Centorior`

(present continuous form of the fictional verb wisenise, “to make others wiser.”)

Assuming good intentions, we often like to offer our valuable advice based on personal experience (or wild imaginations) to the people around us, probably because it will, in our own opinion, make life easier for them. But looking up “unsolicited advice” and it won’t take you long to learn how many instead see it as a form of arrogance or superiority instead.

Reality, however, is that advice is always useless and pointless if it’s not taken on board. This is a category that unsolicited advice, including ‘mansplaining’ in popular culture, often fall into.

Here, unsolicited advice is defined as any type of advice, including suggestions with or without probing questions, that the receiver did not ask for.

Over the years, I have formed an anecdotal view that people with vague or poor social or personal boundaries may be more likely to find the concept of unsolicited advice difficult to accept, or simply overruled with the thought that it is right to always interfere in other people’s lives if they’re ‘wrong’ or not going about things in an ‘approved’ way.

Regrettably, this act of advice giving often is what degrades or ends friendships or valued connections.

We must comprehend that consent is necessary for advice to be offered and received.

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Over time, I’ve worked out a mini social algorithm around when to give advice, or under what (exceptional) situations are unsolicited advice warranted.

Firstly, ask yourself, did the person come to you specifically for advice, i.e. they used a question asking for your valuable thoughts. If so, brilliant, still, don’t offer your first thoughts of advice straight away. Rather:

use probing questions to get a bigger picture of what’s going on and why advice may be needed

use more probing questions to gather what has the person explored already, including potential solutions - it’s always better if the person is able to come up with solutions themselves, or you taking a more passive role in helping to form a joint solution

If needed, clarify what type of advice it is that they want

Only then, do you offer your thoughts in a kind manner, and remember to be humble, that we do not truly share the person’s lived experience. If it’s not explicitly clear if they’re wanting advice or not, it never hurts to ask “would you like some thoughts about this” before babbling on. If you care enough, ask the person if they mind you checking in again with them at a later date.

Treat each time someone consent to receiving advice as a single-use ticket. Even in future check-ins, do not automatically offer any advice.

The rare exception to the above is when you strongly feel that without your intervention, that the person / other people around them / you will likely fall into physical danger. It’s a bit more fluid if the risk involved is psychological instead, so you’ll need to use your own judgement.

Often, people are only looking for somewhere to vent, feel seen, or validated. Unsolicited advice helps with none of those, and likely instead cause adverse effects. Demonstrate active listening skills, ask probing questions without any suggestions, and adopt a reflective or paraphrasing approach instead.

In many circumstances, apply the golden rule that no matter how valuable, magnificent, or “life changing” you feel about your advice, keep it to yourself! 

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Resources:

Personal experience within Swing Dancing communities (circa. 2018-2020)

How to tame your Advice Monster, TEDx by Michael Bungay Stanier (https://youtu.be/Kl0rmx7aa0w)

The Arrogance of Unsolicited Advice, Janani Srikanth via Medium (https://medium.com/@jananisrikanth/the-arrogance-of-unsolicited-advice-d889bc6c7346)

Reddit discussion:

For years, I have been having probably paranoid thoughts that I have a look alike who not only dances Lindy Hop, but engage in questionable behaviours mostly in midlands and south of England.

I have no proof of any of this apart from suspicions risen from here and there that I can't openly discuss, and because of social anxiety and awareness of paranoid traits it simply wasn't something I was in a position to address. Afterall, a look-alike the other side of the world that also dances Lindy Hop in the same country!? Insane, no?

That was until new year's eve of 2025, going into 2026, at the event that I went to in Bristol. I saw him for a few seconds, we both had facial hair, and he looked 80 to 90% like me, perhaps an inch or two taller.

And suddenly, thoughts of why some women I've never met before in the dance scene gives me looks of disgust, but not to other ethnic minorities, kind of made sense. Actually, I am not sure if it's supposed to make sense.

(Written based on advice from my counsellor. Somehow it’s a(n unhealthy) pleasant thought to send it to you, that you might read it, but I am keeping myself grounded by not doing that. I remembered that I had already burnt the connection we had to the ground.)

Are you keeping well? I apologise again about the way I reacted to things coming to an end. It was so much of a shock to me and I got really confused, the hint of naivety didn’t help either. Naturally, I wish I handled it differently. But hindsight is wonderful etc. and I can’t turn back time.

Dancing in London over the May bank holiday weekend, I realised on Sunday evening that I should've been more mature and asked if I could learn to be friends with you, after some space between us. Your busy schedule might've still kept you from using any of the tickets I bought you anyway, but there was no rule that said we couldn’t have attended the events together. We could have still gone and done some Tango classes together, as friends.

Though re-reading the last message you sent me, and my last couple messages to you, I re-remembered I had burnt everything to the ground with the way I reacted. (My memory hasn't been good of late). The last few days I have been thinking about shamelessly asking if I could learn to be friends with you, rationally at first I recognised it wasn’t very healthy to do so, and what would being friends with you actually look like? Would we have actually been doing anything together, as friends? With more thoughts, I feel like that’s just another fantasy spiraling.

I have to accept I still think about messaging you next month asking if I could learn to be friends with you. But haven’t you already blocked me everywhere? Have I not already destroyed that opportunity?

Despite a decline in my mental health with lots of downs and not downs, I have been working on my refreshed goals. My diet is healthier, and I have been working on my exterior. Still, I struggle not to kick myself, because it didn’t take a week to work out how to deal with the snoring, not even a month and my gut problem was already alleviating, and the bedroom thing, I have since realised it’s probably because I’ve been stuffing far too many mints because of my neck and throat problem - I am seeing the GP about it soon.

I still feel quite ashamed that it took you ending things with me for me to actually start looking after myself, rather than being half hearted at it.

In the background, I think my subconscious has been building some self-awareness so I can learn about how to be a better communicator for future reference, for another time when someone I like likes me back. I think this may have been fueling thoughts of self-destruction, as I can’t fathom how inadequate I was when you gave me a chance to get to know you.

Even with all that, I do think I have accepted whatever we had was over. I take the positives that someone I like might like me back, and I should keep working on myself. 

My best wishes to you,

[Space] [Signed]

P.S. Here are some photos from Downtown Jazz Jam featuring Jamboree.

(Disclaimer: My brain kept saying I liked “everything about her” but I am mindful we were still at a stage learning about each other. The actual truth was that I liked everything she showed me until shooting me down.)

I still feel ashamed that when someone who was probably the right woman came along, I had made so much progress but still wasn’t quite the person I’d like to be. I couldn’t stop myself from saying the three words put together, despite knowing the convention, put a mental filter in, AND had an alternative choice of words in my head at the time. To me, in that moment it was just easier to say the three words together. But it was only 3 weeks in, so to her, alarm bells were ringing instead.

I have probably made other mistakes as well, but I won’t put myself into overthink mode again. It’s over, she’s gone, and I burnt anything left into the ground.

I am grateful that she felt able to invest emotionally in the earlier days, it’s just sad that anxiety started creeping in and slowly I was shifting into ‘safe mode’. I didn’t want to lose what we were building, and so instead, we did.

I was hoping to keep working on being more natural, and find ways to communicate better. 

More than a week on, Sunday evening, I was finally able to see much more focus on the positives, the biggest being that based on experience, at least 1% of the women my type do find me attractive, without counting the great artist from years ago. That’s a >100% increase. Haha.

No longer am I some loser that woman my type never sees anything in.

I am going to stick to my self-improvement plan and be a better version of me. Progress was tiny but visible today, I just need to keep it going.

I was devastated, confused, and heartbroken, but Wednesday evening after consulting friends I realised my mistakes and it brought me some peace. I am grateful they exist and didn’t hesitate to share their thoughts with me.

So here are some lessons learnt:

Don’t say “I love you” if you feel, even just slightly, that she might not be ready to hear it, no matter how excited you feel at the time. It will be a major turn-off and raise questions about the future, at fatal mistake level.

I should have said “I am really enjoying this moment with you” instead, which was true but I was stupid to think it was okay to say it with less words.

Since by my own standards, saying ILY then was way too early, so I need to remind myself next time those are not moments to decide saying ILY. I shouldn’t be using ILY at a stage when I was looking forward to how the next few months might turn out.

I did have a mental filter in-place to stop me from saying ILY, but it didn’t stop me from being fatally stupid.

This potentially was what she meant by me being too intense, and led to her thinking that I liked her too much. Perhaps there was no way to recover from this even if I realised sooner, as I’d appear as if I was waiting for her to catch-up to me with feelings.

Putting myself in shape itself isn’t likely to attract someone, but a display of confidence. So when I was “in shape” years ago, it was because I was also confident (read: naïve and clueless) that attracted looks.

I think I need to look at how I can dance and behave in a more traditionally ‘masculine’ way, regardless of how I am looked at by some.

Remember, there will always be someone that just wants to put you down anyway.

Writing this, I began to recognise the hurt I must have caused her. I should apologise. (She might never read it, but I did.)

But there is something I am yet to understand, perhaps never will:

She said a couple times that she felt like losing herself in the relationship, I did ask her once if she’d like to talk about it, but we never got round to doing so.

At some point, I started to be afraid of losing her, at which my ability to communicate significantly reduced. 

I wonder if she felt my confidence levels reduced too.

I can’t reverse what’s been done, no matter how great the future might have been (based on what she showed me about her), but I have already scared her off and ruined everything, it’s time to move on. 

The sad truth is, if she had forgiven me and kept going with the relationship, then I was never going to learn my lesson.

I should feel blessed that I am here now, so I might as well stay; that the experience with her refreshed my motivation to be a better version of myself. 

Here are some new / updated goals:

Get in even better shape. With my disability, I am already glad to get my BMI back to <25, but I need to get more muscle mass building. That belly needs to be completely gone.

Understand confidence. I used to avoid this because I couldn’t differentiate confidence and arrogance, but without realising it’s probably now history. 

I still need to work on my voice and the way I speak.

Improve my body language when interacting with people

Look after myself more, starting from diet. I must be looking after myself even behind the scenes so I can have a stronger mind.

Further my financial standing - I had needed around 3 years to fulfill my promises offered to her - I should need to. Financially, I should be as prepared for as many eventualities as possible. 

I wonder if the covert racists have been feeling there's now more momentum for them to express how they really feel.

Living in Scotland, my experience of (overt) racism sat at around 3x per year, 4 in 2025. Realistically, I am mindful what a luxury this has been, compared to around 2x per month in England, and 2x per week in Melbourne, Australia. Stepping into 2026, January's not past and within a week I've already had it twice. The first in Edinburgh Airport when someone gave me a look then shoved me.

The second was approaching midnight yesterday, when some worm screamed racial slurs from the passenger window just before the driver sped off in the car park outside one of my local supermarkets. I don't know why, but for a moment I wanted to chase them down to give the defective human product a chance to say it to my face.

(Please note I am mindful that my medium / long term memory (like everyone else) may contain incorrect information, therefore some or all of the below may not have happened at all.)

It’s been a few days since I went to a previous colleague’s funeral. We weren’t very close, though for around a year we jointly supported a set of services at work and would cover for each other if one of us happened to be away. His wife was also part of the wider team, but I never knew he had serious health problems until much later on.

What I found most striking about his professional character was that, despite being someone who was passionate and well paced about work, whenever an adversity came along, he might express how he felt about it, but without fail he would recover in a matter of literal minutes. I couldn’t help but on the day of the funeral, I wondered if his resilience had anything to do with his religious beliefs and the communities that he was part of.

There was a time when we spoke about our thoughts on how nurses were being trained in the 2020s, and he shared with me how he met his wife through training, and how different it was back in his day.

He was also the second person (not counting media personalities) to point out that the word funeral starts with the word fun, and it should be a celebration of life. He spoke about how he didn’t want attendees to wear black ties.

Summer / Autumn 2025 was the last time I saw him, at another colleague’s leaving party.

The morning had started with light rain when people arrived at the church, leaving behind an overcast as we made our way to the cemetery. Then, as his casket was being lowered into the ground, the sun managed to break through for a brief moment or two.

Regrettably, I haven’t attended many funerals and didn’t stay to share the few memories I have of him. So I leave them here instead.

Cleaning up one of my email boxes, I came across an email chain from several years ago. I was incredibly (though unintentionally) rude to my friend, yet she just tolerated it.

Today, I woke up and realised one of the last lines on this blog should read "I was a good person, I deserved to be happy."