People often give advice when they don’t know how to act themselves. Teenagers are usually the worst culprits, repeating words of wisdom they believe are true, but that’s actually toxic.
Bad Advice To Give to a Friend
Discover some of the worst advice girls give to their female friends without knowing how bad it is.
It’s time to stop perpetuating this bad advice!
Flirt with His Friends
To keep a man’s attention, flirt with his friends! This horrible advice makes the situation worse for everyone involved. If you really like someone, why would you flirt with others? It destroys trust before it’s even built.
Telling Him You’re Seeing Someone
Young girls think men like competition, so they tell each other to pretend they’re dating others to get the guy they really want interested. Some toxic men may enjoy the chase, but why would you want to be with someone like that long term?
Ignore Him
Men want to chase, so women must pretend they aren’t interested in giving him something to chase.
A good guy will respect your boundaries when you tell him no, leaving women who take this bad advice to heart confused.
Don’t Respond Immediately
We tell people they seem desperate if they respond immediately to texts and phone calls, but it shows that you care and are engaged in what they say. Someone is who really interested won’t care that you responded five minutes later rather than the next day. In fact, they’ll be thrilled!
Analyzing Everything
Young women gather to analyze every interaction and find meaning behind the most mundane texts. Most of it doesn’t mean anything, and if something is really confusing, you should ask him rather than the counsel of ladies.
He’s Just Scared
Women will convince each other to wait around for guys who are clearly stringing them along by saying he’s just scared or avoidant. The better advice is he’s just not that interested. Move along.
Test Him
Girlfriends will go all out to determine whether he’s a cheater, but purposefully setting him up to see if he will cheat with one of your friends is extremely toxic behavior.
Play Hard To Get
The other person can’t tell whether you’re playing or disinterested when you play hard to get. A good person will move on, and a toxic person will try to “get you.”
Make It Even
If someone cheats, you should just break up. There’s no reason to stoop to their level in a never-ending race to the bottom to “make it even.”
It’s YOUR Day
People always build up the bride on her special day, ignoring that it’s the groom’s day, too. Stop convincing your girlfriends that their soon-to-be husband doesn’t matter on his wedding day.
You’re Perfect
Women love to build each other up, but sometimes, they try so hard to protect each other’s feelings that they refuse to tell the truth. We need our friends to tell us when we messed up so we can fix it.
Women should tell their friends when they’re wrong and help them improve for next time. Pretending that she’s a model of perfection when she’s not breeds toxicity.
Forcing Beauty Standards
Women get too caught up in current beauty fads, and they’ll tell their friends they must do this or that to “look better.” Instead, we should celebrate our friends’ natural beauty.
Be What He Wants
You should never change yourself for a man, but all too many women think the key to a man’s heart is morphing into what he wants. Girls will drop their own hobbies and interests for a man and become a shell of themselves with no personality outside of him.
The bad advice hinders women, who stop pursuing their own dreams to try to fit into his box. A relationship built on falsehoods will never work.
He’s Mean Because He Likes You
Everyone tells young girls that young boys are mean because “they like you.” The idea that boys (and then men) show affection through anger and violence needs to end.
The bad advice leads women to correlate pain with love, anger with care, and abuse with relationships. Stop telling your friends he’s mean because he likes you, and stop accepting bullying behavior as “flirting.” We collectively need to stop enabling it.
Love is Enough
Women tell their friends that love conquers all. They tell her that if she truly loves him, she should stick it out and help him be better.
Don’t give up on him, they’ll say, as her relationship gets worse and worse. Love isn’t enough. Stop giving your girlfriends the bad advice that it is.
Is Your Relationship Toxic?
Check the warning signs and find out if you’re in a toxic relationship.