Why would someone give unsolicited advice, and then cut the person off again?
I seriously cannot handle this stuff anymore. Don't take unsolicited advice personally. Most of the time the person giving the advice is giving advice they wish they had, not advice they think you need. Why do men feel so compelled to give unsolicited advice or help? I can't do any DIY work without random men in the neighborhood approaching me, constantly giving me "I would do it this would instead" advice and it's driving me insane.
Sorry for the rant but I feel like I'm going crazy. Since this COVID-19 pandemic started, I've been staying at home a lot more and starting a few DIY projects. Fixing up the old fence, making a new garden bed, overseeding the lawn, etc... And every single time I start a new project, I get random men stopping on the sidewalk to give me unsolicited advice or help as if I don't know what I'm doing and it's just driving me insane. The worst part about it is that on the two occasions where I reluctantly let them help, they completely fucked up and then gave the dumbest excuses to avoid taking responsibility, e.g. "yeah the soil here's no good" after doing a piss poor job at digging a post hole (which I had to re-dig myself) or fucking up a cut of wood because they couldn't be bothered to take their own advice of "measure twice, cut once". I'm SO frustrated and I hate that men have this fucking weird tendency to just constantly interject themselves into other peoples' business and act like I should be so grateful. I work 12 hour shifts on weekdays so I really enjoy my DIY time on weekends but lately I just hate it because it inevitably ends up in me trying to politely decline a bunch of unsolicited advice/help from men. I've even had men WALK INTO MY FUCKING BACK YARD while I'm working because they saw me from their balcony and "noticed you were doing X wrong".
The worst part is that anytime I try to be firm but polite, I get treated like I'm being rude for rejecting their advice/help so it's like no matter what I say I'm in the wrong.
I hate people who feel compelled to give others unsolicited advice/help, particularly the ones who can't take no for an answer and are so insistent. I realize this isn't all or the majority of men but I damn sure don't get approached by random women giving me unsolicited advice/help, especially in such a condescending manner. The one damn thing I LOVED to do on my time off that I don't feel guilty about doing since it's still kinda work has been ruined. I'm wording my view to allow for some very select circumstances where it is okay. Say someone's in a legitimate emergency and you're able to quickly identify the problem and have good experience / expertise on resolving it, then I'm obviously not going to take issue with the unsolicited advice.
The other is where you can immediately prove that your advice was right. Say someone is trying to shove a cube through a circular hole and just can't do it, then you point out to try the square shaped hole instead, and it works. That's clearly okay too. But in pretty much every low-stakes, casual setting I can think of, when there's no way to immediately verify how valid this advice is until you put it into practice in the future, I come out thinking that the unsolicited advice was both rude and unnecessary. Let's tackle the "necessary" part first. Take a step back and realize that there's at least some arrogance, and in my opinion a great deal of arrogance, in assuming that the advice you have to offer is "necessary". You have to unconsciously or even just consciously believe that you know better than they do how to approach this. And remember, this is unsolicited, so no, there was not a request of "how do you think I ought to do this?" that the person can fall back on. It has to have come from a personal evaluation that this other person is doing it wrong and needs your advice to set it right. There are a ton of things you don't know here, like say if you tell a girl whose bf is lazy and irresponsible that you should dump him immediately, do you know how she feels about him overall? How willing he is to work on it? Whether she's tried anything to fix this in the relationship or is she just now coming to terms with it? If there's stuff you don't know, especially when you step back and evaluate all the possibilities of things you don't know, then how is it justified?
As for the rudeness aspect, honestly, most of the time when I see people giving this advice, they are actually just finding a way to brag about themselves. "Oh to make the best cookies, you have to use ingredient X. I know this because people love my cookies." I mean, why else is a person offering this advice unless they are so convinced that they are great at what they are doing? There's already a built-in component of bravado and self-centeredness at play here when people do this, and I don't necessarily have the means to verify that you're the expert that you claim to be, so without that verification, why would I even trust you? When I ask someone for advice, it's because I actually know their strengths and have determined what I think they excel at, and so I request that they help me. But you actually cannot just establish yourself as an expert in my eyes without me having an ability to verify it. Thinking that I know less than you, that you know better than I do, is very rude.
There's also just too much potential for for conflict of values. This whole thing came up after I talked about a thing I wanted to do in a video game, and I had an option to spend real life money to get it done instead. This person said I should do this and could not understand why I don't just spend the money. I could explain that I think paying real life money to achieve things in a video game essentially defeats the purpose of playing that game in my mind. My value is "keeping me entertained" while his is "achieve the objective as quickly as possible". Again, it takes arrogance to think that your version of the objective is the right one and especially to express bewilderment and confusion that someone else might think differently.
Another example: I was playing an MMO and my gear was kinda bad so I asked for help killing a thing. I got the help, but then after killing the thing, the guy launched into this thing about what gear I ought to buy, what stats I need, also giving me the cost of the gear which turned out to be completely wrong. Here he assumes that because I do not yet have good gear, that this means I have no clue where or how to find it. How does he know this without some arrogant assumption on his part? Another big one I just need to toss in here, perhaps it fits, perhaps you have something to say about it: I expressed an interest in taking a community College class, and my SIL said I absolutely should take it in a community College in the city because she loves it so much. I went and did this and only later figured out that this school system has locations all over the metro, including a suburb about 2 miles from where I live and work. I spent a whole semester fighting with city traffic and logistics because I just jumped on a piece of advice offered from her general love of a city, rather than me actually doing what was right for myself. I very much regretted this. It’s the college application season and there’s one person who when I tell them i’m only applying to a few and i’m happy with that decision, they take it as a challenge and an opportunity to suggest to me other places to apply to. When i tell them i’ve looked into other in state options and am okay with where i’m applying they start either insisting that i should apply out of state or suggest more in state options as if i haven’t considered them already. Someone said “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” when I told her I wasn’t applying to a specific place, and said i should look into it more even though i didn’t wanna go there. I feel like these unsolicited suggestions are annoying and vaguely rude, but maybe I’m being over sensitive? Even if you mean well, I think giving unsolicited advice/tips to your teammates is counterproductive
This obviously is situational, but time and time again I’ve noticed that serious fights and toxicity start a lot with one player giving unsolicited advice to another (i.e telling them to aim higher in the middle of a clutch is what I notice most) and that player getting offended over it.
Are you frustrated by men offering unsolicited advice? How do you deal with it?
I just got admonished to not be so prickly about unsolicited advice and accept it because they were just trying to help.
My partner(M) will give me unsolicited advice on things I(F) do or ways that I do them in a manner that often makes me feel critiqued. The advice applies to things I’m already successfully accomplishing, however, his advice would mean accomplishing said task in a different manner and in his opinion, a better or perhaps more “correct” way. This however, is debatable at times and besides the point. Additionally, the things being critiqued do not affect nor include him.
I have tried pointing out that I am a smart grown up who manages my life without her constant advice, I hold a well-paying job and support myself 100%, I have pointed out there is a whole world out there that continues to revolve without the constant opinions, I have tried pointing out that I am more than willing to ask for her advice when I need it, but it is a never ending commentary on my life - from whether or not I should be wearing a coat and why I am driving this route instead of that route (even though they are the same distance), to big life-altering things. Today, she needed to tell me to put particular groceries on the car floor instead of the back seat in case it spilled. I know it's stupid but I felt the frustration growing. I made a calculated decision, and it was my car, so if I fucked up, I would have to take the consequences. Then there was a comment about why I entered a particular car park through one door instead of another even though it took me to the same place. And then there was the comment about if I should drink from a cup in my cup holder while driving in case the police would pull me over. And then there was the comment about if I should have my phone out during the ads before the start of the movie. And then there was the comment about.... well you get it. Seriously, I know it sounds so petty and there are thousands of people who wish their parent would still be alive, but it wears me down. I just don't need another comment. In some way I see it as being her way of controlling everyone. I think part of the issue is that all of her kids are grown and live outside the country and she is not married or in a relationship, and the other reason is that I simply don't hold the same balance of power my other siblings do. For example, she doesn't try it with one of my brothers because it always triggers a massive tantrum and he refuses to talk to her, and another has threatened to withhold access to his kids (I didn't say my family was healthy), but I can't lord those things over her (and I don't want to). I would like to have a healthy relationship with her, but at times I think that all these comments have held me back in certain areas (especially when I was much younger and more dependent on her). But I also know that as much as she can''t control me, I can't control how she acts either - I can only control how I react to it. I need to find healthy ways of dealing with my frustrations with her.
I’ve asked that when he feels the need to give unsolicited advice on my doings that he instead first ask me, “Can I offer some advice?”, and proceed based on my answer. He feels this is a somewhat unreasonable request on my part and I on the other hand feel he isn’t respecting my boundaries. He wants me to just accept this thing about him, that it's a part of his personality.
I'm 23, but I think I must give off a very childish/young/sheltered vibe. As a teenager I learned that the way I talk about my interests (literature, history, bookish stuff) or even my life could really alienate people. I thus consciously try to remain cheerful and carefree with people, to talk about light topics playfully.
I am scared of/upset by a lot of things, like conflict with people, upsetting others, etc., and one of the most common pieces of advice I get is that I need to maintain perspective & that this is all small stuff. I've had people tell me that I am emotionally immature, that I'm childish, that my IQ is obviously high but my EQ isn't. That I'm sheltered and don't have experience in the world yet, that kind of thing. I'm quite certain that people tell me this with the best intentions and I try to just remember that they care about me and want the best for me.
I've experienced plenty of difficult things in my life that I prefer not to discuss with people I don't know very well, as it can make things awkward. These experiences include: surgeries as a child which have left me with chronic pain; the death of my father (the most important person in my life) and the chaos it threw my family into; almost dropping out of HS because of my health problems.
I spend a lot of time and energy trying to cope with the trauma from these events. Slowly I'm managing to move forward. But having experienced those dark times doesn't make the smaller things easier for me, and I feel very very discounted when people tell me that I need to have perspective.
Though I feel like I shouldn't let it bother me, today I had lunch with someone who I thought was becoming a friend. Initially I was very excited but as soon as I sat down, he gave me advice unsolicited, basically telling me to have perspective, and I was frankly really very hurt. He did it quite kindly, though not gently, and the fact that he took time out of his day shows that he cares about me, but... I hear this kind of advice a lot and I just wasn't expecting it from him, and I'm just feeling very rejected right now, to the point that I currently don't want to talk to him anymore.
I have lots of questions. Am I supposed to just be a cold shell of a person, always dwelling on the bad things that have happened to me? Should I constantly be spouting motivational maxims? How do I have to present myself? How can I respond to this kind of advice?
His opinion is that because his intentions are good and he’s “just trying to help me/improve/learn” etc. that I should just accept it.
What can I say to help him to understand my perspective?
Optionally, if I'm truly being unreasonable myself, can someone help me understand what I'm missing?
But the thing is, I'm so sick of men assuming I don't know anything. If I smile and thank then for the advice, it just perpetuates the idea that I'm incapable and they know everything. I don't know how else to break this assumption. How do you do it? I would really love some advice here.
Honestly it makes sense, especially if you’re frustrated, someone giving unwanted advice gives off a vibe that they think they’re better than you even if that wasn’t the intention. After seeing so many fights break out cause of this I honestly think it’d be more productive to just let the person play, especially if the thing they struggle with is something like aim or game sense, which takes practice to get the hang of. Of course if it’s something that takes a second to fix, like letting your teammate know you can right click a Classic to let out 3 simultaneously firing bullets, that’s different, but still I think people should just back off tbh. At work yesterday, some of my coworkers were asking each other what they were doing for Mother's Day. When they got to me, I just said that I'm not on speaking terms with my mother. They didn't pry any further, which I really appreciated. (I've also been no contact with my mother for 4 years now - woohoo!) Today, I was working on something alongside one of my older, middle-aged coworkers. She asked about my response yesterday and I confirmed that yes, my mother and I are estranged, but I didn't go into detail when she asked why. She then proceeded to tell me about how her youngest daughter also doesn't speak to her. She mainly emphasized how life is too short to not be on speaking terms with my mother and that I should "find it in my heart to forgive her, because I shouldn't carry that hurt. It also hurts as a mother for your kid to not talk to you." I told her that I understood what she was saying, but I was /seething/. My heart was pounding at the thought of talking to my mother again. I probably could've lied about my situation but I don't regret putting it out there. I understand that people who give advice like my coworker have good intentions. It just becomes exasperating the more and more you hear it. They don't ever consider a context of abuse or completely disregard the abuse when you do justify yourself.
They're so hung up on familial ties and give their piece with that in mind. "They're still your family!" But if the person who abused me wasn't family, would you still give me the same advice? Would you then respect my decision to go no contact? Telling me to reach out and forgive my mother also feels disrespectful in a sense. It's like you're telling me that her feelings are more important than my own goddamn well-being. I have night terrors for fuck's sake—why the fuck would I betray my mental health to maintain contact with my mother? She was already given numerous chances to act like an adult but she refused to acknowledge her abuse or seek therapy. So my dad divorced her and I went to live with him. (I was 19 at the time of their divorce.) Currently she has custody of my younger siblings, yet they often complain about her neglect. She receives child support from my dad, yet she makes way more annually than him. She's also been after his retirement savings. At this point, my dad stopped telling me to make up with her because he finally understood.
Sorry for the rant but I feel like I'm going crazy. Since this COVID-19 pandemic started, I've been staying at home a lot more and starting a few DIY projects. Fixing up the old fence, making a new garden bed, overseeding the lawn, etc... And every single time I start a new project, I get random men stopping on the sidewalk to give me unsolicited advice or help as if I don't know what I'm doing and it's just driving me insane. The worst part about it is that on the two occasions where I reluctantly let them help, they completely fucked up and then gave the dumbest excuses to avoid taking responsibility, e.g. "yeah the soil here's no good" after doing a piss poor job at digging a post hole (which I had to re-dig myself) or fucking up a cut of wood because they couldn't be bothered to take their own advice of "measure twice, cut once". I'm SO frustrated and I hate that men have this fucking weird tendency to just constantly interject themselves into other peoples' business and act like I should be so grateful. I work 12 hour shifts on weekdays so I really enjoy my DIY time on weekends but lately I just hate it because it inevitably ends up in me trying to politely decline a bunch of unsolicited advice/help from men. I've even had men WALK INTO MY FUCKING BACK YARD while I'm working because they saw me from their balcony and "noticed you were doing X wrong".
The worst part is that anytime I try to be firm but polite, I get treated like I'm being rude for rejecting their advice/help so it's like no matter what I say I'm in the wrong.
I hate people who feel compelled to give others unsolicited advice/help, particularly the ones who can't take no for an answer and are so insistent. I realize this isn't all or the majority of men but I damn sure don't get approached by random women giving me unsolicited advice/help, especially in such a condescending manner. The one damn thing I LOVED to do on my time off that I don't feel guilty about doing since it's still kinda work has been ruined. I'm wording my view to allow for some very select circumstances where it is okay. Say someone's in a legitimate emergency and you're able to quickly identify the problem and have good experience / expertise on resolving it, then I'm obviously not going to take issue with the unsolicited advice.
The other is where you can immediately prove that your advice was right. Say someone is trying to shove a cube through a circular hole and just can't do it, then you point out to try the square shaped hole instead, and it works. That's clearly okay too. But in pretty much every low-stakes, casual setting I can think of, when there's no way to immediately verify how valid this advice is until you put it into practice in the future, I come out thinking that the unsolicited advice was both rude and unnecessary. Let's tackle the "necessary" part first. Take a step back and realize that there's at least some arrogance, and in my opinion a great deal of arrogance, in assuming that the advice you have to offer is "necessary". You have to unconsciously or even just consciously believe that you know better than they do how to approach this. And remember, this is unsolicited, so no, there was not a request of "how do you think I ought to do this?" that the person can fall back on. It has to have come from a personal evaluation that this other person is doing it wrong and needs your advice to set it right. There are a ton of things you don't know here, like say if you tell a girl whose bf is lazy and irresponsible that you should dump him immediately, do you know how she feels about him overall? How willing he is to work on it? Whether she's tried anything to fix this in the relationship or is she just now coming to terms with it? If there's stuff you don't know, especially when you step back and evaluate all the possibilities of things you don't know, then how is it justified?
As for the rudeness aspect, honestly, most of the time when I see people giving this advice, they are actually just finding a way to brag about themselves. "Oh to make the best cookies, you have to use ingredient X. I know this because people love my cookies." I mean, why else is a person offering this advice unless they are so convinced that they are great at what they are doing? There's already a built-in component of bravado and self-centeredness at play here when people do this, and I don't necessarily have the means to verify that you're the expert that you claim to be, so without that verification, why would I even trust you? When I ask someone for advice, it's because I actually know their strengths and have determined what I think they excel at, and so I request that they help me. But you actually cannot just establish yourself as an expert in my eyes without me having an ability to verify it. Thinking that I know less than you, that you know better than I do, is very rude.
There's also just too much potential for for conflict of values. This whole thing came up after I talked about a thing I wanted to do in a video game, and I had an option to spend real life money to get it done instead. This person said I should do this and could not understand why I don't just spend the money. I could explain that I think paying real life money to achieve things in a video game essentially defeats the purpose of playing that game in my mind. My value is "keeping me entertained" while his is "achieve the objective as quickly as possible". Again, it takes arrogance to think that your version of the objective is the right one and especially to express bewilderment and confusion that someone else might think differently.
Another example: I was playing an MMO and my gear was kinda bad so I asked for help killing a thing. I got the help, but then after killing the thing, the guy launched into this thing about what gear I ought to buy, what stats I need, also giving me the cost of the gear which turned out to be completely wrong. Here he assumes that because I do not yet have good gear, that this means I have no clue where or how to find it. How does he know this without some arrogant assumption on his part? Another big one I just need to toss in here, perhaps it fits, perhaps you have something to say about it: I expressed an interest in taking a community College class, and my SIL said I absolutely should take it in a community College in the city because she loves it so much. I went and did this and only later figured out that this school system has locations all over the metro, including a suburb about 2 miles from where I live and work. I spent a whole semester fighting with city traffic and logistics because I just jumped on a piece of advice offered from her general love of a city, rather than me actually doing what was right for myself. I very much regretted this. It’s the college application season and there’s one person who when I tell them i’m only applying to a few and i’m happy with that decision, they take it as a challenge and an opportunity to suggest to me other places to apply to. When i tell them i’ve looked into other in state options and am okay with where i’m applying they start either insisting that i should apply out of state or suggest more in state options as if i haven’t considered them already. Someone said “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” when I told her I wasn’t applying to a specific place, and said i should look into it more even though i didn’t wanna go there. I feel like these unsolicited suggestions are annoying and vaguely rude, but maybe I’m being over sensitive? Even if you mean well, I think giving unsolicited advice/tips to your teammates is counterproductive
This obviously is situational, but time and time again I’ve noticed that serious fights and toxicity start a lot with one player giving unsolicited advice to another (i.e telling them to aim higher in the middle of a clutch is what I notice most) and that player getting offended over it.
Are you frustrated by men offering unsolicited advice? How do you deal with it?
I just got admonished to not be so prickly about unsolicited advice and accept it because they were just trying to help.
My partner(M) will give me unsolicited advice on things I(F) do or ways that I do them in a manner that often makes me feel critiqued. The advice applies to things I’m already successfully accomplishing, however, his advice would mean accomplishing said task in a different manner and in his opinion, a better or perhaps more “correct” way. This however, is debatable at times and besides the point. Additionally, the things being critiqued do not affect nor include him.
I have tried pointing out that I am a smart grown up who manages my life without her constant advice, I hold a well-paying job and support myself 100%, I have pointed out there is a whole world out there that continues to revolve without the constant opinions, I have tried pointing out that I am more than willing to ask for her advice when I need it, but it is a never ending commentary on my life - from whether or not I should be wearing a coat and why I am driving this route instead of that route (even though they are the same distance), to big life-altering things. Today, she needed to tell me to put particular groceries on the car floor instead of the back seat in case it spilled. I know it's stupid but I felt the frustration growing. I made a calculated decision, and it was my car, so if I fucked up, I would have to take the consequences. Then there was a comment about why I entered a particular car park through one door instead of another even though it took me to the same place. And then there was the comment about if I should drink from a cup in my cup holder while driving in case the police would pull me over. And then there was the comment about if I should have my phone out during the ads before the start of the movie. And then there was the comment about.... well you get it. Seriously, I know it sounds so petty and there are thousands of people who wish their parent would still be alive, but it wears me down. I just don't need another comment. In some way I see it as being her way of controlling everyone. I think part of the issue is that all of her kids are grown and live outside the country and she is not married or in a relationship, and the other reason is that I simply don't hold the same balance of power my other siblings do. For example, she doesn't try it with one of my brothers because it always triggers a massive tantrum and he refuses to talk to her, and another has threatened to withhold access to his kids (I didn't say my family was healthy), but I can't lord those things over her (and I don't want to). I would like to have a healthy relationship with her, but at times I think that all these comments have held me back in certain areas (especially when I was much younger and more dependent on her). But I also know that as much as she can''t control me, I can't control how she acts either - I can only control how I react to it. I need to find healthy ways of dealing with my frustrations with her.
I’ve asked that when he feels the need to give unsolicited advice on my doings that he instead first ask me, “Can I offer some advice?”, and proceed based on my answer. He feels this is a somewhat unreasonable request on my part and I on the other hand feel he isn’t respecting my boundaries. He wants me to just accept this thing about him, that it's a part of his personality.
I'm 23, but I think I must give off a very childish/young/sheltered vibe. As a teenager I learned that the way I talk about my interests (literature, history, bookish stuff) or even my life could really alienate people. I thus consciously try to remain cheerful and carefree with people, to talk about light topics playfully.
I am scared of/upset by a lot of things, like conflict with people, upsetting others, etc., and one of the most common pieces of advice I get is that I need to maintain perspective & that this is all small stuff. I've had people tell me that I am emotionally immature, that I'm childish, that my IQ is obviously high but my EQ isn't. That I'm sheltered and don't have experience in the world yet, that kind of thing. I'm quite certain that people tell me this with the best intentions and I try to just remember that they care about me and want the best for me.
I've experienced plenty of difficult things in my life that I prefer not to discuss with people I don't know very well, as it can make things awkward. These experiences include: surgeries as a child which have left me with chronic pain; the death of my father (the most important person in my life) and the chaos it threw my family into; almost dropping out of HS because of my health problems.
I spend a lot of time and energy trying to cope with the trauma from these events. Slowly I'm managing to move forward. But having experienced those dark times doesn't make the smaller things easier for me, and I feel very very discounted when people tell me that I need to have perspective.
Though I feel like I shouldn't let it bother me, today I had lunch with someone who I thought was becoming a friend. Initially I was very excited but as soon as I sat down, he gave me advice unsolicited, basically telling me to have perspective, and I was frankly really very hurt. He did it quite kindly, though not gently, and the fact that he took time out of his day shows that he cares about me, but... I hear this kind of advice a lot and I just wasn't expecting it from him, and I'm just feeling very rejected right now, to the point that I currently don't want to talk to him anymore.
I have lots of questions. Am I supposed to just be a cold shell of a person, always dwelling on the bad things that have happened to me? Should I constantly be spouting motivational maxims? How do I have to present myself? How can I respond to this kind of advice?
His opinion is that because his intentions are good and he’s “just trying to help me/improve/learn” etc. that I should just accept it.
What can I say to help him to understand my perspective?
Optionally, if I'm truly being unreasonable myself, can someone help me understand what I'm missing?
But the thing is, I'm so sick of men assuming I don't know anything. If I smile and thank then for the advice, it just perpetuates the idea that I'm incapable and they know everything. I don't know how else to break this assumption. How do you do it? I would really love some advice here.
Honestly it makes sense, especially if you’re frustrated, someone giving unwanted advice gives off a vibe that they think they’re better than you even if that wasn’t the intention. After seeing so many fights break out cause of this I honestly think it’d be more productive to just let the person play, especially if the thing they struggle with is something like aim or game sense, which takes practice to get the hang of. Of course if it’s something that takes a second to fix, like letting your teammate know you can right click a Classic to let out 3 simultaneously firing bullets, that’s different, but still I think people should just back off tbh. At work yesterday, some of my coworkers were asking each other what they were doing for Mother's Day. When they got to me, I just said that I'm not on speaking terms with my mother. They didn't pry any further, which I really appreciated. (I've also been no contact with my mother for 4 years now - woohoo!) Today, I was working on something alongside one of my older, middle-aged coworkers. She asked about my response yesterday and I confirmed that yes, my mother and I are estranged, but I didn't go into detail when she asked why. She then proceeded to tell me about how her youngest daughter also doesn't speak to her. She mainly emphasized how life is too short to not be on speaking terms with my mother and that I should "find it in my heart to forgive her, because I shouldn't carry that hurt. It also hurts as a mother for your kid to not talk to you." I told her that I understood what she was saying, but I was /seething/. My heart was pounding at the thought of talking to my mother again. I probably could've lied about my situation but I don't regret putting it out there. I understand that people who give advice like my coworker have good intentions. It just becomes exasperating the more and more you hear it. They don't ever consider a context of abuse or completely disregard the abuse when you do justify yourself.
They're so hung up on familial ties and give their piece with that in mind. "They're still your family!" But if the person who abused me wasn't family, would you still give me the same advice? Would you then respect my decision to go no contact? Telling me to reach out and forgive my mother also feels disrespectful in a sense. It's like you're telling me that her feelings are more important than my own goddamn well-being. I have night terrors for fuck's sake—why the fuck would I betray my mental health to maintain contact with my mother? She was already given numerous chances to act like an adult but she refused to acknowledge her abuse or seek therapy. So my dad divorced her and I went to live with him. (I was 19 at the time of their divorce.) Currently she has custody of my younger siblings, yet they often complain about her neglect. She receives child support from my dad, yet she makes way more annually than him. She's also been after his retirement savings. At this point, my dad stopped telling me to make up with her because he finally understood.
