Too Many Cooks Spoil The Broth

Recently I’ve been on the receiving end of some untimely, unsolicited and just downright poor relationship advice from a good friend.

The thing with my friend is her track record in relationships looks more like a pile up on the M25 (just one relationship wreck to the next), but even that’s neither here nor there – you could be in the perfect relationship but the title of the blog still applies to you.

Sometimes you do that don’t you. Your not happy in your own situation, not content with your own relationship so all manner of displacement occurs.

I knew my friend was displacing when her advice was punctuated with the following statements:
‘I just don’t know, it’s my gut feeling’
‘I just don’t trust men’
‘I know men more than you’

It floored me a little you know and I’m a factual person, I don’t have much time for fiction particularly someone else’s.

I had to ask what are the facts? She could not produce any.
But yet she was advising me to be in a state of perpetual fear within my relationship.
I did not want to do that. But good damn it her ‘gut’ made her quite insistent: ‘Just be vigilant’

Now I definitely believe in life there are times you have to follow your ‘gut’.
However when soliciting untimely, unwanted relationship advice to someone else about THEIR relationship is not one of those times.

I mean how can you present someone with something (advice) based on nothing? (your gut); and even if you do have something (or there is something in it) it does not automatically mean you have the right to voice it.

A number of years ago Thebdss ladies told me that a few years before; they saw someone who I was in a relationship with; displaying PDA with someone else.

Of course a part of me thought ‘why didn’t tell you me at the time’ but another part of me was glad they didn’t.

You see it came out in it’s own time in the end; plus I can only imagine how awkward it would have been for them as my friends to keep that from me; knowing that to reveal it would have devastated me; and also you never know maybe even devastated the friendship.

I mean would I have believed them or ignored them? It’s hard to say. If I believed them may be I would have also resented being told because it would have discolored my then rose tinted glasses?

Sometimes even if as a friend you can clearly see something within another persons relationship is not right you don’t have the right to say it (unless an emotionally or physical abusive situation).

Sometimes people have to figure things out for themselves. Who knows they may already know deep down the things that you as an outsider have already figured out however; a part of being a good friend is allowing them to take their own time and go through their own process in order to come out the other side.

My policy is if you ask I will tell you honestly. Other than that I don’t go fishing or offering unsolicited advice.

With that being said we all know those people (we do it ourselves) who sometimes when they ask your advice; what they are really doing is trying to get you to agree with what their plan of action is.

They are telling you what their going to do but disguising it as a what do you think?

In those situations you give your honest opinion, they justify their stand point and you agree to disagree and (watch the wreck ensue) move on!

The difference between those people who offer advice based on their gut versus say someone who has ‘facts’ (maybe even facts you have given them) is that the gut person usually becomes offended because you don’t agree with their advice.

Well my advice back to my friend was ‘too many cooks spoil the broth!’ 😀

Anyway good people have you ever been on the receiving end of poor advice? Did you listen? What was the outcome?