Greetings from Taiwan. Time for fan mail Friday. We'll be answering your questions and dropping some knowledge and feedback to help you kick the weekend off, right?

If you're new to the Art of Charm podcast, this isn't a great place to start. Most of our content is more in depth and longer format.

So check out the best of at the Art of Charm.com slash best or the fundamentals toolbox at the Art of Charm.com slash toolbox.

That's where we've got our fundamentals of body language and nonverbal communication, attraction, negotiation, networking, and everything else we teach here at the Art of Charm.

Alright, let's cut to it.

Hi Jordan and team. My boyfriend and I have been together for several years. He's a type B personality, very caring and intelligent, and he has a ton of potential.

He's a complainer, and I as a type A fixer immediately respond with what he could do in any given situation.

Suffice it to say it's not bringing us closer together, which causes friction. It leaves me feeling like he's avoiding making a decision or otherwise simply not being effective.

What can I personally do to be better at listening without trying to fix the quote unquote problem that I immediately have to identify when he's talking?

But also how can I offer advice in a way that will make him want to actually execute on some of my or his ideas?

Thanks for doing what you do. Your podcast has become an invaluable resource to me as it has and continues to be for many others. Best Saline.

Hey, Saline, this is a really common issue. Actually though, the roles tend to be reversed normally. Normally it's the guy asking us this question.

In fact, I feel like we did one of these earlier on Fan Mill Friday in an earlier episode. Very often it's men who try to fix women's problems with unsolicited advice, and they end up hitting walls.

So my advice to you will be the same as my advice to the guys out there. Listen first, and then ask what the situation is, and then act.

Not the other way around. You also need to set boundaries. For example, I had a college roommate and he would always complain about how this girl didn't do that, and this didn't work, and how he's pining over that girl.

And we would give him a ton of advice, a ton of action steps. He wouldn't follow any of our advice, and it would always blow up in his face.

So eventually we said, listen, man, you can't vent about whatever problem, whatever girl, whatever person, if you're not going to fix it.

There will be two harsh, though. People, especially in relationships, your significant other, for example, still needs to feel that they can vent to you.

But if it's a recurring issue, recurring complaint about the exact same thing, and they won't act, and they won't take your advice, you have to preserve your own sanity and remove yourself from their pattern.

So there's a difference between venting about gas prices and venting about a friend who always takes advantage of them. One requires action. One is simply a proxy for stress relief.

How much complaining is this person actually doing? Is this a deal breaker for you, or is it simply frustrating? You need to decide that for yourself, what your threshold, what your tolerance level is.

If it's a deal breaker, you need to set a hard boundary and ask what can be done about it. Ask them what they can do about their situation. Let him know it can ruin your relationship and ruin everything.

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