5 Birth Months Who Give The Best Advice And Rarely Take It

Some people can help you see a problem clearly in ten minutes, then spend three days doing exactly what they told you to stop doing. These five birth months are wonderful to have on speed dial, even if they could use a recording of their own advice.

1. January

January, you can hear the exhaustion in a friend's voice before they've admitted how tired they are, and you'll gently insist that the laundry can wait. Then you spend your own evening answering one last email, followed by six more. You keep imagining that once everything is handled, you'll finally be allowed to rest. The same care that makes your advice so reassuring makes it hard to leave anything unfinished when someone might be counting on you.

2. March

Your friends come to you when they're tired of decoding someone's mixed signals, March, because you can lovingly point out the difference between a sweet message and actually showing up. When you're the one waiting, though, you remember that wonderful afternoon together and decide to give it another week. You see so much possibility in someone you love that you keep offering their future self the patience their present self has already used up.

3. June

June, you've asked four people what you should do, and you're considering asking a fifth. Meanwhile, those same friends come to you because you can listen to a tangled explanation and pick out the one thing they actually want. You trust their excitement, their hesitation, their sense that something has run its course. With your own choices, you keep hoping one more conversation will remove the possibility of regret.

4. September

September, a friend can tell you about an awkward mistake and leave the conversation knowing exactly how to put it right, without feeling like a terrible person. You understand that a sincere apology matters more than a week of self-punishment. Yet you're still revisiting the slightly wrong thing you said at dinner, long after everyone else has moved on to wondering what to have for breakfast.

5. November

“You could have called me” is something your friends hear often, November, and they know you mean it. You make asking for help feel ordinary, whether someone needs a ride or company on a difficult evening. But when your own day falls apart, you send a breezy reply and decide everybody has enough to deal with. The people who trust you with their worst days would love to be trusted with one of yours.