Our dance community is relativly small and a dance teacher and his wife hosted one dance weekly. The male teacher has been teaching about 2 years, kept his day job and had a few students and was preparing to compete with a local pro.

Recently he took on a amateur and started preparing to compete Pro Am. Within 2 months he left his wife of 25 years for this student. They announced at a recent dance that the husband and wife were separating. It was shocking to all since the couple was very involved in the dance community and all the ladies are sort of paranoid now about getting their husband stolen while dancing. Now they (teacher and ex wife, new girlfriend) are trying to be friendly and at dances both ladies are there and he continues to dance with both of them. It is very awkward for everyone and the teacher doesn't look like he is having much fun. If it was me I would relocate, disappear, or cool it for awhile. Some of us were wondering how angry this deserted wife could get seeing her ex out dancing and etc. with his new love interest. I even thought about dodging bullets from a handgun if things get heated up.

This is by far the stupidest and worst dance breakups I have ever seen. The male teacher says he had been unhappy long before--but to run off with a student and then rub his dance affair in his ex's face at local dances is a little much.

My dance teacher tells me that this is very typical of the soap opera dance world and started telling me about a previous sex harassment lawsuit that she testified in at a previous studio.

I am amazed how some dance Pros can be so unprofessional and not even think about what type of image they are creating for dancers.

I have witnessed something similar in our dance community, even though it did not involve a pro teacher. When I just started dancing, there was a married couple who had been longtime costumers of our studio and come to the Sat social regularly. Then a new girl showed up one day and she often asked the man to dance. Because she never asked any other man, it was obvious to everybody that she was interested in him more than just dancing. Basically their romance evolved while all of us were right there watching. I bet it was so painful for the wife. Eventually they separated and got divorced. Now all three of them stopped coming to the studio, so we don't know if the man and the girl are still together. Last time when we saw the wife, she looked great, losing a lot of weight, even though she was not fat before. One can only wonder what kind of damage her husband's affair did to her self-esteem. The man and the girl behaved themselves as if nothing were wrong, and it was almost embarrassing to us. (We called the girl Charlie's courtesan behind their back.) Another strange thing is, that this girl was a resident working to be a MD, and also good-looking. The man was just an average middle class middle-aged man. We still cannot figure out what she saw in him. The man was kind of shy and a quiet man. She was the one who chased him. If she had not been so persistent, their relationship would not have gone as far as it went.