Posted on 06/25/2013 7:38:12 AM PDT by NotYourAverageDhimmi
Advice giving, especially unsolicited, is tricky. Being on the receiving end can be annoying and make us defensive. But giving advice can be frustrating, as well, particularly when the intended beneficiary of our wisdom makes it clear it isn't welcome—or takes the same recommendations we've been giving for months from someone else. The whole advice issue is typically hardest to navigate with the person we know the best: our spouse or partner.
In a series of six studies that followed 100 couples for the first seven years of marriage, researchers at the University of Iowa found that both husbands and wives feel lower marital satisfaction when they are given too much advice from a spouse, as opposed to too little. And—surprise!—unsolicited advice is the most damaging kind. The most recent study was published in 2009 in the Journal of Family Psychology.
In one study, the researchers videotaped spouses discussing a problem that one of them had—say a struggle to lose weight or quit smoking—while the other partner offered advice. They then examined the positive and negative behaviors that each person engaged in while asking for support, receiving it or providing it.
One result of the study was unexpected: How the person asking for or receiving the support behaves is more important to the health of the relationship than how the person giving the advice behaves. "It's a vulnerable position to need support," says Erika Lawrence, one of the lead researchers on the studies and associate professor at the University of Iowa.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I am ALWAYS giving my wife advice on how to cut an onion.
She never takes it. Hence I will one day be giving her advice on where to get her thumb re-attached.
bump
“Never give advice. The wise don’t need it and fools won’t listen to it.” — Ambrose Bierce
Great cartoons! I like the one at the top right: “Mr. Clean meets Lorena Bobbett.” You just *know* she can’t wait to get her hands on that knife, and it ain’t gonna be pretty...
If you were my husband, you would cut the onion from then on. That would be true with any other criticism you had about how I did something. You could do it from then on, whatever it was. Eventually, you would know if you criticized, you get that job.
Why should I listen to someone who doesn’t even follow their own advice to not give advice.
Let me be the first to say I feel sorry for your husband.
Believe me, I would rather cut all of her onions for her than have to watch the way she does that now.
Steinem’s Theorem: Advice being offered has zero validity if the person offering said advice has a penis.
We have a running joke about “let me show you a better way.” That phrase used to cause a lot of fights early on in our marriage. After nearly 33 years, it gets a dirty look from me, and a big laugh from him.
“Let me be the first to say I feel sorry for your husband.”
Actually, my husband cut all the food that needed cutting. I was the cook, he was the cutter.
“Believe me, I would rather cut all of her onions for her than have to watch the way she does that now.”
My husband felt the same way, so he cut the onions and any other food that needed it. That was fine with me.
I was once in a lounge when I overheard one exceptionally haughty professor say to another professor, “I’d explain it to you, but you simply wouldn’t understand.” He said it in such an English gentry way that it was easy to overlook that he basically said, “You’re too dumb to understand, so why waste my time.”
Now, when my wife asks for an explanation to things I’ll sometimes say, “I’d explain it to you, but you simply wouldn’t understand.”
Right tighty, lefty loosey. Best advice my husband ever gave me.
If I’m reading this right, the basic idea is you’re better off letting your other half muddle through life without information that might help.
When did people become so testy?
“Cutting off her thumb to spite her face...”
No, he took the job of cutting the food so I didn’t have to do it. He also took whatever job he thought he did better. That was a help, not a problem.
Don’t take advice from your husband or wife! Be a good consumer, and listen to the “experts” instead. Spend, spend!
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