Why Some Men Think Women Have No Empathy (And Why They're Wrong)

All right, folks, we have a new Dear DSO entry on the website, and you can submit your own story or question to deardso.com. That's deardso.com. Fill out the form, and if your story or your question is a good one, I will create a video out of it for the whole world to see or for the podcast listeners to listen to. And yes, you can listen to Dad Starting Over podcast wherever podcasts can be found. And if you could do me a favor, if you are watching this on YouTube, if you could click down below and click on subscribe and click on like. Better yet, if you could also leave a comment, man, that would help me out quite a bit. Thank you so very much. Now on to today's submission. This one comes from Mills. Mills is the name. Subject line is Wife's Empathy, and he says, why do women never have empathy for us? Unless it's our sisters or our daughter. I saw a reel where 100 out of 100 men reported feeling no empathy from their partners. I brought it up with my therapist and she was not surprised. Well, Mills, let me start off with this. I pride myself on being a man of science. I'm not a scientist necessarily, but I do like to look at facts. I do like to look at the data, all that fun stuff. I try to, as much as possible— and it's impossible to completely leave off or leave out emotion out of the equation, or prejudice or bias. We all have prejudice, bias, and emotion. It colors our perspective on things. I try to leave that out as much as I— as humanly possible, as much as I can, and just look at the data. When you look up empathy, which by the way, what the heck is empathy anyway? Empathy is defined as the ability to recognize, understand, and share another's thoughts and feelings. This is something that we can quantify in people. I can look and study at person A and compare them to person B, and I can tell you which one is more empathetic. Overall, ask any social scientist, psychologist, psychiatrist, therapist, whatever that studies these type of things, and they will tell you the same thing. Overall, women tend to be more empathetic than men. Study after study seems to show us that as far as the accuracy of their empathy, in other words, the ability to read the other person's situation, Women do much better in that than men do. You know, there's some popular culture type of things that kind of point to this. Women's intuition, they will call it. Many a man has noticed that no matter how much he tries to keep a poker face about something bothering him at work or some horrible news he just received, and he doesn't want to bring that to his wife, he doesn't want to bring it home, he doesn't want to stress her out, the wife immediately sussed out What's wrong? And he's like, goddamn, how does she? It's like there was just something in the way he was carrying himself, the way he was walking, the look on his face, something. She was able immediately to go, I'm feeling the vibes are off here. And that is in part due to her heightened sense of empathy. She feels what you're feeling. So I think what you are saying, Mills, is not necessarily Women in general all over the place tend to have a lower sense of empathy towards us. Let's qualify this further. Again, let's try to keep our emotions out of it. Let's try to keep our bias and prejudice out of it. Just look at this scientifically, shall we? If you are reaching out to me, you're probably a dude with some relationship difficulties. Am I right? Men with relationship difficulties tend to be hitched up to some pretty high drama, not very nice women. Let's just put it that way. Or let's be fair, women that are not a good match for them. Most of the men that I talk to are very anxious in nature. They're the ones that are always pursuing. They're the ones that are kind of heightened. They have a heightened sense of empathy. In fact, a lot of men that I talk to call themselves empaths. They say, I'm, I'm so empathetic. I've identified that. I made that part of my persona. I'm an empath. Which is usually another word for I'm codependent, but that's for another video. And these men tend to match up with, irony of all ironies, kind of the exact opposite. They match up with these cold avoidant type of women, these type A women that anytime the man comes to her with some kind of issue, or you know, it could be about work, it could be about himself, it could be whatever it is, she does the old eye roll like, can you just quit it please? Or what a wuss. Or oh my God, this guy whining again. Look at him with his man flu. And oh, he hurt himself. And men don't like that. It makes us feel like a little baby, like a little kid, and we start questioning ourselves. Maybe I am a baby. Maybe I am a big wuss. Maybe I do need to cut it out. No, no woman cares about anything about me and what I'm going through. And they say no woman because maybe he's had like a couple of girlfriends and a wife and all three were exactly like that. That is not a coincidence. You tend to attract a certain type to you. You tend to attract them to you and you are attracted to them. So what I'm saying here, mister, is this is kind of like those guys that, you know, I've had 5 girlfriends and a couple of wives and they've all cheated on me. It's like, well, what's the common denominator here, dude? It's you. It looks like you have a type because statistically, majority of human beings, yes, including women, sorry guys, do not cheat. But damn, you're, you know, 5 for 5 or something like that. Well, that guy says, no, all women cheat. I got my Data sample 5 proves the point. Besides, my brother went through the same thing. My friend went through the same thing. It's like, yeah, dude, not a coincidence. You kind of hang around a certain type of people who in turn has relationships with certain type of people and on and on. So you're the type of guy who gets with gals who sure as shit don't seem to really care about what's going on with you. And your deduction is, I think all women are like this. No, um, maybe there's, there's a crumb of truth here in terms of what I have observed is that a lot of women, um, and let's be fair, men for this matter, it's a gendered thing. We have a really difficult time kind of putting ourselves in their shoes and seeing things from their perspective as the woman. Um, and men will, uh, in a not so nice way kind of label a lot of what women go through is just silly emotional nonsense. They don't think rationally. They They just think emotionally, and on and on and on. Well, women may say all men are just sex-starved, you know, stupid little animals. They don't care about us, and all men cheat, and on and on, right? So again, bringing prejudice to this. And the thing that both sides of the gender aisle say is like, why can't he or she just see things from my perspective? Damn it. Like, well, it's easier said than done because I'm not a woman. And they're not a dude. They don't, quote, get it. And there's some probably distinctly dude things that your wife is just not getting, or she's just an asshole and not a very good partner, whatever it may be. Now, as far as why your therapist may say, "It doesn't surprise me," maybe he or she is in a roundabout way saying, you know, as far as dudes that you are— or gals rather— that you are interacting with, I can see that. Or he or she is so jaded by, you know, all these people that they see, all these bad relationship candidates. It's maybe not the best thing to go to a, you know, a therapist who just sees poor relationships coming in and out of the door all day long. Like, you know, tell me, do you see this? Is this common? They'd be like, yeah, it doesn't surprise me, dude. I've seen it all. I've seen people cheat on people. I've seen people, you know, do all kinds of horrible things to each other all day long. And by the way, myself included, I talk to dudes all all day, every day, who go through the worst shit imaginable to the point where I'm like, maybe there's something to this all women are crazy thing. And then you have to realize, no, it's just, dude, who's coming through your door, so to speak, or who's, you know, purchasing time with me? Guys with relationship problems, a lot of anxious guys, a lot of ADHD guys, and on and on and on. And they all tend to match with not very good partners, at least not for them. And there's cheating and there's all Anyway, you get my point. So let's not jump to conclusions. Let's not paint all people, all women with the same brush. That is not fair and it's not scientifically accurate. But I get the desire to do so. These people have hurt you, and what better way to hurt them back than to say that they are inherently flawed, biologically, genetically flawed, and there's nothing that they can do about it because they are down here. And then what correlates with that is, and you are up here. That's in essence what we're saying, right? They're down here, I'm up here. It makes you feel better to, you know, stomp on their neck a little bit. I get it, but it's not a healthy thing to do. All right, but I do thank you for reaching out, and, uh, thank you guys for watching so very much. And again, if you have your own Dear DSO question, go to deardso.com. All right guys, we'll see on the next one.