Search Results: being sympathetic

There’s a backstory to this question.

My younger cousin who is a senior had a bit of drama today involving her on-and-off boyfriend (?), Nathan. Both are 18. They broke up at least 4 times over petty things and dated people in between their breaks. Anyway, Nathan dated this girl who was a sophomore (Patty) and they broke up for whatever reason so he went back to my cousin while Patty dated someone else. However, he would still flirt and being intimate with Patty and my cousin found out when Patty “confronted” her after she logged onto his messenger and read the conversation he had with my cousin. She was furious and broke down to her friends in tears. One of them in particular kind told her they told her so and informed her that the Patty was crying as she found out her boyfriend had cancer and my cousin said she didn’t give a fuck, which lead to her friends calling her fucked up for saying that and left it at, “I don’t care.”

She told me this at home and said she kind of felt wrong for saying she didn’t care about someone having cancer but at the same time said she thinks the girl is lying for attention (which she allegedly famous for), didn’t know him and had no connection to him so she didn’t understand why she SHOULD have to care. I didn’t know what to say. Obviously, she said it out of anger and frustration but do you think it’s wrong to not care about someone else’s misfortune or at least not be sympathetic towards it in general.

I've been working on a theory here.

I've been watching relationship reality stuff on TV for years. My poor husband has been subjected to it, being in the same room. He's pretty good at blocking external stimuli out, but ya know, some definitely goes in, whether he likes it or not. These people used to quite often infuriate him. I would be talking at the TV sometimes, and he would be silent, brooding, shaking his head. But eventually, we got to a point where we both watch together, and instead of him being silent, he started making lots of interesting comments and giving his opinions about what was going on - yay, much more fun for me. (These people are on TV for a reason - they're outrageous sometimes, which can be very entertaining. But actually a lot of it is just regular human stories, quite common things many people go through.) Anyway, I noticed a pattern, where he would agree with the woman and criticize the man. Finally, recently, we got to the bottom of this. (Well, I gave my theory and he agreed, "yes, that's it!") Women talk way more. 20,000 wpd vs. 7000. More words means more you have to absorb. And with him only partially listening, he ended up missing many of the details of what the women say, not the men who speak less. So he was basing his conclusions of what's wrong in their relationship, etc. on not all the info. But I saw it as him aligning with the women more, being more sympathetic to them, when often times, as fault is gender-random, they did not deserve all the sympathy. Also, we probably don't have to put as much effort into understanding our own kind. We all know our own sex more. We're on the inside already.
It's been interesting. And now he's figured out how to laugh at them, treat it more as a distant sociological study, or as entertainment, nothing to get worked up about. (And weed and vodka sure helps make things seem funnier.)

But anyway, got me thinking, do you defend one gender more than the other?