[Mark Lapierre]

Oh hell yes.

And I think the reason is fairly simple. Giving advice is a mostly intellectual activity. I.e., you think about what someone else is asking, remember similar situations in your own life and how you dealt with them, or remember the advice you've read somewhere else. Then you share your knowledge. Some emotion is involved of course, but it's rarely at the same level as when you're in that situation. Emotions are integral to our ability to make decisions but they can also interfere. A lot. If you're at all like me (and it sounds as if you are) your thought processes are swayed by your emotional state a lot more than you realise (or would like to admit).

What I try to do is defer making any important decisions while in a highly emotional state. Combine this with talking it out with friends so that I can hear the advice I already know, but am prevented from thinking about because of my emotional state.

So for example, imagine I've been on a couple of dates with a girl and they seemed to go well, but she doesn't respond to my attempts at contacting her afterwards. In the past I probably would have got frustrated and said anything I could think of that would guarantee a response. Not surprisingly the response would be "not interested."

Now I'd do nothing until I could consider what I know about the situation, rather than what I fear. I'd talk to friends to see what they'd do, or what they'd like a guy to do in that situation. And only then would I realise that she's extremely busy (and because of that stressed and exhausted), has said she wants to take it slow, and at the moment may not want to talk to a guy who she wants to make a good impression on. Or that she's also seeing other guys and hasn't made a decision yet. Or she's simply not interested and for some reason doesn't want to say so. But in any case what I want and what I'm happy to give have already been made clear, so it's up to her, and trying to get her to respond when she's not ready to would only push her away. In the mean time I have a life to live.

That kind of thinking is impossible for me in the midst of the frustration I automatically feel when someone I'm emotionally connected to doesn't match my level of communication. Ironically I've been on the other side and that still doesn't prevent me from being swayed by my frustration.

I know that my body is using my past experiences of rejection to tell me that the same thing is happening again, so I try to acknowledge that message while allowing for the possibility that I'm wrong. I do that by not responding to the fear, and I do that by doing nothing (can be very difficult), or by talking it out with friends (always very easy, and productive. I love my friends).