Halfway Decent Advice

Q.

I have a friend who tends to make wrong choices in her love life. Why do I think they are wrong? Well, her emotions, mostly frustration shows itself very clearly. Although I truly believe that everyone should be able to make their own choice and have their own experiences, it’s sometimes hard to be neutral. Any suggestions on not lecturing her where perhaps she is making mistakes?

A.

Hey, interesting question, thanks. Being the observer on other people’s love lives, this is something I’m very familiar with (haha, I definitely have no practical experience these days), so I get your frustration. Like I’ve even seen people making these wrong choices like you say, and bloody hell, I know a few times I’ve been left wondering what they were thinking.

Love makes people do some unusual things from time to time hey, only one thing I have noticed, I think people get confused between love and lust a lot. Then, another possible contributing factor here, emotional intelligence isn’t something that’s typically taught in our society. So, this may be why so many people struggle with feelings and emotions (which leads to bad decisions).

Anyway, with regards to your friend and her apparent bad choices, who says that you have to be neutral? As in, so sure to use the word love in a slightly different contest here, but love sometimes says no. Hence, with regards to your friendship, does it not say that you care if you move away from neutral?

Now, by no means am I saying to drive right in here and criticise your friend, no way. In fact, something to keep in mind is that there’s probably some deeper issues going on for her which are leading to these bad choices (for example, self-esteem issues). So, do be very considerate and gentle in your approach, nope, there’s no need to lecture. But what I really wanted to make note of here, I loved how you stated “everyone should be able to make their own choice and have their own experiences.” And with your friend, I believe this is the thread you should pull.

Start some dialogue around this, and with any luck it could lead to some friendly banter around relationships. Be light, be playful, but most importantly be supportive. And actually, this beings up a second point that I believe many people are confused by, but the basis of a friendship should be care and support (then obviously chuck in stuff like connection and compatibility too).

Still, for your friendship, maybe you could consider some of this support stuff? Which, I’m not saying that this should be a definite, I’m not saying that your friend needs saving either, rather what I’m saying is that it could be a cool thing to explore? It could even bring you guys closer together. Again, explore rather than lecture, this will keep the conversation open and organic.

I dunno, but if I was in her situation (especially if I kept making these same mistakes in dating bad matches over and over again), I think I’d want a friend to gently advise me. I think I’d want a friend to have my back.

But hey, at the end of the day this is all your call, and I’d also say to base your decision here on the quality of your friendship. And at the crux of all this, how is your neutrality serving here? Is it advantageous or detrimental, in both the short and long terms? Only you know the complexities here so only you can answer this.

Hope this helps.