When teaching an intro course on literature, I often end up teaching my students about the difference between an ideal reader and an actual reader. An ideal reader is someone you can imagine reading a text and getting all the little jokes and references, appreciating the compositional complexity of the text, deriving as much pleasure from it as the author seems to have put into it. An actual reader is the flesh-and-blood person who does the reading as themselves. They might get bored or confused, or get up and go to the bathroom, or fall asleep and end up with little crinkle marks on their face where the forehead rested on the corner of the book. They might not laugh at the jokes, and may miss the complexity of the writing. They might not enjoy or understand it because they’re of the wrong time period, or because the text is offensive to them in some way. Or maybe they’re just cantankerous and grumpy when reading, looking for inconsistencies and rolling their eyes.

We’re all actual readers, of course, and sometimes the only “ideal reader” we can imagine for a text is the author. Often the idea we have of the “ideal reader” is not accurate; maybe the text allows for more probing and questioning than we can imagine. Sometimes it’s frustrating to imagine an ideal reader because the ideal reader would have to be dumb or bigoted. But very occasionally you pick up a book and you say, “This is for me. I get this.” Even if you’re not the ideal reader, the illusion that you are can feel marvelous.

Before I had this idea in my head about ideal readers, I remember thinking that there was a particular quality I looked for in friends. Around someone who seemed to be my “ideal reader,” I could be funnier, more relaxed and careless. I didn’t have to watch every word coming out of my mouth, or worry about whether I’d offend them. As my ideal reader, a friend like this would appreciate my best qualities and not worry so much about my failures.

These “ideal reader” friends were not always my best friends, or even among my best friends, who have always included those cantankerous actual readers, second-guessing my assumptions, pointedly not getting my jokes, calling me on my bullshit. To ask more from me than I am offering–that’s intimacy (sometimes). My best students are not the ones who avidly copy down everything I say and laugh at all my jokes; they’re usually the ones with their hands in the air and a doubtful furrowed brow. They don’t allow me to let my guard down or tell me I’m brilliant.

It’s been since high school since I felt like a great number of my friends were the “ideal reader” type. More and more, I seek out those people who make me be more careful, more circumspect, more thoughtful. They might praise me for a few things, but they often also disapprove of me.

But I find sometimes one wants a balance. To have a friend who just thinks you’re great, and to allow them to think you’re great, and think they’re great in return–even if it’s not all the time (which would be annoying), to be appreciated and liked, without reservation, is nice. Around these kinds of people, I lose some of my anxious fidgeting and worrying. I can stop monitoring myself. And while cantankerousness can lead to one kind of self-improvement, the chastening kind, being loved for who I am, it turns out, can create a different kind of self-improvement. It makes me want to gratify them because I enjoy seeing them smile at me.