Obscenely Honest Advice I’ve Been Given*
*... by people in my life who actually care.
You know when you’re spending time with a potential partner, and you can feel that you’re starting to like them? You start thinking about them while waiting for your coffee, you imagine conversations with them in your head, you wonder what they’re doing right this very second, and you notice you are becoming infatuated... rather quickly. Now, you know that feeling when you’re infatuated with them and they’re… not?
It sucks, but you are so infatuated that you don’t care. “They’re not that bad,” you’ll tell your friends, who are desperately trying to slap some sense into you. “He’s better in person,” you’ll tell anyone who will listen. “I don’t even really like them that much, it’s just to keep me occupied,” you’ll repeat in your head like a mantra. But you’re lying through your teeth—you know it, and, spoiler alert, so do your friends.
Here is my olive branch to you beautiful souls who fall in love with the wrong people: I have racked my brains for all the harsh, unapologetically honest advice I’ve been given by the people who love me most, to hopefully help you get over, move past, or just build boundaries with the people who you can’t, at the moment, remove from your life.
In no particular order, the advice is as follows:
1. Actions speak louder than words, and sometimes lack of words are actions. And if you think they’re avoiding you, they probably are. (Thank you, dear friend, for voicing my absolute worst fear)
2. Stop choosing what isn’t choosing you. Do you really want someone who doesn’t want you?
3. Do you really like this person or are you just wanting the attention? (I am an attention wh*re!)
4. If you weren’t attracted to them, would you want to be friends with them? (Ha ha, no.)
5. Stop thinking about them. (My personal favourite, because it’s literally impossible)
6. If someone was treating me this way, would you tell me to keep them in my life, or would you tell me to block them and move on?” (This one always gets me, because every Goddamn time my answer is “Block.”)
7. “No offense, but you always choose people who treat you like this; at some point you’re going to have to address that.” (That hurt)
8. What is it about them that’s making you like them? They’re treating you like shit, so why are you obsessed?
9. Write a list of all their red flags and “icks” and read it every night before you go to sleep. (Best advice)
10. If you died right now, would they go to your funeral? (a friend genuinely asked me this about someone once, and I think it is the funniest yet weirdly most perfect bit of advice I have ever received)
11. Does your mum know you cry over men who cannot distinguish ‘their’ from ‘there’ from ‘they’re’? (Sorry, mum!)
12. If they don’t want something, it is 100% to do with them and not you. Stop making it about you. (Main character syndrome)
13. There are better fish in the sea (...but I like this fish!)
14. Remove them on Instagram right now. (Absolutely not). Give me your phone. (Runs).
Friends care, and sometimes they say exactly what you don’t want them to say because you don’t want to hear the truth. Sometimes the things they say are harsh, they hurt, and they make your stomach drop. But I am reading all the things I’ve written above (with a delightfully clear head), and I absolutely agree with every bit of advice. Even if, at the time, I thought it was dramatic and mean.
At the end of the day, we have to realise that, as corny as it sounds, if someone wanted you in their life, they would make sure you know it. They would not let you get away, just as you wouldn’t want to leave. They would message your back, organise their schedules to see you, and ask about your day. They would make you breakfast, walk you to your car, or pay for your Uber home. They would make you feel like the luckiest person alive because they want you to come back. It hurts to hear this when you’re suffering from unrequited feelings, but at the end of the day, by sticking around, you’re only hurting yourself.
So, whilst these tidbits may seem harsh, dramatic, or just direct, their end goal and my end goal, is to help you start to question the lovers in your life that aren’t meeting you in the middle. And remember:
15. You deserve way better, they’re not even that cute, and why is their Instagram so weird!?!?
Cover Photo by Sabrina Lim. Edited by Madison Case.