I Don't know

[Lawkheart]

I have this issue with everyone around me in real life.

I am constantly seeked out for advise with relationships. There is not one person I've met in real life who has gotten to know me after about a month and then suddenly ask me for relationship advice.

And I give out the best advice I can considering, I HAVE NEVER BEEN IN A RELATIONSHIP.
Yes, I have never dated anyone.

This doesn't mean I haven't fallen in 'love'. I say it like that because I was a teen and now, older, I don't believe it was actually in love.

I have had my first kiss, but it was a prank played on me and lets just say the guy got what he deserved by the hands of my friends with steal toed boots. Well, technically it was their feet but you get what I mean.

And I have confessed my feelings towards someone, but I've been rejected, in the most un-polite way possible, being ignored for two years and pretending like nothing happened afterwards. Which not only hurt, but pissed me the fuck off and I told that person how I felt and when they tried to come up with excuses I told them to, politely, fuck off.

Anyway, I see these experiences as pathetic. I'm not even sad for myself. I let these people effect me physically and emotionally and I let it hurt me more then I should have. And I see that as pathetic, in my own eyes, let alone to anyone else looking in.

So how is it that people still come to me for relationship advice when I'm pathetic in my own attempts?

 

[Jorick]

Y'know, the same thing happens to me, so maybe my own understanding of it will help you out as well.

For starters, I am also not well versed in relationships. The only relationships I've ever been in were a couple rather regrettable internet dating experiences, yet people turn to me for relationship advice all the time. At first I found this to be extremely strange, especially when people still wanted my advice even after I told them that I was experience challenged in this area. Even people I barely knew, acquaintances from school and such, would ask my advice about their relationship issues, and I just didn't understand it all through high school (which, funnily enough, was before I even had the internet dating experience).

The one day after pondering the oddity off and on for some years, when someone I barely knew in my college Chemistry class was asking me to help them with nomenclature stuff they didn't understand, I made what should have been an obvious connection from the start. It wasn't a matter of people coming to me specifically for relationship advice, it was a matter of people seeing me as a good source of advice and answers about stuff in general. I'm apparently a beacon for questioning minds for everything from science questions to help with school work to dispute resolution to relationship woes and so on. In school I was the guy everyone asked for help with understanding stuff the teacher didn't properly drill into their head, and the guy who everyone always looked to after the teacher asked a question and nobody else had an answer in the first few seconds. When people around me have a question about some random factoid of science or history or psychology or whatnot, they tend to ask me if I know the answer even if I've never displayed any knowledge on the subject. Whenever friends of mine got into a fight, I was almost always the one they looked to to help sort it out. The relationship advice seeking is just another facet of that, as far as I can tell.

I didn't quite get this either. I'm a pretty introverted person, especially around strangers and barely familiar acquaintances, but people seemed drawn to me when they had any kind of questions or need for advice. One time I had a guy I'd never spoken to before, a classmate in a college math class that I knew by sight (but not by name) because I'd seen him a few times a week for seven weeks at that point, ask me for advice on how to get out of having to go to his brother's funeral without pissing anyone off, because said brother had sexually abused him but he'd never told his family about it. You would think people would keep that kind of heavy shit to close and trusted friends, but nope, he decided to use that advice request as the first exchange of words between us.

That kind of thing tends to be confusing, so I started asking people (both friends and family types and these random folks who sought out my advice) why exactly people came to me with their questions. Getting other people's honest opinion of you can be a very strange experience, and so it was whenever I did this. I thought others would view me as a quiet loner type, maybe a bookworm or a nerd depending on where they knew me from, but generally not very sociable or approachable; this is because that's how I viewed myself then, and I expected everyone else to come to the same conclusion. Instead I got people telling me that I seemed very intelligent (okay, that one fits with the nerd/bookworm thing), trustworthy (my being quiet = I won't share secrets, I guess?), nice (probably because when I do have to interact with others IRL I'm polite about it so as to not inconvenience myself with butthurt idiots), and confident. People who knew me well said that I have a natural and unassuming charisma that draws people toward me and makes them feel comfortable around me, which at first I attributed to people misreading my arrogance but have come to accept as probably being as they said because I can't fathom any better reason for people I barely know to come to me for advice and trust me with all manner of sensitive secrets.

So, now that the self-absorbed storytelling is done, the answer I found could be applicable to you as well. Regardless of whatever you feel about your qualifications in the matter, people might see you as someone worth listening to. Could be you give off the smart and trustworthy vibes, could be you're super friendly and non-judgmental, could be you've got some kind of heretofore unacknowledged charismatic presence, could be something else entirely. Whatever the case may be, people see something in you that makes your actual lack of experience in relationships rather irrelevant. They see you in a very different way than you see yourself. They think you'd give good advice because of some facet of your personality, not because they think you're a relationship guru.

Take it as a compliment. People wouldn't be coming to you for advice if they thought you were some kind of asshole. If nothing I brought up sparked an epiphany for you, try the straightforward method of asking people why they decided to ask you instead of anyone else they could have chosen. It worked for me, at least.

 

[Lawkheart]

@Jorick

Then we are in a similar boat then. Because it's not just relationship advice people come to me for either. I've made most of my friends, save for maybe one or two, who I found either crying in a stairwell, in the hallway or on the bus's on the way to school. And every time I would just sit there with them and let them vent. I do this because of all the times I had been crying while at school and instead of having someone see me and sit with me and not leave me alone, I got made fun of or shoved around. I didn't want to do that, nor did I want to leave them alone, because of my experiences.

But I don't consider myself very smart. I read a lot and enjoy writing poetry and reading poetry and now I love writing in general. But while I was in school I wasn't top of the class and I didn't have all the answers. I was not an imbecile and I had common sense plus I studied for exams and such, but I didn't give off that "intelligent" vibe. But I did have random factoids from all of my reading. I knew such random facts that my friends would ask me to write a bunch of them down and they cut up the separate ideas and used them as a background for a project of theirs (I have very neat penmanship). I don't know if knowing how many licks to get to the center of a tootsie pop versus a blow pop or how many books there were in our school library or how to recite "Annabelle Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe from memory is considered intelligence.

I think I do have emotional experience, from life long struggles with depression, panic attacks, anxiety attacks and a constant severe migraine. I've had people ask me for help calming down someone who was suicidal or give consoling to my friend who had been sexually abused by her step father most of her childhood. I've even helped out someone who was having a seizure because they had epilepsy and the nurse didn't know to keep their head slightly elevated and keep their chest warm. I only learned that after reading a medical paper written by some doctor on the disease. I think I have smarts, but I don't give off the intelligent vibe, at least I don't think.

And I have asked the people who come to me for advice, but they just shrug and say I look like someone who wouldn't feed them bullshit, which I don't. Because I see things as black and white, there is no grey area in anything. It's either wrong or right, good or bad, stupid or smart.

This coming from a girl who spent most of her grammar, middle and high school keeping her mouth shut unless spoken to by a teacher, but I called people out on the things they did or said that was wrong, whether it be a teacher or a student. For example, there was a girl in my math class in high school who very rarely spoke and when she did she was very soft spoken. Our math teacher who was also the coach for team or whatever decided to slam his text book onto her desk and then yell in her face to answer a question. And she did after jumping in shock. I had had a very bad night with panic attacks and crying for most of the night and it was evident on my face. But when he did that I glared at him and he caught that. So he proceeded to poke fun at me, which wasn't very nice nor was it smart. He proceeded to say "Oh look Ms. "I'm gonna cut myself and cry all night" decided to pay attention," and that caused everyone to go quiet with shock because it was a rumor in my class that I cut myself, but everyone was too afraid to ask. And I remember this moment clearly even after 5 years. I remember closing my books and putting them into my backpack before, calmly standing up and looking at him. I then said "What of it? What if I cut myself all night and spent it crying? What would you do Mr. "So and So"? It's not like you'd do anything about it. I'm not one of your precious players. And another thing (I remember I slammed my book bag onto his desk with all my strength cause I was pissed off then) keep your fucking coach shit on the courts. We don't need your shit when we're trying to learn fucking math." And after I said all of that, I proceeded to leave, but he grabbed onto my arm and he could feel the bandages from when I had cut myself and he let go.

I then went upstairs to the principals office and told him everything that happened and the teacher was reprimanded and I got detention for cursing at a teacher, which I was fine with. And he did just like expected, even after confirming that I hurt myself, nothing. He did absolutely nothing about it. But after that, he stopped being an asshole to everyone and never asked me to answer any of the questions in class.

Story time over, I think I'll ask the next person why, exactly, they came to me for advice on whatever it is they are coming to me with questions about.

 

[Temet Nosce]

Yeah, pretty much Jorick said. You probably just give off a trustworthy vibe, which is a gift honestly.

To be terribly blunt however - I wouldn't ask people that come to you for advice why they did, because if they are mature and brave enough to ask you for help, you can be mature enough to not be an jerk about it.

Sometimes people go to strangers for advice because they have noone else to turn to. They don't need that to be thrown in their face if that is the case.

 

[White]

People look up to me quite often, they admire me and find me adorable. Then when I make a mistake they take it as if their picture of a god was crushed.

You are a person people trust. There are not many trustworthy people on this world, people to trust and rely on. In my entire social enviroment for the past 6 years I have only met a single person I view as trustworthy enough to build trust to.
So please... take pride in who you are. There are simply not enough of your kind on earth :(