Why do some people feel compelled to answer questions about relationships?

Question

Specifically why are so many answers in the Family and Relationship Category written by people who claim limited life experience and no special education or training? Do they really believe that they are helping others or are they just venting their own opinions?

Please reread the question. Nothing bitter here. This is just a curiosity driven question. I never said such people can not give great answers. I am asking about motivation.

Answer 1

You might as well ask why parents try to protect their children from suffering the same problems they had with boy/girl friends and other relationships. We know it probably won't (and shouldn't) work, but we have a compulsion to do it anyway.

By it's very definition, "compelled" means compulsion (and not to be denied).

Besides, since every one "lives" a life, we naturally find it easiest to talk about what we know. Special education and training is highly overrated.

As to the last comment, some really believe they are helping others (and some really are!), and others are just venting their own opinions, which, in many cases actually does help the asker, who is free to form his/her own opinions based on a synthesis of all input.

Answer 2

I "REMEMBER" a time when you were in the Top #10.
In " Family & Relationships.

An answer to this question is we are all compelled to answer as we wish ...right or wrong ..freedom of speech. As long as we answer without breaking community guidelines. Because everyone has a different opinion this is why? there's more then one chance to give an answrer from others. With the thought they are giving the best answer possilble from their knowledge and experience's.

After all "Yahoo Answers" is a community of people, trying to help others.

Some may have the experience, there is no form to fill out in each category. We have no right to judge others without judging ourselves. You as well my have the experience who knows but you, I believe people believe they are helping each other which is also venting their opinions.

Answer 3

People do not think they know it all, they just want to help others. The person that's asking has a need. They need that attention and help so they can get along with their lives. Yahoo answers idea of creating this site was great because sometimes you need somebody to answer a question for you. The person that answers transmits love and affection by providing help and understanding of what the person is going through. But at the end of the day the person asking the question decides to go by the advice or just continue what they are doing. I think that by helping,we contribute to the community.

Answer 4

People tend to mess around with people for the fun of it, while the others are for real! You don't really have to be a rocket scientist to asnwer some of the questions here! It all really depends on everyones life experiences and how well the questioner takes it! You always have to think about what the person who left the comment went through in there life! We will never know those details, so we just take the advice seriosly!

Answer 5

Unless one is raised and lived among apes or wolves all their lives, we all experience relationships with fellow human beings of one kind or another. We all have had experiences in relationships that have been disappointing and painful to varying degrees.

We know the comfort we find when we hear we are not alone; when someone with a similar experience shares with us the pain they felt (one of the reasons group therapy can be helpful). It is human nature to reach out and offer comfort to another in pain. Being able to help someone who going through a painful experience you have gone through with the lessons and life wisdom you have learned, helps you feel what you went through was not entirely pointless. It helps with your healing, too.

Often some of the best advice and wisdom is not from professionals and textbooks, but from life’s embattled who refuse to go down and learned to go on and from old farts who happened to learn a thing or two while living a few decades ;)

P.S. Sadly we cannot discount that in any free open forum you will see the worse as well as the best roaming this cyber world.

Answer 6

I don't propose to have ALL the answers, but having lived beyond the 55th year, I think there are some things that I have the answers for and if I can keep just ONE person from making some of the same mistakes that I did---I will feel like I've mattered in this life.

Answer 7

For me personally, I have been told that I should be a counselor by a lot of people, eve people who are counselors. This is fun and practice perhaps and it's what I'm good at. Not only that, this also where the majority of my best answers come from.

I have been though a lot with my life in general not to mention my recovered rocky marriage. Pulse I used to watch Dr. Phil a lot.

Answer 8

people answer these quesitons because they're about a subject anyone can be an expert on. we all have life experience. you don't need special training to help. a degree in giving life advice is not going to guarantee any higher level of understanding. yahoo answers is great because its a forum for those who may have something to offer but opted not to focus their life and commit to a degree in a subject that they may have a lot of understaning of and passion for.

Answer 9

I think that life experience helps people answer questions. Every person may have a different experience. You put them all together and try to go somewhere down the middle.

Answer 10

I like to think that people are trying to help people. Why would people feel compelled to ask personal questions about relationships in the yahoo anwer rooms? Maybe because they like to know that other people genuinely care.