Of all the possible types of advice a person can give to another, the process of giving relationship advice is the most time consuming—which is kind of weird, because most people usually only seek advice when they are on the verge of breaking up with their boyfriends or girlfriends. I mean, unless your friend is an attention whore, he won’t call you for advice after he gets into an argument with his girlfriend over how her recordings of “Millionaire Matchmaker” have taken up all the space in the DVR, because he knows that is way too trivial to bother anyone with. No, he’s going to call you up (and maybe Dr. Phil) after he sees his girlfriend on an episode of “Millionaire Matchmaker” trying to score a date with some pasty-ass pervert and his receding hairline, because that’s some f’d up sh*t. What your friend should be doing is shining the “Bat-Signal” into the sky, but he probably doesn’t have one so he’ll have to make do with talking to you.
A friend who calls you for advice already knows ahead of time that the only way to resolve his personal drama is to end the relationship. He also knows that’s what you are going to advise him to do. He’s just calling to make sure that’s the best solution, and not just some emotional decision he came up with after watching “Millionaire Matchmaker.”
I’m all for helping friends who are dealing with relationship drama, but my willingness is not unconditional. Specifically, when it comes to relationship advice, I limit my friends to one opportunity per relationship. That’s right: if you are seeing Person A, you get one chance to ask me for advice, and you won’t get another one until you start seeing Person B. I know that’s stingy but, as I said earlier, people only ask for advice when their relationships are pretty much over. What more advice could I possibly give you after I’ve said, “you need to breakup with him”?
The answer is “none,” and yet, I still have to deal with sh*t like this:
Hanging up on a friend in need may be harsh, but I don’t care. I hate giving relationship advice to someone I had already given advice to on a previous occasion. Actually, I hate giving out relationship advice, period, but I really, really, hate (think hate100) giving it to someone who is a Raggedy-Ass Relationship Advice Glutton, or Raggedy-Ass RAG.
A Raggedy-Ass RAG is someone who…who…okay, you know what? I’m going to honest here: I have spent the past three days trying to write a decent description of a Raggedy-Ass RAG, but I haven’t been able to come up with anything that was even remotely close to conveying how incredibly annoying these people are. They are the foulest beasts on the planet, and the only way I can explain them is by sharing with you one of my experiences in dealing with a member of their wretched kind.
I knew a Raggedy-Ass RAG who had been dating some douche bag she met while playing “Counter-Strike.” That was already a pretty crappy way to start a relationship, but it wasn’t enough of a red flag to make this girl realize he was a loser. She actually didn’t see anything wrong with him until he suddenly stopped answering her calls and canceled all the plans they’d made. His excuse was that he too busy working 20-hour days, seven days a week, to spend time with her—which was total crap because he worked for a company that collected recycled cans from those kiosks you see outside of supermarkets.
Clearly, this guy was cheating on her, and my Raggedy-Ass RAG friend knew it when she called me to get my opinion on how she should deal with a relationship that had made her increasingly unhappier.
It doesn’t matter whether your friend is male or female, young or old, gay or straight: all relationship-advice-conversations with a Raggedy-Ass RAG will follow a certain format. And let me tell you something: it is a testament to your patience if are able to survive having this conversation. It trumps standing in the non-appointment line at the DMV, going to a theme park on a weekend—I’m even willing to say it beats waiting for the “Breakfast Jack” you ordered at 10:00 p.m., which takes so long the drive-thru attendant sometimes tells me to park somewhere and wait (what’s up with that?). You must have super-human patience to withstand talking to a Raggedy-Ass RAG in need of relationship advice, or else you will find yourself beaten and broken in ten minutes.
For the first twenty to thirty minutes, the Raggedy-Ass RAG told me all the minute details of how she met her loser boyfriend—from the day they first noticed each other at the Internet Cafe to the present. This information was neither relevant nor particularly interesting, and I probably would have thrown myself over the balcony had I not been equipped with Balls of Titanium.
After the Raggedy-Ass RAG had finished with her introductory story, she spent the following two hours telling me every single problem she had with her boyfriend, repeating the ones she found most irritating two or three times. And I, in turn, responded with supportive comments and sympathy. Luckily, this wasn’t a situation where I had to pretend to feel sorry for her because she was complaining about stupid things, e.g. she hated the way he arranged his toiletries. A lot of the stories this girl told me were ones no one would want to experience in any relationship.
Once I got past the first two and a half hours, I spent the next hour giving her the only piece of advice there was: “you need to dump him.” After listening to her vent about her boyfriend for two and a half hours, do you think there was anything else I could suggest besides that? Hell no.
Okay, the act of telling this Raggedy-Ass RAG “you need to dump him” only took a few seconds—so why did I say I spent an hour? Because the fun part took that long…and by “fun part,” I mean “annoying part”…and by “annoying part,” I mean “the part of a relationship-advice-conversation that I hate most.” This is the reason why I limit my friends to one chance for advice per relationship—it’s because I cannot stand this thing a Raggedy-Ass RAG will do immediately after being told she should end her relationship. The moment I gave her the advice, this Raggedy-Ass RAG responded with, “but, he’s…” and started telling me all the things she felt made him the best boyfriend in the world. That’s right: after telling me why her boyfriend makes her unbearably miserable, after she had spent hours describing specific instances where her boyfriend had done something that made her resent their relationship, after she had practically written a script for me and my only line was, “you need to dump him,” she was now trying to come up with reasons why my advice was wrong. Dumping him was not an option, not even when I repeated verbatim every complaint she had made about her boyfriend. She insisted she was 100% sure he was really working 20-hours a day, and that whatever unhappiness she was feeling was because of her period.
I see, so you just took up three and a half hours of my time to figure out that you were only miserable because you, a Raggedy-Ass RAG, were on the rag? Eat a dick!
A few days later, the Raggedy-Ass RAG called me because she was suspicious that her boyfriend was lying about his work hours, and wanted relationship advice. She went through the typical relationship-advice-conversation format, and told me the exact same stories about her boyfriend; I told her “you need to dump him,” and she told me my advice was wrong. After that, I stopped answering my phone whenever she called.
Great, now I am irritated after remembering how annoying that girl was. Who else has a story about talking to a Raggedy-Ass RAG? I know all of you have at least one! I want to hear it!
absolutangel64 
great post. gotta rec. 😉
I think the Raggedy Ass RAG applies to a lot of people seeking advice but not wanting it…it mostly deals with denial…I think I may in fact BE one of these people, because I will ask my friends for advice from time to time but I won’t take it, most of the time because I feel that I have not explained the “whole” situation, so I just don’t talk about it anymore. Plus relationship advice I have found really isn’t that good most of the time because your friends don’t really know your relationship
You don’t want to hear it. I have a friend that has a boyfriend that uses her debit cards to buy his friends drinks doesn’t get her even a card on valentines, won’t return her texts etc. Even when it’s not him, she dates total losers that I won’t even go all the way into. At that point, I tell her that I go on “strike” and pretty much don’t want to hear shit like that. I think your approach is good because if we dont’ do this, we just become “enablers” to such shitty relationships. Good post.
do i have stories about this? yeps. do i feel like telling them? nopes.but i hear you. people goto you b/c they want advice and validation. some people can’t make decisions on their own so they look to others to help them w/ decisions. after you tell them to dump that person and they don’t do it, you just roll your eyes. then when they finally do it, these people act like it was their original idea all along, and you just roll your eyes in further to the back of your skull.
I can relate all too well. Ugh. It’s the same shit over and over again. I know I’m not being listened to, so I finally told her, “Look Bitch, I told you to dump his ass! Do it and fuck off already. Or just fuck off.” OK, I really didn’t say that. Girls are sensitive for some reason. I really said, “Look, you keep coming to me for advice, but I obviously can’t give you the advice you need. Maybe you should find someone else to talk to.” It did the trick. Even without swearing.
Ugh, why would she ask for advice if she wasn’t going to take it into account?
I’ve had a Raggedy Ass RAG in my life. After weeks of listening to her complaints about her ex-fiance whom she broke up with, then decided to give another chance, I had to put my foot down. It was driving me crazy. Just like you, I spent hours listening to her complaints, agreeing, sympathizing, and finally giving my advice to dump him and move on. Amazingly, she’d agree and start talking about how she was going to build a new life for herself, that she deserved better than he was giving her, etc, etc. I’d get off the phone feeling all was settled. But wouldn’t you know it, not 24 hours would pass before she’d be calling me again, telling me she was confused and didn’t know what to do!!! What?!! Hello, didn’t we just talk and didn’t you just say you were going to put an end to the relationship and move on? Was I dreaming?? Just about drove me insane. I had to yell at her. Now I am free from her relationship drama. She’s still complaining, but no longer to me. She’s someone else’s Raggedy Ass RAG now. HA!
no phone a friend?
Haha, I’m the same way when people ask me for advice. Especially when they don’t listen to my advice? They’re on their own until they’re with someone else, hehe.
I’ve never been a Raggedy-Ass RAG… /shifty eyes
LOL!! As usual your posts are HALARIOUS!!!!!! I have not been a R-A RAG, nor do I know any. THANK GOD!!!!
SERIOUSLY. when i talk to my friends about it, i don’t call it relationship advice. it starts with me saying “i think i’m gonna break up with my boyfriend” and ends with “so unless you tell me i’m being crazy and overreacting, i’m gonna break up with him.” and if they say “no, go for it”, then i break up with him.cut and dry.
I only get annoyed when the person is asking advice about a dumb relationship situation (which is usually).
The worst are the ones that haven’t acted yet. My friend executed brilliant fail after blatantly defying my advice not to pursue a certain girl. It also came after legit advice from several people on how *not* to talk to girls.”Wouldn’t it be weird if two people who weren’t going out went out some time?”…..yeah. Then he gets pissed when I say, “Let this be a lesson to you”.
I don’t talk to people, only machines. Iterating through a programmed loop 1000 times with 1000 lines of code in it is way less frustrating than iterating through 1 raggedy-ass RAG speech.
1. sooooo much emotion in your illustrations today!! lol awesome.2. ..and i quote, “I see, so you just took up threeand a half hours of my time to figure out that you were only miserablebecause you, a Raggedy-Ass RAG, were on the rag? Eat a dick!”hahahahahhahah perfect set up.. and you never.. EVER let me forget why I heart your face off.loves it.
Hahaha… hilarious post. Yeesh… I can’t stand people that want advice but never take it. Just say no to Raggedy-Ass RAGs!!!
oh my gosh, we totally have the same phone!
I hope they burn in a.. a… blazing fireball of furious… And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious angerthose who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you willknow my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee! buk! buk! buk!
Hahaha! Girls are annoying most of the time and they’re even more annoying when they’re dating losers.
Good post! My friend is quite a RA RAG (although I’d like to assume all girls share that quality). Already having a long-distance boyfriend, she recently met a new guy and went out with him on 4 informal dates within a week (plus nitty-gritty details of course). Today he told her that he likes her. She asked me whether “from a guy’s perspective” his words were likely to be true. After several times of me saying ‘totally true’ and her giving me reasons why ‘it can’t be true’, I told her that I was flexible in that I could either give her the answer she wants to hear, or my answer to her question. This is just the beginning of another cycle. We sort of do this for every phase of her relationships. How fun.
Can I just say..I felt like I wrote this post. I know the exact feeling, the conversation, the crying, the advice and then…but I LOVE him!! Aghhhh! It kind of makes me want to eat broken glass.
after a few years of being single, my friend started seeing a guy.she wasnt attracted to him, but liked the attention.i, and many other friends, told her not to like him for the wrong reasons.but she did.so now shes in a relationship that causes her to be more insecure than EVAR and complains about the relationship every time i see her.the one time i told her to break up with him,she flipped out and said i was a bad friend for not wanting her to be happy.oh dear. -___-
the best advice is left by mother.
OMG that always happens to me. people always ask me what to do and when i give my advice, then they go on and on, saying “yea but…” & then its like why do you ask for my advice if you’re not going to listen?and then there are the ones that always make the same mistakes in their relationship and come to you for advice for the same damn situation over and over again. like if you hook up with a douchey guy who ignores you and you don’t know what to do, stop hooking up with the damn douchey guys! ugh. i hate it. i generally just stop being friends with people like that. its only a few people that i’m willing to stick by and give the same advice to over and over again.
My two really good friends have been together since December. I absolutely thought they would last super long. But they start fighting. And she cheats on him. I’ve known him for years, and we’d been close since the beginning of the year, and I knew her since January of last year. He always went to me and told me the little details, and recently (I mean like this morning) he says that she told him she loves him and can’t live without him. We just did relationships in health, and that there is a RED FLAG for abuse! UGHHH! And he won’t listen to me.
My little freshman, oh she is a Raggedy Ass RAG, but I still love her. She just needs to get a real boyfriend to understand things.
uuuuhh the end of a relationship is definitely not the only time when advice is sought. jeez.
I can totally relate to this post. The same people constantly hassle me for relationship advice….then come back to me crying after they listened to someone else…and got their heart broken. G’damn losers. Don’t tell me “I need to talk to you..because you give great advice…” and then never follow the advice I give you! GAHI don’t call them Raggety ass RAGs though…I just call them morons. It’s shorter and requires less mental effort on my part.
Raggedy-Ass RAG is a really amazing description for the person you described…I commend you for having balls of titanium to deal with that person’s bullshit….I know I wouldn’t have..lolActually, now that I think of it…I knew a Raggedy-Assed RAG…*sighs* Maybe we should give them their own little community so none of us have to deal with their bullshit XD
I’ve been telling my friend to leave this girl alone for months, but he won’t listen and just keeps getting depressed over her. Its very frustrating.
Lol I loved the illustrations. I think you mentioned a very good point.
I had this friend that ALWAYS called me up crying about what problems her and her boyfriend had. Everytime I would sit and listen to her talk and cry for hours and give her the same advice everytime: BREAK UP WITH HIMShe never listened and sure enough every week she called at least once crying again. What sucked the most though was that she never realized the right guy for her was me…I finally told her that if she wasn’t going to take my advice then she needn’t call me to ask for it.A year later: She doesn’t call anymore. She’s still with that guy. They still have problems.Jeeze can I say I told you so?
I am, indeed, a RAG. I feel bad for my friend now and in all seriousness, I’m going to try and stop now. Thanks for the post.
haha, great and funny post
LMFAO oh yes I know this, mine was a guy!! He loooooooooooved his gf but she was constantly ditching him never phoning him blowing him off all the time. I just said you gotta dump her man. Then he’d actually go okay I’ll give her a week cause I love her to change her ways. Then this was repeated two weeks later. For about 4 months 8D
I always tell people that they have a relationship that I dont understand. Done.
Oh dear. Sometimes, you just need to refer them to their mother. Or another friend willing to listen to them ramble on and on and on.
Hahaha. Thats why I have more than one friend to bitch too. 🙂
I can relate. A certain friend of mine has a tendency to be the dog that returns to its proverbial vomit. And she always asks for my advice.
omg i totally understand what you going through. I just don’t get some people.. and by that I mean Raggedy-Ass Rags. lol It is so annoyyying OMG. I love your illustration, if only I have the guts to do that to my friends.. >.< lol I’ll just feel too bad.
Aughhhh. I don’t even give my friends advice anymore. I’m happy to say that, after me giving them the cold shoulder when it came to relationship advice, they’ve finally quit asking me. I have absolutely no patience, because all of my friends go through the same things over and over. Repeatedly. They’re all the same.The last one I dealt with was a guy who thought that when a girl dumped him, it was her fault. Somehow or another she was the one who was messed up. He thought this with over twenty failed relationships. All of which lasted only a few days. I told him my advice, he actually agreed with it, but he never actually tried to fix anything. When people come to someone for advice, they’re just wanting an opinion, sure. But damn, they already know it anyway.
You know, I feel you on this post. I really gotta try the hang-up move.
Raggedy-Ass RAG nice term. glad to be a guy right now
HAHA! I HATE THAT, I’m always the one giving advice to my clingy girl friends, and now that I’ve read your post it has changed my perception on giving advice to them.I think it’s stupid how your friend just assumed that her period was the problem. Totally not, her boyfriend is a definition of a bad boyfriend and she won’t realize it until something bad really happens. I can relate to you -_- It’s funny how she just changed her view after you told her one sentence.Man, why ask for advice when you can’t even take it into consideration?
This is my constant worry. They tell you there is a problem when you can’t help them anymore. It’s discouraging really.
hahaha. i used to be raggedy-ass-rag, but i’ve been called out on it several times and am now trying to change my raggedy-ass-rag ways 😛
I wish I could give you 3 eProps for this. I was the ear for two of my best friends, and they were going out with each other!!! How do you tell two friends to break up?! Despite how bad they were for each other, the reason to always be together was “BUT I LOVE HIM/HER” …. It really makes me hope I never ever fall in love (or use the word they way they do). The logic behind it eludes me.
The friend calls to talk about her relationship.The friend knows that her boyfriend treats her bad.I drop the “you need to break up with him” line.The friend complains more about him.The conversation ends.Next time the friend calls complaining again.The friend never took my advice. I would have to listen to it over and over again, but I eventually began to multitask to save some time.
Too true. No matter who you are and what relationships you’ve been in – tho things may be similar in certain ways – they’re far from being the same. Giving advice is just that. Advice. To be given when you feel you want to, and to be taken with a pinch of salt.. always.