September 29th, 2007
Today I had a lesson in giving advice, and why it is almost never advisable. (Ha!) In conversation with a dear friend, I found myself beaking off with all manner of advice and opinions and interpretations, which were entirely unsolicited, and rather unwelcome. I do know better than this – lesson one at therapy school is never give advice. (Except things like “You should have a doctor look at that,” or “No, you should not abuse others” and so on.) But I fell into it and of course the conversation ended tensely.
I’m not a total jerk – I did call up later to apologize for being so insensitive. And have resolved anew to hold my tongue unless a request is received to do otherwise. Because here is something else I have learned: when people come to you to talk about problems, they almost never want your advice. Not really. They want to vent. They want to feel heard, supported, and cared for. They almost always know what they’re going to do already, and even if they do outright ask for advice (a rare event indeed!), they generally do so only as a way to confirm their pre-existing decision, either by accepting your congruent advice or devising ways of shooting contradictory advice down.
Asking for advice is, in most instances, a form of social stroke exchange entirely divorced from the literal meaning of advice seeking. And anyway, if the other person really doesn’t know what to do, and really wants your advice, you should run like fuck away from that trap. One, you don’t want to be responsible for a course of action when you have imperfect knowledge of the situation which, trust me, you do. And two, it’s creepy for someone else to totally abdicate responsibility for themselves to you and you just shouldn’t go there. (Disclosure: I occasionally force Husband to offer advice when I’m stumped, though of course he hates this and I ignore his advice anyway.)
Hey, did you notice how I totally gave advice up there? Oh, I kill me. I just can’t escape being a know it all. Oh well… if ever there was a place to be obnoxious, it’s on a blog.
I had always thought that the advice / help / empathy equation was largely gender based. From my experience, if I woman tells you her problem, she doesn’t want you to advise her or attempt to fix it, she simply wants to be listened to, and acknowledged.
Contrasting this with my experience with male friends. I find that the subtext of a complaint is often a request. I’m bummed cause I have all this heavy shit to move. (Help me move it).
So, the guy doesn’t share problems unless he wants advice, and the girl never wants advice, just your sympathetic ear.
I find this distasteful. If I am approached with a problem, I really only want to advise, or fix. Why am I simply listening? So you can talk out loud, and solve your own problem? If you could solve it yourself, I wouldn’t have to listen, except perhaps to how you cleverly resolved what used to be a problem.
It would drive me to madness to sit and listen to some simpleton cry because he couldn’t ram his square block through the round hole. It seems worthless to listen to a problem, and not utilize resources to assist in its resolution. If a person needs to verbalize their frusterations, so be it. I just wish they’d find someone else to curse cruel fate to.
As a gentleman, I will happily fix your car, buy you dinner, and trounce any ne’er-do-wells that accost you.
Please ladies, don’t make me listen at length to how life is bad, but I can’t fix it.
Huzzah! for the advice givers.
Regards,
~ I.
I too have found that my male friends will ask for my advice and they really actually mean it and want it; but it is a rarity that they ask for it. I feel this pressure to give them the right answer on those occasions because I know they are really listening to me.
However, women never want to take it. I always tell my sister, “I don’t know why you are asking me this when you are just going to do what you want to anyway” but I guess it is just a way to sound off about problems.
Blogging is an odd medium because once we put our feelings out there, we have to be prepared for someone to offer advice, and it is not always pretty
.
“It seems worthless to listen to a problem, and not utilize resources to assist in its resolution.”
Indeed. Sometimes the answer seems so plain, it’s brutal to have it ignored. But here is the thing: for many people, in fact I would wager almost all people, lending support through presence and care, as manifested through listening, is incredibly helpful. This is resolution provision of a sort. Listening isn’t passive at all – you can use it to help the other person explore their options, clarify their thoughts, and it’s not hard to ‘lead’ the speaker with carefully chosen questions, if that’s your thing. And again, feeling cared for is another effect of listening which is incredibly important. And rare!
So when I say let the person vent, I don’t mean provide a stage for them to whine on for the sheer joy of whining. I do agree though that there is a point where the listening stops being fruitful. There are chronic complainers who use supportive listeners as an audience for their narcissism. You have to watch out for that.
I guess the thing for me is that no one can be responsible for their problems except themself (sp?). Even if I wanted to, I just can’t run other people’s lives. And they wouldn’t want me to anyway, no matter what they say about asking my advice. I think it’s essentially a respectful stance to allow people the freedom to come to their own decisions, without me imposing my arrogance in the form of advice giving.
Of course, that’s the ideal. In real life people should totally listen to me. I am clearly right most of the time.
(I hope this is cogent, I just crawled out of bed…)
In my early experiences with relationships, I was very confused about when my s.o. would “vent” about the tribulations of her day, etc. I assumed that she did this so that I could advise. As you pointed out, this is an exercise in frustration. Now I’ll listen, and if an epiphany pops in my head, I’ll verbalize it, but I learned to be satisfied just listen and say “there there…there there….”
Before I read the above comments I clicked to post my own.
But now I can just say “What they said”!