Relationship Advice

From time to time my friends ask me for relationship advice.This is normally a mistake as I’m crap at relationships.I read in a womens’ magazine (I can’t imagine when, I’d like to think I was at the dentist but I haven’t been to the dentist) that the relationship advice that your friends gives you is likely to reflect their experience (no shit) so if a friend has had a cheating boyfriend they will interpret the behaviour of your boyfriend in the same light.Therefore all relationship advice is flawed

I did however once receive some good relationship advice.I went to see an astrologer with my (real) Dad.I had had my star chart done when I was 8 but it had accidentally been set in the wrong hemisphere and so was considered inaccurate.When I was 17 or 18 I had a serious boyfriend and the astrologer was (amongst other things) commenting on our compatibility.He said

No you are not compatible, but you are a very difficult person, you should not look for someone with whom you are compatible just someone who can tolerate you.

The astrologer wasn’t being particularly insightful he was a friend of my dads and so probably knew me by reputation, but I’ve considered it good advice all the same.Someone who can tolerate you is well worth finding.

As an interesting aside, the guy who did the reading lived in a van in a field in a community of benders (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bender_tent).The community had bought the land and the council had refused planning permission for sanitation.His relationship advice to himself was that is wife had the sort of personality that found these miserable conditions harsh and needed to be taken out and shown a good time occasionally*.He failed to follow this advice and she committed suicide.A couple of years later after drawing up his own star chart he too committed suicide and I’ve often wondered what was in the chart.

*I sometimes wonder about a man who needed a chart to tell him this.

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