I have a heuristic that goes something like “if you find yourself using the same example half a dozen times in quick succession, you should probably just write it up as an essay.” This is a lens that I’ve found helpful in thinking about a certain kind of cultural mismatch that messes up coordination between people.
Some people, when they are on an airplane, hold their elbows in. They avoid pressing up against the other person. The basic idea (insofar as there’s any conscious thought put into it at all) is something like, if I keep to my side of the line and you keep to your side of the line we can all enjoy our own personal space with no contact and no conflict.
However, there’s a cost to holding your elbows in, which is that you’re, you know, holding your elbows in. It can be exhausting. It’s not an easy or comfortable thing to do, for hours on end.
So there’s a different strategy, which is to let your elbows relax.
Elbow relaxers correctly reason that, hey, look, if you relax and I relax, our arms will sort of sag together and meet in baaaasically the same place where they would have been anyway. Like, the line between us is still the line between us, the boundary hasn’t moved, but now we’re not experiencing a bunch of self-inflicted. We can just let go, and our elbows will press up against each other, and it’s fine.
(To be clear: this is both literally about actual elbows on an actual airplane, and also a metaphor for interpersonal coordination.)
If two elbow holders sit next to each other: no problem! They both hold themselves shy of the line, and everything works out great.
If two elbow relaxers sit next to each other: also fine!
The problem arises when a relaxer (pusher?) sits next to a holder (contractor?).
See, the two cultures have different control systems for sorting out boundaries. The holders expect each individual to think about (and respect) a sort of reasonable, common-sense property line. It’s your job to know the line and stay shy of it—often well shy, with a buffer zone in case of misunderstanding.
In particular, elbow holders are avoiding contact. In the literal sense, they either don’t want anyone touching them, or don’t want to inflict possibly-unwanted touch on a stranger, or both.
The relaxers, on the other hand, expect pushback. They’re abiding by an implicit rule that goes something like “continue expanding until that expansion runs up against someone else; voilà; that’s where the boundary is.”
Which means that the relaxer will just keep expanding, taking up more and more space, implicitly assuming that it must be fine or the other person would push back or say something. Meanwhile, the holder is going hey, whoa, what, what, why is this asshole eating up all of the common space (while shrinking back and back and back).
Either the holder eventually hits a breaking point and blows up (often to the bewilderment of the relaxer), or the holder just keeps shrinking back forever and never brings it up and the whole flight goes by with the relaxer in perfect comfort and the holder silently suffering.
(There are other possible outcomes, of course, but those are the two most common ones.)
And both of those are bad!
I like the elbow metaphor because it helps highlight:
That both of these cultures are valid, actually; it’s not that the relaxers are pushy assholes and the holders are passive-aggressive and resentful; it’s that each of them was using (and expecting others to use) a different control mechanism
That there are ways around the problem, and they start with recognizing that something is off under your personal set of assumptions.
e.g. if someone is pressing into your space in a way that only ~a 1th-percentile asshole with a total disregard for personal space would do … yeah, maybe they’re a 1th-percentile asshole but like probably what’s going on is that they are misreading your signals/are on a different wavelength?
e.g. if you were expecting to get resistance and you’re getting a confusing lack of resistance, it may not actually be that your further and further expansion is welcomed and appreciated but that there’s some signal you are missing/something preventing you from perceiving the pushback you were counting on.
I’ve found that it’s helpful to think about various contexts, and whether I was being a holder or a relaxer in those contexts, and what the costs of holding and relaxing are, and whether I’m confident that the other people involved share my understanding or maybe are trying to do something different, etc. etc. etc. It’s a good way to get traction on a lot of previously-pretty-confusing-to-me conflicts.
Hope it helps you, too.
See also: ask vs guess culture
*For theoretical spherical sheep of equal size.
...and furthermore the 'holders' are working within a framework of autonomy without imposition. The 'relaxers' are 'naturally' putting their 'stuff' into other folks' space without consent.