Why Do People Ask For Advice Then Get Mad When You Give It?

[lindatucker]

  Everytime I go on facebook there is always somebody asking me for advice on things like oral hygiene, family problems what foods are good for them to eat to help them lose weight. But everytime I tell them what is best for them to do they tend to get mad at me. Then I wonder why did they ask me for the advice in the first place. My husband is also one of they people. He's always telling me that he needs to lose weight especially from his stomach. He's always telling me that he's going need my help. But whenever I tell him not to put a lot of food on his plate or go back for seconds he always says, "don't worry about it I know what I'm doing. Whenever we go grocery shopping together we always get into an argument because he's always buying unhealthy snack foods like potato chips and fruit drinks instead fruit juices. Because I am always telling his that fruit drinks have too much sugar in them. The same thing happens when we go to the restaurant he always order ribs or fried chicken. Then I say you shouldn't order that because remember you said you wanted to lose weight. He always says don't worry about it. So now I don't say anything because he's not going to listen to me anyway.

[Abrupt]

First off be certain that someone is actually asking for advice and not just speaking to themselves with their statements/questions.  This is often difficult to tell though unless you know the person.

I know the sort that you speak of when talking about those that get mad when you give them serious advice to their questions.  What happens is that the advice you have given them is not the advice they wanted to hear and one can only conclude they are not in a position to take advice.  I tend to dismiss those types readily -- or if I interact with them frequently I will no longer give them advice.

Regarding your husband and speaking as a man myself I might suggest you put him in a situation of conquering and not surrendering.  As you probably know the male mentality is to conquer.  Him eating less food or eating wiser choices of food likely invokes his image of surrendering.  A better choice would be for him to work off his calories via cardio or some sort of exercise like squats or dead lifts that affect metabolism.  These will have to necessarily be challenging (can be progressively so though) to invoke the desired effect.  How to 'lead' him to making such a decision on his own though is the tricky part.

See I just gave advice and you didn't even ask for it.  You could simply be venting for all I know yet my response was to advise.

[mardukblood2009]

That's a good question. My dad is like that and than Him and I always get into fight afterwords. What a waste of energy and time.