“Couldn’t you see that they were mocking you?” she asks, as soon as we’re in the car. I’d apparently mistaken their snickering at a middle-aged mom for friendliness.
Bean may also have picked up this skill in France. I’m starting to think that my adopted country has its own version of nunchi that’s both interpersonal and introspective. You’re supposed to be able to read the room, but you’re also expected to have a very precise understanding of yourself. Someone who lacks these skills is said, pejoratively, to have la confiture dans les yeux: jam in the eyes.
I didn’t move to France to have the jam wiped from my eyes. I came here for Simon (who had himself come here to escape London’s real-estate prices). But after a few years in Paris, and gradually improving French, I realize it’s no accident that the English word “clairvoyance” comes from the French for “clear-seeing.” Figuring out what’s happening—within your family, your workplace and your social circles—and understanding your own response to all this, is one of the central pursuits of French life.
This starts in childhood here. State preschools emphasize an awareness of others. Mothers say their main parenting technique is to observe their children carefully, to understand them. Later, they launch into detailed descriptions of their children’s characters, including their many contradictory qualities.
French elementary schools are a lesson in naming and ordering experiences. My children don’t just learn how to read a clock; they must define what time itself is. In the hands of French educators, human history seems like an orderly procession of events. Students learn it in chronological order, from prehistoric times onward, and graduate with a sense of their own place in human events. My children’s elementary school report cards rate them on dozens of specific skills, including esoteric ones like their ability to “adopt a critical distance from the language.”
From an early age here, kids learn to detect surprising, paradoxical qualities. I realize that my younger son is truly French when, after I’ve been bugging him to wear a jacket, he turns to me on the street and says, “Mommy, I like to be a little bit cold.” My older son explains that he’s ready to get rid of his high chair; he’d assessed it and decided it was “more comfortable but also more babyish.”
Parisians notice visual stimuli with far more precision than I’m used to. In daily life they seem to be constantly visually analyzing. When I bring a poster to my local framing shop, the salesman describes the exact effect that each frame would have on the poster. In boutiques, salespeople don’t say “that’s adorable” or “take it off”—the kind of comments I used to get in America. They say that a certain color sweater looks more “luminous” on me, that one red handbag is more versatile than another because it has more blue in it, that a pair of tan sandals clash with my skin tone (this is true, but it hadn’t occurred to me) and that the glasses I’m trying on “eat my face.” No one here actually says that something has je ne sais quoi. That would be too vague.
French adults often describe the social dynamics in their lives with the same novelistic precision. I’m used to American celebrity interviews in which actresses wax about how hard they work and how they’re devoted to their children. In equivalent French profiles, actresses barely discuss their work or their offspring. Instead, they try to show that they’ve achieved a precise understanding of their own minds, and that they’ve organized their lives to accommodate this.
This is especially true for actresses over age forty. When French Elle profiles Charlotte Gainsbourg after she moves from Paris to New York, Gainsbourg is blunt about herself and her new life.
“I’m not an easy person. I don’t think I’m very open, I don’t speak easily,” she says.
Gainsbourg, then forty-five, says she hasn’t made any new friends in America, but that she didn’t socialize much in Paris, either, because “I don’t think it’s in my nature to be very festive.” She says she spends a lot of time walking around New York alone. “I also love to be a little bit unstable,” she adds.
To an American reader, this might sound morose. But in the French context, it’s high status. It’s proof that Gainsbourg observes herself clearly, and that she has arranged her life to correspond to who she is.
Of course, one reason the French are so intent on figuring out what’s happening is that they assume that a lot goes unsaid. France’s mannered culture sometimes values elegant facades over transparency. Jean-Jacques Rousseau complained about this in the eighteenth century, noting in a letter that “The only frankness of your polite society is never to say what you think except with qualifications, civilities, double-meanings and half-truths.”
Rousseau didn’t manage to change much. “Being too explicit can be perceived by the French as being naive or impolite,” the French academic Pascal Baudry explains.
If this sounds confusing, that’s because it is. You’re supposed to know yourself precisely, but you only reveal this knowledge selectively. People expect artifice in some contexts and precision in others. “Live hidden, live happy,” the French expression goes.
Becoming attuned to when to expose your true self, and when not to, is a big part of growing up here and of learning to adapt as a foreigner. It’s crucial to be precise among your friends and in selective magazine interviews. But real-estate advertisements highlight apartments that have no vis-à-vis, meaning that no other apartment has a view into them. Your home is private, and it’s best when strangers can’t see inside.
* * *
—
After a dozen years in France, and of living with Simon, my nunchi improves. I can now tell when I’m boring someone, and when they’re treating me with disgust or contempt. (I’ve taken an online course in how to read micro-expressions. These two emotions are easy to spot because they’re signaled asymmetrically on the face.)
I’ve also learned to compensate for my own limitations. Whenever I think a handsome man may be hitting on me, I remind myself that he’s probably a solicitous homosexual. And when I have the urge to lend a new friend my apartment, I consider this evidence that the person might have a personality disorder.
But more and more, I feel like I have a handle on what’s happening. When Simon and I are walking up the stairs of our building one day, we pass a neighbor who’s standing outside his apartment. The man doesn’t greet us, then he dashes inside.
“Unfriendly” is Simon’s analysis. But I see it differently. “He was wearing his bathrobe, and he was embarrassed,” I explain. Simon thinks about it and concedes the point. I’ve finally started to see.
You know you’re in your forties when . . .
Hardly anyone you meet is twice your age.
No matter how late you ate breakfast, you will be shaking with hunger if you have not had lunch by two p.m.
That baby-faced friend from high school, who you thought would never look his age, now looks his age.
The only songs you know all the words to are at least twenty years old.
Most women who are pregnant seem very young.
Despite its terrible backstory, you’ve grown fond of Thanksgiving.
20
how to make friends
ONE ENORMOUS ADVANTAGE of becoming less neurotic is that it’s easier to make friends. I used to be the second kind of shopper with people, too—the kind who needs to see all options before she makes a choice. Only instead of needing to see all possible shoes, I needed to meet all possible people before deciding which ones to befriend.
It took me some time to learn that, unlike sneakers, people take offense when you’re standoffish. In my forties, I’ve realized that it’s a gift to find someone I adore, no matter who else is out there.
It’s not just me who’s gotten better at friendship. Much of my peer group has, too. This is partly biological. Since we’re at a peak in conscientiousness (this includes traits like “hardworking” a
nd “orderly”), it’s easier to make plans with fortysomethings and to know they’ll follow through on their obligations. Even my flakiest friends now seem more responsible and focused.
People in their forties are also more “agreeable,” on average, than those in younger age groups. And having made it this far together—through the same songs, hairstyles, new technologies and national tragedies—there’s a feeling of kinship that didn’t exist in our twenties and thirties.
Taken together, this means that my contemporaries are easier to spend time with. At my twentieth high school reunion, my former classmates were competitive and a bit cold. I didn’t go to my thirtieth reunion—a consequence of living outside the country. But from what I gather from the run-up, and from the gushing messages and cozy snapshots, the whole tone was warmer and people were nicer to each other. They had stopped pretending to be who they’re not and just wanted to enjoy each other’s company. (We’ve all realized that one of the great consolations of aging is that you get to do it with your friends.)
If the early forties have a slightly panicky now-or-never mood, the later forties feel more resolved. People who were anxious about not having children, or the right job, or a suitable partner, have either come up with solutions that satisfy them or they’ve reoriented. They might not have the life they planned for. But they’ve found one that they can live with or that they’ve grown to like.
And becoming less neurotic lets us see how much we have in common. We can join the group mood, confident that we’re having a shared experience. After years of feeling exceptional, suspicious and out of sync, we realize we’re quite a lot like other people. Knowing this is a bit of a disappointment, and a bit of a relief.
* * *
—
I’ve also benefited from seeing the French model of friendship.
American friendships can ramp up quickly, progressing within a couple of weeks from coffees to lunches, and before long to dinners. If someone is your neighbor, or your children are in the same class, and you find each other reasonably interesting, it’s natural to meet for coffee and take it from there.
We do this wherever we are. For a while, when my hair was growing back after chemotherapy, I had a Jean Seberg–style bob. An American expat whom I met briefly one night during this period—and who didn’t know the backstory of my hairdo—emailed me soon afterward. “I saw you and thought, I want to know that woman, she looks cool,” she wrote. We met soon afterward.
The French rules are different. Proximity alone doesn’t imply that there will be any intimacy. After ten years, I don’t even know the names of most of my neighbors, and I still address the couple next door using the formal vous. Keeping people at a polite, protective distance—so they don’t intrude on your privacy or create obligations—is a French specialty. There’s little requirement to do social chitchat. If you don’t feel like talking to someone, you don’t talk to him.
The French sometimes make fast friends, too. But in general, friendships progress cautiously here. It takes more than a haircut to get things going. You can know someone socially for months or years and slowly grow to like them without ever proposing that the two of you meet alone. There might be years between the first encounter and the first coffee.
I initially found this slower French pace strange. By the time someone warmed up enough to signal that they were ready to befriend me, I resented them for having been so distant for so long. I suspected that they were being the second kind of shopper with me, and looking to see if there was someone better.
In fact, they were just gradually getting to know me. And I’ve learned that this slower pace of friendship suits my spoon brain. I’ve started to apply the French rules to non-French relationships, too, even though I can tell that some Americans find me aloof. Though I trust my assessments of people more now, moving slowly means that I don’t need to rely on adrenaline-filled first impressions or plunge into friendships before I’m ready. I can get to know people over time and test my hypotheses about them.
The French friendship rules also suit my tendency to be blunt. American friendships can involve lots of reassurance and mirroring. When a friend gets into trouble or has a setback, you’re supposed to “make him feel better by finding extenuating circumstances, by reminding him of all his good points, and by helping him to have confidence in himself again,” Raymonde Carroll writes.
Under the same circumstances in France, however, you’re supposed to tell your friend the truth. “My friend is there to tell me out loud what I tell myself confusedly,” Carroll writes. “He or she ‘shakes me up’ out of affection for me without, in doing so, judging me.” Afterward, you thank your friend for her bluntness, saying, “I feel much better, I knew it was time for me to let you set me straight.”
There are different expectations of the trajectory that friendships take. Some American friendships endure, but others are quite fragile. I had one drink with the lady who liked my haircut, during which she told me all about her life. But then we never met alone again. Even if you reach the dinner stage with someone, the friendship can end abruptly when one party changes cities, has a baby or simply becomes disappointed or fed up. (No wonder I felt like I was perpetually auditioning. I was.) As a general rule, we expect balance and reciprocity, and become concerned when one friend hosts more dinners or asks more favors. Friends are supposed to be there for each other in a pinch, but they shouldn’t ask too much and risk overtaxing and alienating the other person.
The French might also lose touch with someone who leaves town or changes jobs. There’s still risk of a rupture. But in general, once you’ve passed through the long trial period and someone is your copine, it’s expected to endure. By that stage, you’re said to “know them by heart.” The screening process has been so extensive, you can be confident that you have the part in perpetuity.
This feels safer to me. Friendship comes with a kind of tenure.
* * *
—
Slowly, I’ve made real friends and solidified some old ones. My social anxiety hasn’t disappeared, and others sometimes notice it (though being a foreigner is a good cover for being awkward). But that’s rare now. These days, when I have a plan to meet someone and a voice comes into my head asking, “What will we possibly talk about for three hours, and what if she discovers how unlikable I am?” I shush the voice and see the friend anyway. I trust that I have qualities, and that I needn’t constantly entertain people in order to be liked.
And now that my own mind is quieter, I’ve realized that there are people all around me who have worse social anxiety than I do. A woman I know confesses to me over lunch that she finds books far easier to cope with than humans, and that most of what she knows about people comes from reading nineteenth-century novels. Whenever she meets someone, she tries to decide which character from Jane Austen best explains him.
I’ve figured out that I have some basic requirements in a friend. One is that the person has a sense of humor. (The Jane Austen lady does, and despite her best efforts I’ve befriended her.)
I don’t expect constant comic monologues or exchanges of quips. Someone can be serious and have a sense of humor. But nowadays, when humor is missing entirely, I notice. This quality isn’t trivial or just about having a laugh. A humorless person is stuck in her own head and doesn’t have much distance from situations or from herself. Occasionally I’ll meet someone who’s impressive and smart, but who—for reasons I can’t immediately put my finger on—I never need to see again. Afterward, I’ll realize what it was: he was humorless.
I’ve also learned to watch for whether someone listens. It’s a basic skill, but it’s not always there. (Simon will sometimes say of an elderly person, “He doesn’t have a hearing problem, he has a listening problem.”)
Having become more relaxed with others, I’ve loosened my grip on them. I realize that not everyone stays in your life. There are unforgettable people with
whom you have shared an excellent evening or a few days. Now they live in Hong Kong, and you will never see them again. That’s just how life is.
And I’ve gotten better at spotting members of my tribe. Jerry Seinfeld once said that his favorite part of the Emmy Awards is when the comedy writers go onstage to collect their prize. “You see these gnomelike cretins, just kind of all misshapen. And I go, ‘This is me. This is who I am. That’s my group.’”
My group consists of former misfits who like to read and write. And it turns out that there are quite a lot of us. One day, apropos of nothing, I propose to two new friends that we go away for the weekend together. They both agree, and we spend three days in a hotel sharing meals, swimming and talking into the night in each other’s rooms. We describe what it’s like to grow up not quite belonging, and then to finally find a life that suits us. At several points during the weekend, we all break into song.
Along the way, there are confessions. One of my new friends reveals that a Holocaust survivor taught him how to masturbate. (This was all aboveboard; apparently the survivor was a sex educator at his school.) I tell my friends that, in college, I had a class assignment to make a video about anything. I decided to make a documentary about myself, and went around interviewing people in my dormitory about what they thought of me.
After I say this, I wince, certain that my friends will judge me. Surely I’ve gone too far in revealing the ugly truth about myself. But the opposite happens.
“Oh, I love that, it’s so you!” one of them says with great affection. I realize that while the story doesn’t reflect especially well on me, they like me more for having told it. Perfection isn’t a requirement of friendship, but showing people who you are definitely is.
There Are No Grown-ups Page 16
