So, in my ongoing quest to encourage myself to update this blog on a regular (ideally it would be daily) basis, I’ve tried to think of new categories of topics to add. And this recently hit me: Pet Peeves! Things that annoy me! It’s perfect, because almost everything annoys me, so this should be an easy topic to fall back on when I need to write something. I suspect that some upcoming posts in this category will be serious, others much less so. Y’all can judge for yourselves which type this post is.

This is a new word for me, I’d never heard it before, I only found that above image when I was doing a google image search for “pet peeve” to add to this post. I had something else I was going to write about but this topic brought up a better one, in my opinion.

Now, as I’ve mentioned before, I do a lot of participating in the dating and relationship advice forums on Reddit. I’ve been complimented for my advice many times, and directly sought out for personal advice, including yesterday. A new Reddit member whom I’d never interacted with before, sent me a private message, saying he’d agreed with advice he’d seen me give others on the forum and wanted to know my opinion on his current situation. That’s always flattering when that happens. I mean, I don’t claim to be a expert, but I do seem to have a knack for pointing people in the right direction when it comes to their problems (my own? Not always..).

However, many times over the past  years, I have noticed this other thing happening. It’s where someone will come to the forum, supposedly for advice. They’ll lay out their situation, and present two different possible solutions and want to know what they should do. Let’s say either solution A or solution B.

So I read their post and tell them solution B is the right one. And then they counter with a question about why not solution A? So I try to further explain why I think solution B is right, and they ask again about solution A. But no matter what I say, they keep coming back to solution A, adding new details to the situation, trying to convince me to change my mind, and getting darn right combative when I don’t. And that’s when I realize, oh, they didn’t really come here for advice, they came here for affirmation. They had already made up their mind that they are going to do solution A, and they just asked because they wanted everyone to agree with them, so they’ll feel better about their decision.

And it’s annoying because all you’re doing is wasting both of our time then. If you’ve already decided to do something, just go on ahead and do it, don’t pretend like you sincerely want my advice if you’re just going to blatantly ignore anything I say that isn’t what you wanted to hear. I can be wrong (it’s been known to happen once or twice).  But there also times when I know, I just know, that the advice I’m giving is correct, buy they just refuse to listen or accept that. That’s really frustrating, but you sometimes also have to accept that some people need to learn the hard way. So let them go make their mistakes.

And then at least I get to say I told you so, afterwards.