by Delano Squires
A few people have asked me a question in recent months that I believe is worth addressing here today. Although articulated in different ways each time, it’s the same question that I’ve heard countless women ask about Steve Harvey, given his new role as relationship guru: “Why should anyone listen to anything you have to say about love, dating, or relationships?”
It is a totally legitimate question, not just for me but for anyone who is in the business of giving advice or presents themselves as an expert in some area.
An evaluation of advice or expertise typically starts with two things: the messenger and the message. We usually feel safe accepting the counsel of others when they have verifiable credentials (e.g. degrees or certifications) or extensive and tangible experience in a particular field.
Sometimes we take advice from people in one area even when their formal training is in an entirely different area. For example, both Boyce Watkins and John McWhorter are often called upon by major media outlets to discuss matters of race although their PhDs are in finance and linguistics, respectively. While I believe teachability is an important character trait, even the advice of “experts” should be examined carefully.
For instance, at one point in our country’s history legal experts held that black people were viewed as inferior by the framers of the Constitution and therefore had “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” My point here is simple: experts are capable of making mistakes, giving flawed advice, and exercising poor judgement, even with a great deal of training and experience.
This does not invalidate the usefulness of their expertise in a particular area. It simply means that they are much like us, trying to make sense of a world with so many questions and so few clear-cut answers, all the while reconciling new information with long-held beliefs, opinions, and biases.
In addition to the message and the messenger, it is also important to evaluate a person’s motives and methods. My motive for writing is simple: to provide content that helps people improve their relationships. We all value relationships, whether romantic or otherwise, but the amount of effort we put into making them successful is rarely in direct proportion to their importance in our lives.
We often put more tangible investment into our education, careers, and social networks than we do our love relationships. Therefore, my aim as a writer is to ask questions and start conversations about topics that affect relationships (e.g. intimacy, faith, fidelity), with the hope being that more effective actions will result from additional knowledge.
As I wrote in a previous column, the pain of past experiences often limits a person’s ability to give objective relationship advice. This is why a person’s methods for forming opinions is just as important as his/her motives. Sometimes our loved ones have great intentions but their inability to let go of their own hurt means that the words they speak with nourishing intentions often end up having poisonous results.
Personally, I strive to ensure any major relationship advice that I give is biblically based. While I believe that the principles and insight I share are also applicable to non-Christians, what makes this ancient text so powerful is that it often upends conventional wisdom about the world in which we live. For example, modern conceptions of love focus on feelings, both physical and emotional, that wax and wane throughout the life of a relationship. The Bible (1Cor 13:4-8), however, captures the essence of love this way:
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”
This is certainly a much different perspective of love than we are used to hearing in our everyday lives. In addition to the foundation I described above, I, like many people, attempt to learn from my own personal experiences, as well as those of others close to me. I do so cautiously, however, because relying too heavily on personal anecdotes can also lead to bad advice. Personal experiences are helpful when attempting to make sense of our own lives, but we should all be very careful not to make sweeping generalizations about entire groups of people based solely on our limited relationship histories.
Finally, the last tool in my toolkit is my background in public policy. While we all experience our relationships on a personal level, there are benefits that are reaped by children, families, and communities when people build strong relationships and marriages, and often dire consequences when they don’t. Just think of how many people you know who would characterize themselves as successful because of their family and upbringing, as opposed to those who would say their success is in spite of their personal history. An understanding of how our private relationship decisions often have public effects (e.g. social welfare spending, juvenile incarceration, teen pregnancy) has proven useful during my time writing for BMWK.
I hope this post will be a helpful tool as you evaluate advice, particularly on relationships, that you receive on this site and from other sources. The “4M” approach (messenger, message, motive, and methods) that I described has been useful in my life, but ultimately it’s up to you to decide what to do with the advice you receive. I recommend treating relationship advice the same way you treat your emails. Flag some senders automatically as spam. For sources that you trust, read the messages and save them if they are useful, and send those that are not to their rightful resting place”“the trash folder.
BMWK, how do you evaluate the advice you receive about relationships and other important topics? Who is your most reliable source of advice? What is the worst relationship advice you’ve ever received?
Delano Squires is currently a graduate student in Social Policy at the George Washington University. His interests are contemporary African American culture and fatherhood, families, and child development. Follow him on Twitter @Mr_Squires.