I don’t really know how I got to be named a good advice giver, but I did. The strangest thing isn’t that people come to me for advice, but that people come to me for relationship advice. I haven’t been in a relationship since the eighth grade, so I didn’t really expect to be good at relationship advice because my experience involved AIM messaging and whether or not to hug after school.
After helping out one of my best friends, I started to realize why people were coming to me with their relationship problems. And the main reason I noticed was that I had an unbiased perspective on dating. When you’re used to being single, you don’t have emotions that’ll sway you in one way or another. A person can come to you about a fight their boyfriend had, and you can give your opinion with a clear mind rather than a mind of someone who also just got in a fight with their boyfriend. If you’re dating someone too, you give advice based on your experiences. If you don’t have those experiences you can clearly guide a situation without relating back to “what you did” or “how you responded.”
Also, people know that you’ll be real with them when they ask for advice. You’re not going to dance around when getting to the advice you really want to give. Rather, you’re going to be blunt because you don’t know how their situation feels, so you have no need to worry about how your advice will make them feel. A person might be hesitant to give advice to someone if they know how the situation hurt them in the past. But, this isn’t healthy because sometimes the truth is what a person needs to hear.
I can’t say that I don’t have any experience with relationships; I have a lot of experience with failed relationships -- relationships that were “almost there.” I think these experiences are even more beneficial when giving advice because you’ve been through the shitty part of a relationship without really being in one. Those experiences can make a person more skeptical of situations, which many people seeking advice need to become. It is okay to not be trusting and to second guess yourself; that is why you have friends that will willingly sit down with you and advise you. You just have to make sure that those people you go to are willing to tell you the truth and have your best interest at heart.
So be proud if you’re the advice giver in life and be proud if you’re the advice taker. Because it’s just as hard to give advice as it is to take it. Your experiences in your life are different from everybody else’s and you should learn to use those to your advantage. At the end of the day, your relationships with your friends are what matter most anyways.
