Porcupines and people pleasing
"How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved."
A reminder that I record all my Substacks, so you can listen by pressing play above if you’d prefer not to read.
Recently a friend spoke candidly with me about a loved-one’s neediness. It was the age-old story of one person taking more time and space than another has capacity to give. I resonated with this story.
This afternoon as I walked across the Carrington bridge to the mangroves, a woman trailed behind me, closer than I would have liked. It was partially my fault, I overtook her earlier and clearly failed to walk fast enough ahead. As I felt her shadow nip at my heels, I resented how close she was to me.
Lately I have been thinking about how I would like to care for so many people, but how there is only one of me. Privacy, space and autonomy are luxuries I crave as well.
The writer Elizabeth Gilbert once brought to my attention the hedgehog’s dilemma. A German philosopher named Arthur Schopenhauer originally coined this metaphor for the state of the individual in society.
According to Wikipedia:
”A group of hedgehogs seek to move close to one another to share heat during cold weather. They must remain apart, however, as they cannot avoid hurting one another with their sharp spines. Though they all share the intention of a close reciprocal relationship, this cannot occur, for reasons they cannot avoid.”
The moral is: “Despite goodwill, humans cannot be intimate without the risk of mutual harm, leading to cautious and tentative relationships.”
A Bukowski quote seems quite poignant to this Substack, all about whether what you feel when you’re alone is freedom or loneliness.
I want freedom and love simultaneously. We all do. My brother once told me he wished he had a house where I lived on a different floor to him, so he knew that I was around, but I didn’t annoy him with my fabulous personality.
”How bold we get,” Freud wrote, “when we know that we are loved.” It’s fair to call myself a calculated risk taker, and I wonder if that bravery comes from the love my parents gave and continue to give me. I think about my partner and how having his attention, even when he doesn’t say much, gives me a boldness that I easily underestimate until he withholds it or I can’t reach him.
Our connections to others run deep and are hard to understand. Ties aren’t always seen as much as they are felt. I have written and wondered before, what does it mean to be close to someone?
I contrast the irritation of someone inadvertantly too close behind me with the fear and helplessness of being alone at night in a sketchy alleyway or being on a plane full of strangers without a connection to friends and family back on land.
When someone ghosts you, you know that they’re still around, but you feel the sting of their absence. When people actually die it is often recommended to spend physical time with the deceased body so we can fully grasp that they are no longer with us. When people ghost us, (abandon us) it’s hard to let them go in a way it wouldn’t be if we knew that they were actually dead.
We’re all individuals connected, like a plexus of dots moving with stronger and weaker links. Some dots are neighbours, parents, family-friends, romantic interests, strangers. Some connections are random, based on location and happenstance. Many of these connections are fragile. We might not know how much others matter until they are broken.
It’s not always easy to determine where an individual sits in your web, and it’s particularly challenging if you’re a people pleaser like me who wants strong connections with everyone.
Nearly two years have passed since I had to move out of my rental with the incredible rooftop, and still I miss it. I reflect on why it still feels like such a loss. One reason I loved living in an apartment building with a massive stunning exclusive space up top (with a bathroom and a wine fridge) was that I could invite not just close friends but also friend-adjacents and cool strangers. I could be warm and welcoming while enjoying myself and not feeling the pressures of one-on-one deep listening which I can do quite well but sometimes prefer to not. I brought wine and cheese. Others did the same, and we all drank and made merry while the sun and moon shone lovingly upon us. I could offer something beautiful to so many people that I loved without relinquishing too much of precious time. People made friends and lovers on the rooftop. In a country where it’s increasingly expensive to do social things, a bottle of wine and some nibbles with a view went a long way. Plus, I didn’t have to cook.
In my new, wonderful apartment I think about the logistics of curating a dinner party. The fact that I have to play chef and cleaner combined with the fact that I can’t invite everyone I know annoys me. The hypothetical dinner party is off! Cheese and olives on the couch while scrolling instagram for me it is! So much of my paid work is now orchestrating excursions and events, sometimes I just can’t be fucked, as the delightful Aussie expression proclaims.
Life circumstances can be the reason why you have stronger or weaker ties with others. No one is owed a rooftop in life, but lordy did it make life easy for an extravert.
An ex friend once told me,
”Alex, based on the amount of people you know, someone is always going to be mad at you. This is just a mathematical fact.”
Ironic that she’s no longer in my life.
Another friend’s voice in my head…
”Alex, if you love everyone, you love no one.”
That was Andrea. Fortunately he and I have maintained a good friendship. We met nearly 20 years ago in Washington, DC. He now lives across the globe in Europe, but once or twice a year gives me work editing his academic papers. When we speak it is often work-related, but I am certain if he came to Australia or if I came to Spain we would pick up just where we left off. Our connection is stronger than so many other wispy strings I try to maintain in my own backyard.
What a privilege to have people in my life who love me, even if we go years without communication. I read a beautiful quote from Alain De Botton last night which partially inspired this Substack.
“To love someone as a friend is no lesser form. It is to love them without possession. To see them as an end rather than a means.”
How beautiful is it to have space and to still know you are loved. And how brave humans are as we navigate a world full of complicated people and try to smother them in our prickly love, or try to keep them warm from another continent. And how hard it is to know when to pull closer, and when to let go.
the porcupine metaphor works because it captures the paradox - the quills exist because the animal needs closeness but learned that closeness is where the damage happens. people pleasing is usually framed as excessive niceness when it is actually a defense strategy. the person who says yes to everything is not generous. they are afraid. what they learned early is that their authentic response - the real yes or the real no - was punished or ignored, so they built an entire behavioral system around anticipating what would keep the other person calm. the exhaustion people pleasers describe is not from doing too much for others. it is from running two parallel processes constantly - what they actually feel and what they calculate is safe to show. that dual processing is the real cost. the porcupine does not want to be prickly. it wants to be held without getting hurt. but the quills are not a choice anymore. they are architecture.
Interesting you should write about the subject of friendship (btw I wasn't quite so excited by your friendship on Facebook when I realised you have >2000 of us) when I am negotiating a friend relationship weirdness at the moment. When does the neediness become too much and how to tell them? For e.g., and I realise it sounds petty in isolation, I helped this friend all day one day look at bicycles – something I know a little about – and she didn't even buy me a coffee. Huh. I have listened for hours, many hours, about her myriad health complaints and when I had a potentially serious one myself (phew, nothing to worry about) I didn't hear from her for over a week. When you kick in the anti-Semitic comments about Jews being tight with money (as a result I always pay for her cawfee) I came to the conclusion that enough is enough. Only I didn't think it so much as feel it, it's visceral. Yet I second guess my feelings because well she aint the first (there's a bit of a litany to be honest) and I don't tell her the truth when she asks what's up. I guess I don't trust her with my feelings, and she was never that close a friend so why expect that level of intimacy. I find it easier to cut and run. Mercer makes some good points about dual processing, I may be all fucked up.