This baffles me

Hammster said:

When I have car trouble, I don’t take my car to someone who also has car trouble. I take it someone who has experience in fixing cars. Makes sense. What baffles me are singles who ask other singles about relationships. Wouldn’t it make more sense to ask married folk who have already solved a lot of those issues?

Click to expand...

But on CF we make it hard for them to do that; with the age specific forums.

Hammster said:

When I have car trouble, I don’t take my car to someone who also has car trouble. I take it someone who has experience in fixing cars. Makes sense. What baffles me are singles who ask other singles about relationships. Wouldn’t it make more sense to ask married folk who have already solved a lot of those issues?

Click to expand...

Misery wants company?
I'm one of those happily married (most of the time) type women.

I've noticed that I'm not allowed on the singles forum.
But if they want advice from others...they can post on a different forum....so...

Back to square one.

Hammster said:

There are forums they can use. Maybe they just need promoting.

Click to expand...

I'd say that they need some pretty unambiguous direction ... as they are, typically, already dealing with a crisis.

Maybe something on the Single's forums ... which provides links to addressing the married christian community on CF ...

People usually prefer advice from their friends or their peer group.

Singles date, married couples don't. Relationships are inheritantly different when your single.

Hammster said:

When I have car trouble, I don’t take my car to someone who also has car trouble. I take it someone who has experience in fixing cars. Makes sense. What baffles me are singles who ask other singles about relationships. Wouldn’t it make more sense to ask married folk who have already solved a lot of those issues?

Click to expand...

I'm just guessing, but it might be that [some] single people today think that married people are different in that they may be seen by single people as those who are successful relationally and who don't understand what it is to struggle, especially long-term, as an individual searching for companionship. So........they ask other seemingly unsuccessful singles about dating rather than asking those who've gone through the trenches of dating and come out married.

On the other hand, with all of the divorce, adultery, inappropriate content, and other mitigating social forces that tear the flesh of today's marriages, it might also be that singles are skeptical that this relationship stuff can truly be answered by hitting up married people for answers.

Hammster said:

When I have car trouble, I don’t take my car to someone who also has car trouble. I take it someone who has experience in fixing cars. Makes sense. What baffles me are singles who ask other singles about relationships. Wouldn’t it make more sense to ask married folk who have already solved a lot of those issues?

Click to expand...

It always baffled me that some of these forums shut out some posters that could offer very good advice, and I guess the singles boards shutting out the married is a good example of that.

All I can figure is those making the rules, are just doing what has always been done.

Hammster said:

When I have car trouble, I don’t take my car to someone who also has car trouble. I take it someone who has experience in fixing cars. Makes sense. What baffles me are singles who ask other singles about relationships. Wouldn’t it make more sense to ask married folk who have already solved a lot of those issues?

Click to expand...

Even celibate priests are considered experts in these questions.

Hammster said:

When I have car trouble, I don’t take my car to someone who also has car trouble. I take it someone who has experience in fixing cars. Makes sense. What baffles me are singles who ask other singles about relationships. Wouldn’t it make more sense to ask married folk who have already solved a lot of those issues?

Click to expand...

I dont´t think happily married folks would offer their SO.

quatona said:

Even celibate priests are considered experts in these questions.

Click to expand...

That's precisely where the OP's analogy begins to break down. A mechanic owns very few of the cars he works on. His relationship to the cars is in that way professional and extrinsic. He knows a lot about cars in general in large part because he does not confine himself to any single one. In the same way a psychologist is not valued because of his marital status; he is valued because he has broad learning and long experience in dealing with personal problems. There is no prerequisite that the psychologist be himself neurotic, or that the mechanic himself own the car in question.

Hammster said:

We could just have one giant forum and get rid of all the sub-forums. That would fix it.

Click to expand...

Or just find a happy medium,


She'll have all the answers.

Hammster said:

We could just have one giant forum and get rid of all the sub-forums. That would fix it.

Click to expand...

Like maybe a forum called "Relationships". It could apply to both singles & marrieds.

mnorian said:

But on CF we make it hard for them to do that; with the age specific forums.

Click to expand...

Singles and marrieds have very few restrictions from my experience.
Plus you can private message across the "boundaries" easily.

zippy2006 said:

That's precisely where the OP's analogy begins to break down. A mechanic owns very few of the cars he works on. His relationship to the cars is in that way professional and extrinsic. He knows a lot about cars in general in large part because he does not confine himself to any single one. In the same way a psychologist is not valued because of his marital status; he is valued because he has broad learning and long experience in dealing with personal problems. There is no prerequisite that the psychologist be himself neurotic, or that the mechanic himself own the car in question.

Click to expand...

Yes, exactly. If your car doesn´t work the expert you are looking for is not *a guy whose car works*.

lol, I have thought this many times myself.

quatona said:

Yes, exactly. If your car doesn´t work the expert you are looking for is not *a guy whose car works*.

Click to expand...

I tend to agree that in serious circumstances, an expert's help can be best.

But the particular analogy fails a bit. One doesn't learn much about how mechanical things work by driving a functioning car. But one does tend to learn a good deal about how relationships work by living in and participating in a healthy one.