BEFORE THE WORD, THE DANCE

On what unites us — because reason is not enough

Adriana Tanese Nogueira
Psychoanalyst | AELLA Institute
adrianatns@icloud.com and @CleoAdriana

We speak too much about love, relationships, the masculine and the feminine. We analyze, conceptualize, debate. And yet, we keep stumbling over the same misencounters. Perhaps because what truly unites us cannot be resolved through words. Perhaps because something needs to happen first — in the body, in presence, in silence.

Once upon a time, there was a man who struggled, breathless, to be the superman he was told he needed to be. Wherever he went, he carried that mask — heavy, tight, suffocating — until the day he realized how exhausting it was to sustain a hero he simply was not. It was like dragging along an enormous inflatable doll of himself: impressive on the outside, hollow within.

What “being a superman” actually means varies according to environment, upbringing, emotional bonds, social context — which is not always as friendly as it seems — and, to complete the picture, the unconscious marks each man carries from birth. Despite these differences, a performative demand persists, pushing men into an oppressive role. No one should need the “super” in order to simply exist.

Thus, many men came to live in a permanent state of forced self-overcoming, trying to prove to themselves and to the world that they were strong, powerful, invulnerable. The most common version of this superman is familiar: the strong man who easily becomes arrogant; the leader who slips into tyranny; the commander who loses himself in brutality; the self-confidence that quickly turns into ignorance and crude stupidity. Trapped in this pattern, men err — and err greatly.

On the other side of the seesaw stand women. They, too, are breathless, but for a different reason: they seek to claim a new place in the world, carrying new values, new demands, and a constant inner conflict — between surrendering to the relationship or retreating from it, between loving and protecting themselves. They bear in their bodies and memories the marks of past violence. Something broke there. Trust in themselves and in men, like a crystal vase, shattered on the floor. And the shards remained with them. What is to be done with that?

Meanwhile, many men, wishing to be serious, dignified, and socially useful, feel foolish. They sense they lack solid foundations to sustain such dignity. They do not want to be brutal, yet they can no longer be supermen. Nor do they know how to step into the shoes of a whole man, as they feel trapped in empty gestures — like someone wagging their tail in search of approval.

In the attempt to make the relationship work, men and women — especially women — invest in conversation. They encourage dialogue, discussion, endless talking. After all, “a couple needs to talk.” Issues must be discussed, confronted, resolved, understood, overcome. Exhausted, they find themselves trapped in a web of words: phrases full of meaning and weight, yet offering no way out. Discourses that revolve around an individual core that has not been resolved — or even seen.

After all, what is a couple? What does it mean to be a couple?

Each person comes from different worlds, carrying the burdens of a gender history deeply marked by violence, simulation, betrayal, abuse, and fear. Many of us are aware of this. We acknowledge our mistakes, our limitations. We want to do things differently. The problem is that, although we have absorbed new and important concepts, the love we wish to live cannot inaugurate a new form of communication, a new and genuine attunement.

A couple does not form because they share political ideas, cultural tastes, or similar histories. None of that sustains a union. A couple exists because there is between two people a communion that is not rational — a bond that takes place on another plane. A plane that must exist individually before it can be shared.

Trying to resolve the conflicts of a relationship solely through reason is to believe that conversation alone can handle everything. How could words, even beautiful ones, resolve the inner shadows that each person has yet to face within themselves?

That is why words grow tired. They wear out. And the same conflicts reappear, despite endless explanations and good intentions. A couple is not made of words. Nor is it resolved by them.

Each person must renew themselves inwardly and individually before creating a renewed relationship.
Only then can a new channel of communication be found. And, gradually, a new relational identity can emerge.

Men and women truly define themselves only together, facing one another. The old self can only see the old self in the other — and vice versa.

Today, many of us are saturated with notions of right and wrong when it comes to gender issues. What is lacking is presence. What is lacking is embodiment. What is lacking is bringing thought into the concrete reality of life — something that only happens in a living relationship with the other, beginning with the other that lives within us. That “other” who does not fit into the box of expectations and who, precisely because of that, can renew us.

How can a man change in relation to a woman if she does not resist the old patterns that insist on acting within her? If she does not make space for the new and for the truth that emerges in her? And the reverse is equally true.

Sometimes, as an ancient dream poetically suggests, it is necessary to put words on ice. To pause the constant talking. To place the book in the refrigerator, to preserve it for a while. Not because words lack value, but because we are not made of words alone. We must learn to feel, to perceive with the heart, to look beyond reason. To listen to the silence of the stars that shine within us. Because they do shine.

Modernity exalted language as if it fully defined us. It does not. We are not only language. And it is not solely through words, even truthful ones, that peace and harmony in a relationship are achieved.

We must focus on a new channel of communication — one that transcends words. This channel is the body, not merely as flesh and bone, but as a living entity that contains knowledge and truth.

Two minds in harmony cannot coexist if the bodies are not also in harmony.

This is the meaning of dance. Dance as harmonious movement. It may follow different rhythms, yet it maintains harmony. It is a whole that moves as one within itself. This is how we should be. This is how words should be: a harmonious expression of the whole that we are — including the body. Without it, words become that disconnected rationality we know so well: beautiful, yet ineffective.

A couple expresses its union through the harmonious movement symbolized by dance.
It is the meeting of physical and subtle movements, internal and external, of feeling and thinking.

Dance metaphorically represents the attunement of emotions, senses, and energies. Those who know the pleasure of dancing understand this: when we dance, we enter a realm where understanding precedes explanation. A territory that still has no name, because it was never meant to be spoken.

Because reason explains.
But it is dance — clear and present feeling — that unites.