James Cordova

If the turtle feels the porcupine's quills coming out, they start to withdraw.

That withdrawal feels threatening to the porcupine, so that person pursues even harder with their quills out even more aggressively, which makes the other person pull into their shell even more deeply.

And it's frustrating for both of them, right?

The person in the shell is waiting for the porcupine to stop poking me.

And the person who's in the porcupine role is just desperate for the other person to come back out of their shell.

And we can engage that kind of porcupine-turtle pattern until we're exhausted.

And that's, for most couples, how the pattern resolves.

We just do it till we're too tired to do it anymore.

This is a couple that I've seen somewhat regularly.

They come in, I would say, once a year or so.

And almost always initiated, you know, coming into therapy will be initiated by her because she is feeling so hurt by his behavior.

his requests for, his demands for, his not particularly skillful encouragement for her to exercise more, become more fit, watch what she eats, right?

And he has this image in mind of a particular kind of physique that he says, I mean, I can't help it.

This is just what I'm attracted to.

And his wife is...

actually quite fit she's just normal woman fit not like supermodel fit and and and um they will get stuck in this place where um you know she tries to appease she tries to go along she tries to resist and he just is projecting this experience of frustration and disappointment honestly tinged with a little bit of shame

And they can't get themselves out of this pattern when it gets sticky for them.

Oh, absolutely.

So her strong attempts are to help him see that this is what a normal person's fit body looks like, to get him to let go of that desire, or at least to, I suppose, if he can't let go of it, to keep it to himself.

That is our natural instinct, right?