Giving Allo Friends Advice

[briesplease]

Did anyone else's allo friends think you gave them great relationship advice until you came out to them and then they began saying that you can't possibly understand (i.e. give valid advice)?

[Eklinaar]

Yeah, my allo friends think my relationship advice is amazing.  But the secret is that every bit of advice I give them would work exactly the same in any other encounter, whether it's a friendship, a family relationship, or ordering your coffee at Starbucks.  My advice is just "how to communicate with other humans 101".  But the allos don't know that, and it blows their minds every time.  Shh!  Don't let them know our secret that we actually don't know shit about romance!

[Holmbo]

20 hours ago, briesplease said:

Did anyone else's allo friends think you gave them great relationship advice until you came out to them and then they began saying that you can't possibly understand (i.e. give valid advice)?

I don't know if anyone has ever looked often to me for relationship advice. But I agree that it's even less so now. For example one of my friends was sad about a girl he broke up with two years ago. When I asked him if maybe the roots lay somewhere else he told me that I couldn't possibly understand because I was aromantic.

[nonmerci]

29 minutes ago, Holmbo said:

When I asked him if maybe the roots lay somewhere else he told me that I couldn't possibly understand because I was aromantic.

How I hate this kind of remarks. 1. It's very rude, and 2. it's not true. It's not because we don't feel it that we can't understand it. Love is everywhere, all movies are dealing with it and teaching us what it is. So of course we would never deal with that kind of stuff, but we still has an idea of how they feel, we know what joy and sadness are, we can sympathise and give advices. I wrote stories, there is romance in it and nobody said that it was not credible or whatever; in fact I'm not that bad at it (in particular to write break-ups  ). So I guess I understand Something about it.

Sometimes I even Wonder i aros don't understand romance better than allos : since I know I'm aroace, I think a lot about those things, and I think I understand it better than before. Plus we have that pragmatic look about it that permits us to give good advices. Romantic relationship are re relationships anyway, and we do know what a relationship is.

 

I'm glad I never had this type of comments (but I'm not out to people who have romantic problems, so...).

[briesplease]

On 4/27/2018 at 8:59 PM, Eklinaar said:

  My advice is just "how to communicate with other humans 101".  But the allos don't know that, and it blows their minds every time.  Shh!  Don't let them know our secret that we actually don't know shit about romance!

 Pretty much! My advice is never usually "dump them" unless I can see (from a pragmatic viewpoint) that the person they're in a relationship with clearly doesn't care / is toxic to them and putting them through hell for no reason. I was heralded for my practical and "real" relationship advice until I came out. But I figure if my allofriends want to suffer through amatanormativity they can, I just want to release their minds to the realm of possibility that their romantic life could be even more prolific and self loving (rather than loathing) than they imagined!

[Star Girl]

My allo(romantic) friends think I give good advice (at least when my friend was struggling after breaking up with her boyfriend), even knowing I'm aro. Mine was generally along the lines of "you don't need to feel guilty about ending your relationship. You do not have an obligation to be in a relationship with anyone, let alone this person."

[Ace of Amethysts]

No one does, really.

[eatingcroutons]

.

[Cee Fox]

My friends ask me for advice all the time. I think I give terrible advice - it's always something generic like 'you do what feels right' and 'you have every right to feel how you do' - but somehow I've been labelled as a great advice-giver???