I spent two nights this past week giving relationship advice. Each time was to a woman, who if they were single I would be interested in dating. But they're not, so I'm not, and instead try to give advice to the best of my abilities. I'm just not sure why people listen to my advice when it comes to relationships. As I believe I've mentioned before, I've been single now for six years. In that time, whenever I've even come close to a relationship I've managed to convince myself it's not going to work before I've even given it a chance. I know this about myself, and still kill them before they even have a chance.

Regardless of that, I spent Sunday night- well, Sunday night into Monday morning- talking to a woman I'd just met about her current relationship. She's been seeing this guy for a few weeks, and really enjoys the time they spend together, his personality, she thinks he's hot, and the sex is great. And despite all this, despite the fact that when he goes out of town on business and calls her every day, she keeps asking herself why he's with her. She's pretty confident, and although I had only met her that night and we were both a little the worse for beer, she seems pretty sensible and put together, but because he's friends with a couple of playmates she questions why he would be with her.

Now, if he was to keep her away from his other friends, I could see why she'd be suspicious. But she's hung out with them all, they all know here and know he's with her. The logical part of me says it would make no sense for him to introduce her to them if he wanted to cheat on her with them. I mentioned this, and told her to just enjoy being with him because the more she over-analyzes everything, the sooner it'll be over.

The second friend, I'm not going to go into as much detail about, because it's a harder situation to give advice about. It's easier to give advice that someone wants to hear, as in the case of friend one, than advice that might not be welcome, which is what I gave friend two. She basically described the relationship to me, and I told her I have no idea why she would be with him. Beer was drunk and reasons were given, none of which I thought were any good. Admittedly there may have been a lot that she held back, but from what I got he treats her like crap and she shouldn't have to settle with someone like that. That's the advice I tried to convey, but nickel PBR has a wonderful charm and I probably wasn't as eloquent as I fancied.

So why advice from me? I can think of myriad reason to not come to me for advice. . .Been single for six years, I'm sometimes too logical about things, and I tend to drink when dispensing advice, to name a few. But thinking more about it, I'm not sure that it was something about me that had them asking my opinion. I think it's one component of our society, our species even. We ask advice even if we're already convinced of the path we should take. I know I ask people's advice, but don't always listen to the response. It's more about getting it out there, saying it, because that often helps me work through whatever I'm going through on my own. Not just with relationships, either. When I'm writing I like to let a few people read what I'm doing, and technically it's for feedback, but I've made very few changes based on feedback I've received so far. I'll add a few lines here or there to explain a situation better, but that's about it.

So here's my goal. To actually use the advice I'm given. Mostly. Cos it stands to reason that not all advice is good advice, but when someone suggests something to me that I know is the right course of action, I've been thinking about it myself for a while, I'm going to try and do better at heeding it. Starting today. Got some advice last night, and I'm trying to stick to it today. It's been. . .interesting. Not the easiest thing, but we'll see how things work out.

And if they don't, I can always blame the bugger who gave me the advice.