All of us get a bit unbalanced in one way or another: too serious, too gloomy, too jokey. And so we all benefit from being tugged back towards a healthier mean. The good-teaser latches onto and responds to our distinctive imbalances and gets compassionately constructive about trying to change us: not by delivering a stern lesson, but by helping us to notice our excesses and laugh at them. We sense the teaser trying to give us a useful little shove in a good (and secretly welcome) direction and therefore know that, at its affectionate best, teasing is at once sweet and constructive.
It’s a general idea with multiple variants: inside the fussy, over formal individual there’s a more relaxed person looking for an opening; there’s an ambitious, eager self quietly despairing within the lazy man; the gloomy, disenchanted cynic harbours a more cheery, sunny sub-self in need of more recognition.
The teasing remark speaks over the head of the dominant aspect to the subordinated side of the self, whom it helps to release and relax.
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When we enjoy being warmly teased, it’s because the teasing remark emerges from a genuine insight into who we are. This person has studied us and put their finger on a struggle that’s going on in us; they’ve taken the part of a nice – but currently under-supported – side of who we are. It’s pleasing because normally others don’t see much past the front we put on for the world. Typically, the world just thinks we are gloomy, or stern, or intellectual, or obsessed by fashion. The teaser does us the favour of recognising that the dominant front isn’t telling the whole story; they’re kind enough and perceptive enough to see past the surface.
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