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Don’t Offer Advice

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Clarissa

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Here’s a huge life hack for the sociability challenged among us:

People don’t want advice. The act of giving advice is always perceived as a claim to being superior. Claims of superiority annoy and anger people. Even if you have what you believe is excellent advice, the only way not to come off as a dick is to keep it to yourself.

The biggest giveaway that a person most certainly doesn’t want advice and will detest you for offering any is when they say, “please, I really need some advice.” Whatever you do, do not, and I repeat, do not offer advice. You’ll create a lifelong sworn enemy if you fall for this trick. Tell them that their suffering is so massive and exceptional that you, who never experienced anything remotely this daunting, would never dare give advice to such a paragon of strength, bravery, and inhuman intelligence as they are.

8 responses to “Don’t Offer Advice”

  1. Avatar
    Anonymous

    I think that when Wife says “I don’t want <solution>”, she may be leaving off the next, and more important, sentence: “I want sympathy.”

    This brushes up against two common sex stereotypes. Women tend to discuss their issues openly with each other, knowing that sharing a problem lessens the emotional weight. Men tend to only bring up problems when they’re specifically looking for solutions to them. (And also the inverse: women notice that men can stress out and bottle up issues until they explode uncontrollably, and men notice that women can discuss and discuss and never actually begin taking the actions necessary to make the problem go away.)

    As a slightly sociability-challenged man myself, I’ve learned that often the best way to respond is to look the other person in the eyes and ask “are we looking for sympathy or solutions here?”. The answer will tell you how to proceed.

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    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      It sounds like a harsh question, but I think it’s more helpful than a rule about always or never offering advice.

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  2. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “People don’t want advice”

    Sometimes….. years ago I knew an English guy who was not…. thriving in Poland. Once he told me of how he wanted to handle a specific problem at work (very English way that would be spectacularly wrong in Poland). I told him what to do instead and he did that and he could tell it worked better than his horrible plan would have. Thereafter he would run plans by me and I would tell him what would work better.

    He was also having trouble finding a girlfriend (constantly misreading signals) and I explained about flirting in Poland and how to distinguish simple flirting and real interest (he… didn’t get it) and so I finally told him to stop trying to make the first move and play dumb – Polish women would give the man every chance to make the first move but if he didn’t then she would give it a shot before giving up. Soon after he did have a girlfriend and they ended up married back in England.

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  3. Avatar
    Anonymous

    There’s a caveat: never offer advice unless you were asked for advice.

    There are a few niche things I am very expert on, that I do not hesitate to offer advice on, and people sometimes thank me after trying it. But I wait to be asked, and I try not to frame it as “you should do X”, but rather “Here’s what I do, and it has generally worked”.

    -ethyl

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Asked several times, I must add, because people often pretend to ask when in reality they want to hear a very specific thing and nothing else.

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      1. Avatar
        Anonymous

        Yeah I try to stay far away from general advice on stuff like relationships, kids, jobs… but if you want to know why your tomato plants are dying: I can help!

        Liked by 1 person

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          I’ve gotten into trouble even with such things as how to publish more and how to learn another language. Silly me, I thought that, given my obvious success in both areas, people really wanted to know. In reality, all they wanted to hear was that both endeavors were utterly hopeless.

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      2. overgrownhobbit Avatar
        overgrownhobbit

        That is a boundary problem: low-trust dishonest vs honest high trust people.

        If you choose to explore it, please share.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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