Dear Luv Doc,
About once a month or so I get together for coffee or sometimes drinks with a group of friends, most of whom I have known since high school. We usually talk about normal stuff – our jobs, kids, relationships, politics, culture, etc. One of these friends does not seem to be able to contribute to the conversation without offering unsolicited advice. Oftentimes it’s contradictory and sometimes it’s even confrontational. We have all been putting up with her behavior for a long time – partly because she has always been this way and partly because we all know that her own life is a train wreck – numerous breakups, job changes, financial problems, depression. Even still, she can’t help herself from weighing in confidently on our problems, real or imagined. Last week, I made the mistake of complaining about my husband getting a bit too drunk at my sister’s wedding, which led to our advice-giving friend lecturing me about insisting that my husband go to AA. I stupidly sat there and let her go off about how my husband is exactly like one of her exes and that if I don’t take action now I am going to regret it. I know my husband and I know her ex. They are not even remotely similar. Even though I was enraged and insulted, I just nodded and said I would “look into that.” Now I am angry because I didn’t defend my husband and I am worried that my other friends might actually think he is an alcoholic, which he definitely is not. What should I do to fix this problem and avoid something similar happening in the future?
– Not the Wife of an Alcoholic
Isn’t it ironic that oftentimes the folks most in need of advice are the ones most compelled to give it out? I have lived in fear of being painted/dabbed/smeared with that brush for decades, knowing fully well that I have always had a huge amount of room for self-improvement – an inspirational amount for certain people – the type of people I avoid like the plague. I don’t like someone offering me advice even when I recognize it as good advice because … goddammit, I should have been smart enough to think of that shit myself, right? Yes, I know it’s best to keep an open mind and an open heart, even when the messenger bears a striking resemblance to Satan, but I can’t help thinking I might have come up with a suitable solution on my own by watching a few hundred TikToks. You might have already guessed this, but what’s about to follow is neither original nor profound. If I do it right though, it might seem like it is.
Let’s just assume for a moment that your husband is not the raging alcoholic your friend has diagnosed him to be. Does that excuse his overindulgence at your sister’s wedding? Probably, yeah. I mean, if you can’t get drunk at a wedding, somebody probably married a Methodist. That marriage isn’t going to last, is it? You can’t sustain an everlasting love on memories of bored wedding guests nibbling on powdery mints. However, remembering Uncle Jim splitting his chinos trying to drunkenly twerk to “Single Ladies” is the kind of memory that burns brightly for all eternity – especially if someone had the sense to capture it on their cellphone.
Even if your husband is a raging alcoholic, that doesn’t mean your friend gets to use it as an easy excuse to offload her own PTSD in the form of unsolicited advice. In the immortal words of my acid-dealing, practicing communist, hippie friend Motorcycle Michael, “Don’t let people ‘should’ on you. It stinks.” He was right. If people can’t dole out advice in nondidactic, subtly nuanced parables, they probably don’t deserve your attention, right? Or, maybe those socially inept, bull-in-a-china-shop types actually know whereof they speak, they just don’t know when to speak it. It’s not the worst crime in a friend, is it? The desire to be helpful? That said, in your case, the next time you and your friends get together, it wouldn’t hurt to let them know that your husband is not an alcoholic and that portraying him as such, even in an attempt to be helpful, is doing him a grave disservice. As for dealing with your advice-giving friend in the future, you are going to have to be direct … perhaps even a bit confrontational. Here’s a template: “I appreciate your desire to help, but I wasn’t seeking advice.”
This article appears in October 21 • 2022.
