A Word of Advice

The dating world can be a dangerous place.

There are social scenes to navigate, assholes to avoid, and heartbreak lurking at every corner.

It makes sense that we sometimes need to ask other women for directions. But they don’t always offer the best advice.

While your friends can provide perspective on a situation you’re too embroiled in to evaluate objectively, they can also sometimes point you in the wrong direction.

Sometimes you ask your friends questions that you know the answer to. “Should I text Brian? He never responded to my voicemail from last Tuesday, but… I feel like I should send him one more text. Just so he knows I’m interested.”

If you actually thought this was a good idea, you would just send the text. But you’re asking your friends because you want them to tell you to do it.

And, most of time, they will. We all want to believe that things really are that easy. That you can text someone and he’ll magically be into you again. That he’s only ignoring you because he’s really hung up on his ex. And so we tell our friends to go for it.

Or sometimes we can see the writing on the wall, and we don’t want to tell our friends that their new crush is clearly not interested.

The outcome is still the same. If you’re asking “Should I do X?”, it’s probably because you’re looking for your friends to egg you on. And they will, because they’d want you to do the same.

If you have to ask, you probably already know the answer.