You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.
Hey, it's Marielle.
Today we're talking about how to deal with unwanted and unwarranted advice.
Now, what's that old expression?
Opinions are like adrenal glands.
Most of us have them and we tend to think ours are the best, which is to say, a lot of people have strong opinions about offering advice and opinions.
Oh, I love giving advice.
Unfortunately unsolicited.
See what I mean?
That was NPR's Brittany Luce, by the way.
If you don't know her already, she's the host of It's Been a Minute.
And every week she does a deep dive into what's going on in our culture and helps listeners make sense of it.
So it makes sense that she would have hot takes on things and I would trust them.
But I do seek advice.
I'm comfortable with not being an expert on something and not knowing something and going to somebody like to be like.
Can you help me with this?
Or what do you think I should do?
The thing is there is a difference between someone attempting to be helpful and just straight up judging or criticizing you.
I'm someone who's like, if you have wisdom, like, I'll learn from it.
I'm happy to learn from it.
But I do think it's different if you're like, no, I'm going along just fine.
And I don't need your opinion that might be judgmental or like you're doing it wrong.
Like that advice is generally like nobody likes.
Nobody likes it.
That's clinical psychologist Adia Gooden.
You might recognize her from our episodes on How to Be a Good Loser or how to stop hurting your own feelings.
She's all about embracing unconditional self-worth a very useful skill to have in your back pocket.
When it comes to today's topic,
On this edition of Dear Life Kit, the advice series from Life Kit reporter Andy Tegel, Brittany and Adia are going to give you advice about advice.
They'll talk you through how to handle hurtful in-laws, overly curious onlookers and those family members that mean well but can't seem to quit with their lofty expectations.
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Okay, everybody.
Here's question one.
Dear Life Kit, I'm struggling with my relationship with my future sister-in-law.
She often says things that are hurtful or judgmental.
One time she told me, I love you, but you're too much of a self-absorbed person to own a dog.
And this was over a meal that I had brought over for her.
I've had pets in the past, raised my younger sister, taken care of my sick mom.
I volunteer regularly.
I don't live my life in a way that I think most would consider self-absorbed.
She frequently comments on the decisions my fiancé, her brother, and I make.
Her comments make us second-guess our decisions and bring us down.
In the past, when my fiancé has brought up an opposing opinion, she shuts him down and is adamant that she is right and he is wrong.
So lately, I've begun avoiding her.
How can I cope with a situation in a healthy way and have a healthy relationship with her?
Signed, Feeling Frozen.
Well, I think this is a situation of needing to recognize when someone's comments are not about you.
I mean, many of the times when we interact with people, it's about them.
It's not about us.
And if you know for yourself that you are not selfish, that you are not self-absorbed, then you shouldn't let somebody's comment that you are derail you or override what you know to be true from your own experience, from how you've shown up.
So I think the first thing is how do you remember who you are and know who you are and be grounded in that?
And then how do you determine and discern whose opinion you're going to take and whose opinion you're going to leave right,
Like if it's your wise grandma and she says hey, it seems like you've been focusing on yourself a little too much and i want you to think about this.
That might be very different than a sister-in-law who you don't really feel knows you, tends to make judgmental comments and is often make you feel bad right, so she may be somebody who you're like i'm gonna leave your opinions over there because that's about you, it's really not about me, and then you may also need to set some boundaries like hey, you know I feel judged when you give me advice, so I prefer that not to be part of our relationship or something right.
You may have a conversation at some point.
I echo that.
I think that you can't control her.
You can only control how and when you interact with her to a certain degree and also how you want to take on what she's saying to and about you.
Another question that I have, though, where is your fiance in all this?
At the end of the day, that's his sister, and i think he could play maybe a bigger role in managing um, the like the your relationship as a couple.
To uh her, it also sounds like maybe there's something going on where he's also taking on a lot as far as, like her judgments of him and you guys's relationship um, and that is also something to kind of like be aware of.
Like i remember my therapist at one point saying to me uh, when I was talking about somebody that I was having a difficult issue with, and she said you know, have you ever considered that this person may never change?
Like.
I want you to consider that and then think about how you want to conduct yourself going forward.
And um yeah, I think that's not just something for you to do, but it sounds like it may be something for your fiance to do as well.
Yeah.
Um, the one question that I had here is, as they're starting a new life, as they're starting to pull away from the sister, like the optics of that can feel hard.
It seems like there might be space for them to distance without like totally cutting off.
And I think if people question, you could also just you can give people an opportunity to do something different.
You can also say Hey, you know, every time you make these comments it makes me feel judged and criticized, and I don't like it.
And I'm hoping you could stop and you can, Give them an opportunity to stop and they can try.
And if they do, great.
And if they don't, they'll know exactly why there has been a shift.
Yeah, that makes me think of something that I say.
It's like a personal philosophy, which is like I'm going to give as much as I can lovingly, and no more.
Because if you, if you give more than what you can give lovingly, you're either going to either leads to conflict or it leads to you feeling shortchanged.
Even if the other person is fine.
Right.
You're feeling terrible because you feel like you overextended yourself and you got trampled on.
And it just it doesn't make anybody happy.
Wow.
I love that.
That's a great philosophy.
Moving on to question two.
Dear Life Kit.
As a six foot tall woman, I am often told by complete strangers variations of wow, you're tall.
It makes me feel uncomfortable and a bit like a spectacle.
Some people say I should take it as a compliment, but I think it's rude for others to announce my most prominent feature to me with a tone of shock.
I don't want to normalize the comments, but I don't want to embarrass the commenters either.
How can I respond?
Signed, more than my height.
More than my height.
I appreciate the fact that you don't want to embarrass the people who are making these comments.
But I just want to offer maybe not 100 embarrassment or even like 60 embarrassment, but maybe a nice little gritty 15 embarrassment where you can respond with like, oh my gosh, you are the – you know, you're the first person to tell me that.
And just give them a little giggle.
And then you kind of give them the opportunity to laugh with you, but they know like you're not playing.
And then, if they don't take the hint the first time, then you can just be direct and be like is this the thing?
– that's catching your attention so much that you have to say something right now?
I just feel like if you can give someone sort of like one pass with a little joke to sort of let them know that you don't like it,
And then after that, I think if you're really direct, um, then people will get it.
Hmm.
Yeah.
I agree with Brittany.
If people are continuing to sort of like cross this boundary, being more serious about it and be like it's not cool.
I'm not comfortable with it.
Please stop.
Um, And I think you know, if somebody I agree, if somebody feels a little embarrassed or a little like oh, I shouldn't have done it.
It's like, that's true.
And that's OK.
You're not saying you're an awful person that you would ever do.
Right.
You're not doing that.
But you're communicating like actually what you did is problematic.
Somebody else should feel a little taste of it so that they stop doing it.
That's good.
More questions from Dear Life Kit after this.
Moving on to question number three.
Dear Life Kit.
I've been with my boyfriend for seven years and I'm starting to feel pressure from family members and friends to settle down and have a wedding.
We're planning on getting married, but neither of us are financially stable right now.
We want to wait until we are in a more secure place to make wedding plans.
How can I let people know that we're not in a hurry to get married without being rude?
Signed, Yes, not in a hurry, but also could be signed by everybody on earth for sure.
We all have a version of this, I think.
Single, partnered, married, not married.
Everyone loves to tell you that you are behind in your life.
You are doing it wrong.
Brittany, thoughts?
I lived this.
When you literally say, like my husband and I, we got.
He proposed after three years, which for some people is way too long.
And then by the time we got married in 2022, we had been together forever. about seven years.
And everybody was asking like, when are you getting married?
And then as soon as we did that, I think you got everyone off your back.
And then everyone's like, okay, well, where are your kids?
And you know, at the end of the day, I think there's like two things happening.
One thing is that people in your life probably see that you're very happy and are happy for your relationship and want to celebrate it, and you and would love to see you feel the happiness that perhaps they get or have gotten from those celebrations that they've had of their own.
So it can be coming from like a very loving place.
And then there's also like another aspect of it, which is that people, I think, also sometimes feel a lot of anxiety if they feel like you are not hitting certain milestones in a timeline that's comfortable for them.
And then they can take that anxiety and project it onto you.
And I mean as you are bringing your lives together to get married.
Thinking back to that first question we discussed, now is a great time for you all to discuss and strategize how you're going to deal with feedback and input from other people.
And what I said to people.
Maybe it's probably not as great as what Adia might say you should say to people.
But I said to people if you got 30000 for me that you want to break off, if you got tens of thousands of dollars that you want to give me, go right ahead.
The other thing that I would say that was mildly, gentler is like I don't have any updates to share right now, but when I do, you will be the first to know.
Which is what I say now when people ask me about having children.
I say, oh, I don't have any updates right now, but when I do, you'll be the first to know.
That's exactly what I tell my parents when they ask about, the second when they ask about.
So now my new benchmark is for a sibling.
And I'm like, are you paying for daycare?
Or when are you moving in?
Yeah, there's never an end to benchmarks.
This is all very good.
Adia, what do you have for us?
Yeah, I agree with what Brittany said.
I think if people are coming from a loving place, just saying like you know, we're being really intentional and thoughtful about how we want to start our next chapter of our lives together.
Weddings are expensive.
We don't want to start our lives together in debt or going into debt.
I think sort of touching on what Brittany mentioned about anxiety, right?
Sometimes you know it could be anxiety of like you know, if you don't marry him right away he's going to leave.
And so I think again, sort of like it might be a time when you're like either like you know, like thanks for your opinion, but we're going to do what's right for us, or like letting it roll off and just being like OK, like I'm glad you, you know, that's not our situation.
Like we're not I'm not worried he's going to leave me.
I'm not worried this or that the other is going to happen.
I think making a joke about it can be good, too, because people like, oh, oh, oh, OK.
Right.
They'll usually back off.
I like that.
My last question for you is we all have those people in our lives that push harder.
There's a spectrum.
So when that light touch doesn't work, what's level two?
What Brittany was saying, it's like, please stop asking us.
It's kind of frustrating and annoying when you keep asking us about our plans.
We will be sure to let you know when we are going in that direction.
But until then, I just ask that you respect our decision-making.
I agree.
And you just gotta, you gotta really push back, or I mean, I have never really had to do this, but like you could also, if it gets, if it gets to a certain point, you could just give them a complete.
Like I already told you, I'm not discussing this.
And then you just wait.
Yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
It unsettles people.
Yeah.
Because I think part of it is people want you to get into a negotiation with them.
Like, you feeling like, oh, I have to give all my reasons.
And what Brittany said is like, I already told you.
It's like, I'm not engaging in this discussion.
Like, our decision is made.
Right.
Because people want to be able to, I want to convince you.
Or, why do you think?
Well, no, our decision is made.
Yep.
And then not engaging anymore.
Not negotiating your life plan.
So funny.
I feel like so much of the advice we've given today is like, don't take other people's advice.
Take our advice.
But not others.
Okay.
Our final question, question number four.
Dear Life Kit, I've grown close with a group of coworkers lately.
One friend in our group will be getting married later this year.
Most of us have mixed feelings about our friend's upcoming marriage.
She seems happy, but we disapprove of how her fiance treats her.
We think she deserves better.
We've observed him in group settings.
He's disengaged, hard to talk to, and acts as if he's too good for the gathering.
We consider that he might just be shy or awkward, but another co-worker has noticed that our friend's fiance withholds affection and bosses her around.
A few of us talked it over and agreed that if we were in her situation, we would want someone to tell us.
Should we tell her?
Signed, Karen Coworkers.
I do not think it's true that they would want to know from a coworker if their coworker did not like their fiance.
Right.
Yeah.
In what world?
In what world?
You would not.
You would not.
Right?
No.
Like from one, from all, you're going to pull them into a conference room and be like.
She will cut you all off.
We've all had enough relationships with people we probably shouldn't have been with.
And seeing friends in relationships with people that weren't great, to know that it basically never works to be like girl.
He ain't for you.
When have we listened to that?
When have we ever been like, oh, my friends were like, he ain't for me.
And I was like, OK, I'm going to break up with him.
Right.
Like it just that's not how it works.
First of all, one on one, do not stage an intervention.
Right.
Do not go as a group and tell this girl that you don't like her fiance.
That is not going to work.
She's not going to talk to you about the relationship anymore and you will not see him anymore.
Nope.
You're not going to be close coworkers anymore.
No.
Yeah, I agree.
As much as you could be 100% right.
And that's the thing that'll hurt is like you could call it from jump.
Yeah.
And you could be 100% right in the end.
100% right.
But it is not something that is really always for you to point out as an outside party to the relationship, especially as a coworker.
Now, as a super close sibling or a real homegirl, like the bestie, right?
I generally think that you have maybe one time to say, hey, I just want to check in with you.
Like, this is a big change.
Yeah. how are you feeling?
Do you really feel a hundred percent sure this is the right person for you?
And then if they say yes, you just go, all right.
And then you got to keep that mouth shut, be a sounding board, be a friend, be supportive.
And if you really care about this person as a friend, you don't want them to be in a situation where they're socially isolated with a partner who's really not nice to them.
And you know, maybe one point in the future.
Um, they will kind of see all these people around them that are like okay well, this person makes me feel really good about myself.
And I have so much fun with this person.
And this one, like, is always picking up the phone and wants to talk to me.
And this person always wants to go to, like you know, the farmer's market with me and try whatever new hobby I want to try.
They'll start to kind of see like okay well, if I feel great in all these other relationships where I'm really supported, maybe this person really isn't for me.
It's a long game.
I don't know, And it's not necessarily for the weak, but if you really care about someone, then you really just want to have their back and be there as a friend.
Man, is that hard to do.
It's hard.
It's hard.
Before you go, we ask every guest of Dear Life Kit for their best piece of advice.
We would love to hear yours.
Block and delete block and delete block and delete block and delete block and delete block and delete.
Situationship X, old hookup.
If you want to move forward with your life, Block and delete.
If you wanna play in the past and fantasize and get your heart broken or keep it broken and waste time and be upset, do what you wanna do.
But if you wanna move forward, block and delete.
Someone needed to hear that today.
Well, mine's a little different, but it would be to learn to be a good friend to yourself.
Right.
Like we deal with so much.
And the last thing we need is to be judging and criticizing ourselves constantly.
So the more you can learn to be kind and compassionate and a good friend to yourself, I think, the easier life is.
Adia Brittany, thank you so much for your time.
What a pleasure.
Thanks.
This was fun.
Thank you.
This was so fun.
That was Life Kit reporter Andy Tegel talking to Adia Gooden and Brittany Luce.
And that's our show.
Before we go, I do have a favor to ask you.
If you have a second, would you leave LifeKit a five-star review?
If LifeKit has ever helped you save a little money, make a healthier choice for yourself, or it's just made you feel a little more seen, a five-star review is a great way to show your support.
Thank you so much.
This episode of LifeKit was produced by Sylvie Douglas.
Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan, and our digital editor is Malika Gharib.
Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is our executive producer.
Our production team also includes Claire Marie Schneider and Margaret Serino.
Engineering support comes from Robert Rodriguez.
I'm Mariel Cigarra.
Thanks for listening.
