In reply to your question (One unanticipated note. I now tell friends what I doing and they all think I'm just grazing for women..............Is that a common response?), Gene Kelly said he took up dancing to meet girls.
Other people have mentioned this, but remember the old joke: Tourist in New York to native—"How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" Native's answer—"Practice." If you don't practice it doesn't matter how many lessons you take. You're wasting your money. That's when you find out (preferably with continuing advice from an instructor) what it actually takes to make your body do what your instructor teaches, or what someone at a party showed you, or what you learned from a video. A general rule of thumb in dancing is that if you are having to work hard, you're probably doing it wrong. Practice also helps you remember the details, both in your head and "muscle memory."