ITHACA, N.Y. -- "I want to adopt but my husband doesn't." "I want to have dinner with an old lover but don't know whether to tell my girlfriend." "My friend wants to marry a woman 25 years younger but I don't want to socialize with someone my children's age." "I'd like my wife to engage in non-abusive sexual behavior that arouses me but she doesn't want to because it doesn't arouse her. " What should I do?
"Across the country, millions of people rely on talk-show relationship gurus to direct their lives with answers to questions like these," say Cornell University psychologists Wendy M. Williams and Stephen M. Ceci, authors of the book, Escaping the Advice Trap. "This book shows that quick, glib advice can be hazardous to your mental health," they add.
Williams and Ceci ask more than 100 experts how they would respond to these and other tough relationship problems in their new book. For each of the 59 problems posed, two to five experts give their best advice. Then, Williams and Ceci, both psychologists and professors in the department of human development at Cornell, offer a bottom-line analysis for each dilemma.
"Even well-intentioned, well-credentialed professionals often disagree when it comes to practical, everyday problems with families and relationships. The trouble is that most people don't realize this and take advice from a single expert," write the two authors. "Even though experts may disagree on what to do, they often agree on the most important factors in the situation, factors that should be considered carefully during decision making."
Williams and Ceci add: "The message in this book is clear -- reader beware. Just because a person is an expert doesn't mean that his or her advice is right for you, or that a second expert wouldn't give you the opposite opinion. Ultimately, when it comes to relationship problems we would all be more successful if we used experts to help focus our thinking, but not to run our lives. The best decisions are the ones we make for ourselves after learning how to think like experts about a problem."
Escaping the Advice Trap ($21.95) is published by Andrews McMeel Publishing