Hello Sunshine,

I'm 40 and she's 42 years old.

I should mention that one thing that was very helpful was that I discussed this issue with some of my dance instructors. They took this into account when they were teaching and my girlfriend and I were both present. For example if she was clinging to me, the instructor would say its time for everyone to change partners.

I noticed that some people thought that it was bad to write out the proceedures because it is not a business contract. I think that the ballroom is a hobby and it can easily have procedures to protect it from relashionship problems. The dating is a separate issue. By the way, I got positive feedback from my dating partner about those procedures that I wrote out.

In retrospect, what I believe is going on is that we have a relashionship problem that is interfering with our ballroom hobby.

Things have improved since I wrote the procedures but they are up and down.

Recently she broke off with me because I was talking to another women during a dance practice. She now is regretful of this and wants to get back together. Now she says she understands that I have to dance with various partners and manage other dance partnerships. I believe that we both should be dancing with a variety of partners at different levels.

My case is particularly sticky because she tends towards wanting me to dance with her only plus she started dancing a full year after me.

At this time, I'm getting disinterested in attending the same practices that she goes to as this whole thing is getting tiring.

Another issue that has come to light is that the practices I like have more advanced dancers. So if we both go to one of those, she feels that it is difficult for her to find a partner. So every time I go to dance I'm "abandoning" her. So we've decided to go to different practices. This will probably help a bit but I'd like to get to the point were we can go to a dance practice and she doesn't have any sense of ownership of me.

TS