm.

               I will not pretend to share in the sympathy for the women who have loved and lost. I am no stranger to a broken heart. It is my opinion that women can be hard on themselves. Some women beat themselves up badly for having loved too deeply. Loving so strongly is not a thing to be regretted; it is something to be thankful for.

               Some people never get that chance. On the road to acquire all the things they thought necessary in life, they failed to see the love they were in and missed their chance to give it all they had.

               Tango allows a woman, for a brief moment in time, to love hard without the heartache. It gives both men and women the chance to show the love, the passion that is inside them. We can’t be afraid of who we are and what we bring into the room. All we can do, and all we really need to do, is dance.

Note: Check out my new book on Amazon: Fear of Intimacy and the Tango Cure.

For a deeper psychological insight into the mind of the Kayak Hombre, read his book, available on Amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/River-Tango-perri-iezzoni/dp/1453865527/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371659630&sr=1-1&keywords=river+tango