“Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.” — Morticia Addams

00:07

Good evening and welcome to my humble podcast abode. I am Cocoa Griot 50 something who truly enjoys sharing my thoughts with you about life, love, and a heaping of other topics. Now being a woman of a certain age, I get a lot of calls regarding advice. I feel like since I've been on this planet for a minute, I should share wisdom if it can help someone avoid mistakes I've made. Lately, though, I've been feeling some type of way about people who ask for my help, but then do the exact opposite of what I encourage them to do. These people are lovingly known as askholes. They will ask for your advice, and then willingly not do what we advise them to do. Now you might be thinking, well, a person has a right to do what they choose. I'm the first to agree with that, but my issue is why ask if you do not intend to follow the advice? In my neck of the woods, we call that a colossal waste of time.! I'm going to share a few reasons why I'm not entertaining askholes any longer.

01:12

The first reason I'm no longer dealing with askholes is that I realized they will do nothing that is not going to confirm what they already want to hear, right? Hypothetical situation, but very plausible in the askhole realm. A friend comes to you wanting advice because her boyfriend cheated on her. He promises her he will never do it again and it was just a moment of weakness while the couple was going through a rough patch. You tell your friend Hey, a leopard does not change his spots. If he cheated on you once, he will do it again. And didn't he cheat on you with his last girlfriend?. That is how you guys ended up together. I think the best thing to do is break up with him. She looks at you with alligator tears in her eyes, and with all sincerity, she says yes, you're right. I'm going to break up with him tomorrow. You call her the next day because you are sure she is brokenhearted and sulking. Oh, no, she's not sulking. She is jubilant because he asked her to marry him, and she said yes. You gave your time and advice to someone who had no intention of doing what you recommended. She wanted to be in this relationship with the community dude. You know what I mean when I say that? No matter what he did to hurt her. We have to stop giving our energy and time to people who already know what they're going to do in a situation before they even ask us.

02:33

The second reason I'm no longer giving an audience to askholes is because not everyone has the courage to do hard things. Let's think through the scenario I posed about the girl marrying this Casanova. This is the prime setup for delayed heartache and disappointment. If a person has the courage to just deal with being down and taking the steps to get over a breakup, further heartache down the road can be avoided. I am definitely speaking from experience here. When I was involved with he who shall not be named, we split up several times. I had a friend who advised me to just have the courage to be done with it once and for all. I believe her exact words were when you get a belly full, you will stop. You better believe she was right. Was it hard when I made the decision to finally depart the Codependency Crazy Express? Yes. But my mental state stabilized as I worked through the pain.

03:28

The most compelling reason I am no longer giving askholes my time is because they subtly use you as a friend, and take you for granted. There's a pattern I recognized regarding the askholes in my life. I never hear from them when times are good. They don't talk to me about any positive news. The askholes breeze into my day, take an emotional dump and then leave. I will not hear from them again until the next crisis comes up that they want to ask me for advice for that they have no intention of taking. Let me repeat . The people already know what they are going to do. If your advice is different than what they want to do, they will zone you out and ignore your recommendations. Some askholes secretly enjoy ignoring your advice. It is like they are one-upping you by ignoring what you told them. This is not a healthy friendship. I believe the energies we interact with closely impact our own energy. Askholes are emotional vampires. If you want to learn more about emotional vampires, please visit season one of my podcast. I discuss emotional vampires in episodes two, and three.

04:41

Thanks for listening this evening and as always, I wish you good health, good fortune, and a goodnight. Cocoa Griot out!