BMW 1.1

My first car was a BMW, but this acronym will refer to becoming more whole as this process continues. 

This is a continuation of learning how much one of my autistic students looks forward to spending time with me. It's occurred to me that I've compartmentalized how I give of myself. I have no expectations of reciprocity when it comes to serving people making dinner for the homeless every week, and of course, these students are paying for my time (for which I get a relatively meager percentage, but that's entirely another story) but when it comes to socializing, my approach is a lot more transactional, as in "what's in it for me?" - in particular when dancing is involved.  

The thing is, where social partner dancing is involved. the 'better' partner is the one better able to compensate for their partner's shortcomings, so all things being equal, the less experienced partner ends up being the one who has the more enjoyable experience while the other partner puts more effort into compensating for their partners, and I reached a point where it just seemed like people were relying on me to provide them their best experience of the night and it became very one-sided - to the point where I was risking injury compensating for some of the people hoping to dance with me. One such example occurred when someone insisted dancing a foxtrot with me, and 'backled" into a dip where I was unprepared to bear her weight and I ended up injuring my knee to avoid dropping her, with the result that I was prevented me from dancing for about six weeks while I recuperated.

I've invested some time and effort into learning vintage dances, such as English Regency, Victorian & Ragtime period dances and I used to attend vintage dance events rather frequently and the usual experience was that I'd have complete strangers (and invariably newcomers/beginners) approach me asking: "Are you _____? Everyone says I should dance with you." to the extent that my dance card would often get entirely filled with requests from strangers and my not getting a chance to approach anyone I hoped to dance with. I eventually began telling people that I took requests only for the first set before the dance started, and I often avoided filling out the rest of my card so I could approach people who weren't getting asked to dance throughout the rest of the evening, so my attitude there wasn't entirely transactional, but to be fair, I did tend to target potential partners who I'd observing moving well during other dances - or being fairly attractive - but the fact that they were available to be asked instead of having their cards completely filled out before the beginning of the dance suggested an overall attitude much more in line with my own. And if there was no connection, it was at most a 3-5 minute episode but if we both enjoyed ourselves we might agree to dance again that evening. 

In current social dance communities, there's typically a lot of goodwill extended towards newcomers/beginners - experienced dancers understand that today's beginner often becomes a sought after partner - and they remember who was nice to them when they started out. But that goodwill is finite - there's an expectation that people take lessons and continue to improve - and if they don't, they may find that the more advanced dancers will begin to decline offers to dance. This happened to someone I know who had pretty poor leading skills who began to attend an event called Lindygroove. He loved how all these great dancers were dancing with him. I cautioned him that this would last for about six weeks and then people would begin to turn him down when it became clear he wasn't getting any better. He didn't believe me, but sure enough, the advanced dancers started turning him down and he eventually stopped going.  
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I've let this go for about three weeks, and I'm trying to pick up where I've left out. I've made no progress towards any sort of resolution of my sense of unease; though it does now occur to me that I have been focused on resenting the strain of accommodating others and it seeming very one-sided -while giving little consideration to how others may be accommodating me - or even if I'm giving others the chance to do so.  Hmm.

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