I don’t want people to suffer, but I love reading about their struggles

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by other people’s problems. It’s not that I want people to suffer but if someone is having an issue, I am curious to hear it. Challenges are what make people interesting to me. I can learn about a person’s hobbies, I can learn about their family, I can learn about their work, but it’s only when I learn what they struggle with that I get an insight into who they really are.

It’s probably no surprise, then, that I love a good advice column. I can lose an hour browsing through advice-needed letters, picking out my favourites and mulling over the responses. I like marital dramas and workplace horror stories, I am riveted by friendship breakdowns and mother-in-law clashes, and I enjoy tales of forbidden love most of all.

Advice columns give us a powerful insight into the challenges of human relationships. People find endless ways to hurt each other, and love doesn’t guarantee harmony or calm. “My husband told his mother a secret I told him about my brother’s ex-wife’s affair with her gym instructor,” a person will write. Or “Help! My best friend wants to bring her horrible boyfriend to my wedding!“

But when you read enough advice columns, you see variations on the same few themes play out over again. Letter writers are disappointed by other people, and are baffled at their behaviours. They experience conflict with their family members, and discord with friends. They feel worried about troubled loved ones, and are confused at how to proceed.

Oh! And they feel enormous anxiety about weddings.

Answering the anguished letters are a diverse group of columnists, some of whom resonate with me more than others. Back when I was a kid, advice columns were attached to magazines, and columnists like Dolly Doctor and Dear Abby attracted a cult following. These days, pretty much every media platform has its own advice column or podcast, with 20-somethings riffing off their life experience, older “experts” offering professional opinions and celebrities breezily dishing out advice with no qualifications.

Of course, none of the advice columnists are anything like an actual therapist. A therapist listens, says little, and tries to help their client to figure out a solution to a problem on their own. But this would make for a dull column. The non-therapist writers are tremendously entertaining. Some of them are quite startlingly directive, dispensing life-altering advice in just a few commanding sentences.

Their literary answers are less like guidance and more like mini memoirs, meandering through thousands of words of exposition.

KERRI SACKVILLE

“This person is not your friend,” they will write. “Do not see her again.” Or “Dump him already!” Or “Your sister wants to come to stay with you? This is exactly what you should say.“

Others are much gentler and much more circuitous, offering up their own personal disclosures as a point of connection. Their literary answers are less like guidance and more like mini memoirs, meandering through thousands of words of exposition in order to get to the actual advice.

“Oh, darling heart!” they will begin, before explaining that the writer has reminded them of that time they were living in Spain in a freezing flat above a pastry shop after a break-up with a man with red hair. I have read columns that are beautiful and insightful and inspirational (some of the Dear Sugar responses are among the best writing I have ever read). I am often left awed by the insight of the columnist.

Still, much of the advice is innocuous at best, and alarmingly bad at worst. I’ve read letters that subtly blame the victim, or miss important nuances, or suggest drastic solutions before exploring other options. I have yelled “Nooooo!” at my computer screen more than once, and hoped the person seeking advice will, too.

I’m aware, though, that advice letters leave me with more questions than answers, and that the perspectives of the other players are always missing. Over the years, advice columns have taught me that we can learn and grow as individuals, but we don’t seem to learn from the mistakes of our predecessors. There are enough advice columns and books to cover every problem under the sun, yet we keep stumbling around in the dark. Life will continue to throw up problems for each new generation. Happily, they do make for some truly compelling reading.

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