How morally wrong is it not to sympathise with a person's loss?
May 3, 2019 3:34 PM   Subscribe

Recently I was told that someone I barely know (husband of the sister of my SO 's friend) is lying in a coma and most probably won't wake up again.

Sure, I felt sad, but I didn't make a drama about it and my SO thought I was a monster for not sympathising more. I didn't know that guy like at all, and I don't know his wife or that one friend of my SO, I have seen them like 2 times in my life.
I can understand why it can be a tough situation for my partner, but is it wrong for me not feeling the same way?

I work in a hospital and see people passing away every day. I believe that those things happen and surely happen out of the blue, but I am not able to cry over every loss of someone. Is it so bad?

By the way we had a huge fight over this. I don't know how to fix things, because I am pretty sure about my opinion and I don't think that this makes me any less human.

If you disagree with me please tell me, maybe I am caught in a bubble or something.

Thank you all!
posted by Tiffy119 to Human Relations (32 answers total)
 
On the one hand, people die all the time. I realized a few years ago that I am now at an age where I can expect at least one person about whom I care a great deal to pass away every year for the remainder of my life, and I was surprised by how ok I was with that. You do not know this comatose dude from Adam and you are not a monster for not having any particularly strong feelings about it one way or another.

On the other hand, this third party's situation is clearly a matter of some importance to your S.O., and it costs you practically nothing to sympathize with them about their feelings on the matter. It kind of depends on how much your S.O.'s feelings are to you. I have had relationships where I would have sympathized a great deal because I cared about my partner’s feelings. I have also had relationships where I would not have sympathized at all because I did not. The relationships where I cared were generally better throughout, but you can decide for yourself what kind of relationship you want.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 3:49 PM on May 3, 2019 [5 favorites]


I work in a hospital and see people passing away every day.
I don't think either of you is a monster. I think you are constantly in proximity to tragic death, and it sounds like he is not frequently in proximity to the heavy stuff. He needs to realize that you have to compartmentalize and prioritize, or you wouldn't be able to deal with your job. And you need to respect what he's feeling and not seem to be dismissing it, which you may inadvertently be doing.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:51 PM on May 3, 2019 [15 favorites]


I don't disagree with you, I definitely don't always feel torn up when I hear about bad news...but even if I don't feel that sad I do make a show of being very sympathetic when other people are relating the news, especially if they're clearly affected by it. I think it's because I can sense that this is a big deal/really hard for them, and so I give response more in line with their own out of sympathy to THEM and how they're processing the grief.

So I agree with your viewpoint, but I think the issue is more with how your SO is feeling and perhaps them needing comfort/understanding vs whether it's objectively moral/right.
posted by sprezzy at 3:51 PM on May 3, 2019 [7 favorites]


Your ability to sympathize is independent from your desire to empathize. You can't force yourself to feel what the other person is feeling but you can still express care and understanding.
posted by SkinsOfCoconut at 3:52 PM on May 3, 2019 [14 favorites]


You work in a hospital so you've had to develop a coping mechanism to deal with death and sadness, especially of those that you don't know very well. You couldn't do your job if you didn't. Have you explained this to your SO? Truthfully, I would have reacted the same as you, more of a "my fellow man is suffering and that sucks" kind of way, but no tears.

Perhaps your SO wanted you to be more sympathetic to them, that their friend was in a coma?
posted by NoraCharles at 3:52 PM on May 3, 2019 [1 favorite]


You are not a monster, and you are more in touch with the ordinariness and dailiness of death and loss than most of us are, because of your job.
However, in my opinion this isn't a matter of right and wrong. It's a matter of framing this way: are you wrong
not to sympathise with a person's loss? This is not "a person," this is your SO. Whether your SO is mourning someone close or far, or having a bad day over something you feel would be trivial to you, or feeling upset about a childhood memory that isn't as bad as someone else's... the point is we want our SO to sympathize and empathize with us when we feel bad, and feeling bad isn't a matter of measure against the worst it could possibly be. We often want our SO to feel with us, that's part of the benefit of having a SO.
On the other hand, I don't think most people could fake "that's the most terrible thing I've ever heard, I'm also devastated!" just to mirror their SO. Is that what was asked of you? If you've expressed empathy for what your SO is feeling, that's probably all most of us could do in that circumstance. You can't pretend more.
posted by nantucket at 3:52 PM on May 3, 2019 [4 favorites]


If he mentioned it to you in private and didn't think your response was adequately sad, that's odd. Unless SO is really torn up about the loss themselves? I'm not exactly clear on this point.

If you were out for drinks with friends and one of them mentioned that their relative was dying, most people would express sympathy and support even if they didn't know the people involved very well - that doesn't really tie in to whether you feel sad yourself or not.
posted by bunderful at 3:58 PM on May 3, 2019 [1 favorite]


If something tragic happened to a distant connection/bare acquaintance like the one you describe, I'd say something like "Oh, that's awful," and leave it at that.

However, I would be careful not to shrug and/or say something like, "Oh well, I barely even know this person," which could come across as dismissive and callous.

As long as your reaction was along the lines of the first scenario and not the second, and you gave your partner no indication that you were unsympathetic to their feelings, they can't reasonably demand a more emotionally involved reaction from you.
posted by orange swan at 4:01 PM on May 3, 2019 [7 favorites]


you don't have to feel personal sorrow for someone you don't know well and it is not morally wrong of you not to feel any. it is wrong of you not to express sympathy out loud in a way that conveys concern, when told of bad news by a person who does feel sorrow about it.

expressing sympathy in the conventional way does not need to involve lies, not even harmless kind lies (e.g. you can truthfully say "that's a terrible thing, how sad for them" rather than untruthfully say "that's terrible for my emotional state; I'm so upset about this, me." in fact, the former way is often preferable even when both are true.)

if expressing sympathy in the conventional way is what you mean by "making a drama about it," yes, that is entirely wrong. wrong in the sense of mistaken, to leave morals out of it.
posted by queenofbithynia at 4:10 PM on May 3, 2019 [5 favorites]


Was your SO reacting to an action on your part (like a comment you made) or a lack of action (for example, “why aren’t you crying, this is so sad”)?

I think the former could be a problem while the latter is not. If your SO is upset that you’re not upset enough, you can say something like “I feel very sorry for them and I’m here for you if you want a shoulder to cry on, even if I don’t seem upset personally. I know it really hurts to lose someone you love.”
posted by sallybrown at 4:34 PM on May 3, 2019


When you talk about this, don't talk about what you're not feeling. Talk about what you are feeling: sympathetic with your partner's stress, aware of the injustice of chance, and able to be supportive in real ways.
posted by amtho at 4:36 PM on May 3, 2019 [4 favorites]


This is an odd question to me. I'm trying to think how I would feel if my hubby's friend's sister's husband who I had met twice was in a coma. I'd feel bad for them but I wouldn't really be crying-level sad about it and I'd be surprised if someone else was. And I'm not even remotely in the healthcare field. Typically when you're actually crying about someone it's because they're a part of your life.

Now if on top of that my hubby picked a fight with me about it, I guess I would assume that he's actually more sad than he's letting himself let on and lashing out at me for not doing that performance on his behalf. I'm not diagnosing your SO but, grief can be a weird thing and guys aren't always the best at knowing what's really going on with their emotions and expressing them without lashing out in anger at the closest person. So, don't feel bad about not feeling bad and decide how game you are for working this out with your SO but I think it might be a dealbreaker for me depending on how long we've been together.
posted by bleep at 4:38 PM on May 3, 2019 [8 favorites]


I am sad when my partner is sad, even if I'm not sad or not as sad about the thing they're sad about. My partner recently had a huge crying session over climate change (explicitly out of sadness for the loss of nature, not fear for our future safety). And, like, I'm sad about that, but not crying levels of sad. But I was sad that they were sad, and I was able to sympathize with how much it affected them. Do you think you're doing that? Or are you coming off as not caring that they're sad? It's fine not to be sad about the same things. Generally, though, you should empathize with the fact that your partner feels bad. It may be you're not doing this, or you are but you're communicating it poorly.
posted by brook horse at 4:41 PM on May 3, 2019 [4 favorites]


Perhaps the issue isn't really sympathy for this person you are six degrees of separation from, but sympathy for your SO. Maybe they are taking this harder than they are letting on. Maybe this is making them feel their own mortality. Maybe they are in need of more comfort than you realized at first.

I would approach addressing this conflict from the point of view of thinking about what your SO needs from you at this moment and not the person in the coma or that person's family.
posted by brookeb at 4:48 PM on May 3, 2019 [5 favorites]


There's a limit to how much anyone can emotionally take on, especially for people they don't know, and even more when you have a job that requires a lot of emotional labor, such as working in a hospital. You're not a terrible person, you just can't take everything on for everyone.
posted by bile and syntax at 5:09 PM on May 3, 2019 [4 favorites]


It is not a moral failing, nor bad, for you to experience no emotional grief over this situation for someone you barely know. Grief is about processing the loss of someone important to you. If you acknowledged that this sucks for the people involved, you are showing appropriate human compassion. I'm not sure I'd chalk it up to you working in a hospital, I don't think most people would grieve over someone they don't know. Sorry for the people involved, of course. But not personally grieving.

Perhaps a good question to ask is why this situation matters so much to your SO, why do they deem it so significant? If they just think you should be upset over a death of someone you don't know, that's...odd and concerning. If they feel a deeper than obvious personal connection to these people and are grieving, or if this is a triggering situation to them (coma is their worst fear maybe?), that might explain why they felt you should be more demonstrative. Maybe what your SO is upset about is that *they* are upset over the situation and need more support from you for them personally?
posted by AliceBlue at 5:30 PM on May 3, 2019 [1 favorite]


I am trying to think of what my reaction would be if my SO gave me news like that and my absolute most sympathetic response would be to say something like "Oh, that's so sad" and then pause for a good 5 seconds to see if she wanted to talk about it and if not continue what I was doing. If I was actually in the middle of something interesting myself I probably wouldn't even wait that long.

Going one degree closer, if it was my friend's sister's husband who was in a coma I'd talk with the friend about it for support and probably mention it to my SO as news if she knew the friend but that would be it. I wouldn't expect much of a reaction from my SO and I probably wouldn't have much of a reaction myself apart from trying to give support to my friend.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 5:33 PM on May 3, 2019 [3 favorites]


I think the importance here is what and how you communicated to your partner, and then also what they think is an appropriate response. For me, if something happened to someone my partner legitimately knew and cared about I would definitely be sympathetic to him for his feelings because I know it sucks (maybe extra so if this person is pretty near to them in age, it's an existential blow as well as personal), and abstractly I would acknowledge how awful it must be for the people actually going through it. I think that is an appropriate response.

If your response was "yeah, people die, suck it up", that might be unsympathetic.

If your partner is expecting you to cry, rend your garments, be unable to function because someone you basically do not know has suffered a tragedy, that's an unreasonable expectation.

If your partner is doing that emotional-appropriation thing where they are expressing a first-degree response to a second-degree loss, I guess the appropriate initial reaction is maybe giving them some polite space to get a hold of themselves, but it is not reasonable for them to expect you to participate as if you also lost a first-degree relationship. And, after a certain point (especially if they are getting their overblown grief ON the actual first-degree parties like literal family members/partners/children) I think it is appropriate to tell them to cut that out. It may be harsh but still doesn't make you a monster, especially if you're preventing them from exacerbating the grief of someone else.
posted by Lyn Never at 5:37 PM on May 3, 2019 [5 favorites]


If your partner is doing that emotional-appropriation thing where they are expressing a first-degree response to a second-degree loss,

caring about someone more than you are absolutely obligated to care about them by blood ties or contract law is not "emotional appropriation." refusing to keep a strict ledger wherein you expend no more affection on a person than is guaranteed to be returned to you is not "emotional appropriation." the very concept is fairly grotesque.

if it is not wrong to not care about someone just because you don't care about them -- which was the original question, to which the answer is "no, it isn't wrong not to care" -- then neither is it wrong to care about someone just because you do care about them. you don't have free rights to express your caring in a way that is not reciprocated or welcomed, such as through stalking or harassment, but you have every right to care, period.

whether the partner's grief is for the dying man, for the suffering soon-to-be-widow, or for the soon-to-be-bereaved friend, we do not know. perhaps all three. you have the reasonable right to talk about the effect on you of the impending death or the emotional trials of someone you care about, in private with your intimate partner, without being told to cut it out as if you are trying to sneak into a private compassion venue without having purchased an upper-tier sadness ticket. jesus.
posted by queenofbithynia at 5:53 PM on May 3, 2019 [14 favorites]


Sorry to have pushed a button, but some people use not-great excuses/behavior to punish their partners in emotionally charged situations and OP does not have to apologize or be cast as the monster if that's what has happened in this case. It is one of many options.
posted by Lyn Never at 6:01 PM on May 3, 2019 [3 favorites]


Your ability to sympathize is independent from your desire to empathize. You can't force yourself to feel what the other person is feeling but you can still express care and understanding.

Yeah I can see myself in your shoes a lot of times. I am a little low-affect generally speaking and people often have stronger emotional reactions than I do. This is fine. Feelings, all feelings, are fine. However if someone close to me felt terrible about a thing, whatever the thing is, and I cared about THEM, I could empathize with their feeling bad about the thing even if I did not share the feeling. So a lot of this has to do with the feelings versus the actions.

some people use not-great excuses/behavior to punish their partners in emotionally charged situations

My history also leads me to think along these lines. If your partner is upset because of how you FEEL, that's not particularly cool and should not be a thing they are interrogating you about (esp if they know you pretty well, this should not be news to them). However if you said something callous about the situation--absent specific "How do you feel about this?" prompting--then I think you can be held responsible for speaking in a way that may have made your partner feel bad which wasn't about the other person at all.

Also I hope you're hyperbolizing because if your partner, knowing you and knowing where you work, called you a monster for feeling the way you do, that's a disproportionate reaction. They may be very upset about the situation and so that could be understandable, but I'd also just say I'd be careful about how you move forward here because they are either 1) pretty upset or 2) possibly abusive (unlikely but always worth pointing out) or 3) possibly checked out of this realtionship or 4) something AskMe hasn't even thought of yet.
posted by jessamyn at 6:16 PM on May 3, 2019 [4 favorites]


If you were a character in a movie, that character would seem callous and blocked. The audience would judge her lack of empathy. Imperfect non-hero. Bring on the hero!

But this isn’t a movie. A complex set of real-life factors affect your emotional responses in perfectly understandable ways; a web of history and experience that makes you behave not like the protagonist of a movie.

Movie protagonists have no web of history and experience. They’re not complex. They’re two dimensional cartoons. They’re not real. Don’t judge yourself against a two dimensional cinematic ideal.

Again, this isn’t a movie. Work within your reality, and favor kindness, truth, and empathy in the ways those responses are available to you. That’s all that’s necessary. Play the cards you’re dealt with sincerity and let the outcome - and the imaginary movie audience’s reaction - be what it will.
posted by Quisp Lover at 6:20 PM on May 3, 2019


When anyone dies, it’s sad for them and the people who love them. But if you don’t know them, why would it be sad for you? I mean, sure, you can be sad in an abstract sense because I also think it’s tragic when I hear of people dying in any awful way but I don’t know why your husband would expect you to be personally affected by someone you don’t know personally.

If you want to give him an example, ask him if he’d feel upset when a person who lives two streets away from him that he met twice, died. Your husband is closer to the situation that you are which affects him more. He has to understand that you’re not close to the situation at all and while you can feel empathy for what he’s going through, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re affected yourself and neither should you be, really. If you got broken up by every second or third tier tragedy you heard about, you wouldn’t be able to function.
posted by Jubey at 6:54 PM on May 3, 2019 [2 favorites]


You ARE caught in a bubble - the Monkeysphere. (Dunbar's Number if you want to get scientific.)

And I agree with you that it's perfectly fine - it's how our brains protect us from being constantly devastated by all the world's sorrows.
posted by peagood at 7:01 PM on May 3, 2019


I’m surprised no one has mentioned this...but if you’re a woman there’s a lot of expectations for women to do emotional labor on behalf of others. I would be surprised if men have this same issue with people telling them they should be more upset.
posted by pando11 at 10:12 PM on May 3, 2019 [3 favorites]


I’m not sure what your reaction was or his expectations were- did he expect you to wail with grief (unreasonable) or did you tell him that people die all the time and you’re unbothered (true but unnecessarily callous).

Your question made me think of a good friend of mine who’s a doctor, and I’ve noticed she’s become less and less empathetic over the years.

I completely understand she needs to protect herself and develop a thick skin, but it can be very hard to talk to her about illness and death.

Because she’s been exposed to so much of it, it’s clear she doesn’t think it’s a big deal. But it’s a big deal to me when someone I love gets very sick, or dies.

If I tell most of my friends that, say, my mother has been very unwell, they are empathetic and kind, even if they’ve never met my mother, because they care about me. If I tell my doctor friend, she’ll say it’s not a big deal and it’s common in women that age.

She’s probably trying to support me in a way, but I don’t need a doctor in that situation, I need a friend. It feels invalidating and hurtful, and it’s changed our friendship a lot.

Don’t know if this resonates, but if it does, it might be worth thinking about balancing the need for resilience with the ability to empathise with the grief of people you love.
posted by Dwardles at 11:02 PM on May 3, 2019 [5 favorites]


Your narrative didn't give me a clear picture of the interaction between you and your SO.

Emotions are probably high between you and SO now. Could it be that SO wasn't really expecting "drama" from you as much as his vision of an appropriate reaction? When things quiet down, maybe a conversation would help clear the air. SO may indeed have inappropriate expectations. On the other hand, consider that SO's relationship to the man in the coma may have merited a more tender response than you thought appropriate at the time.

Another thing crosses my mind. I've had some lengthy experience as an patient over the years, including a six-month stint on the porch of a critical care ward at Walter Reed in 1970-71. We (on the porch of the ward) were convalescing, while most of the residents of the ward itself were dying. The staff were under pressure of the most hideous sort, yet they made heroic efforts to be professional and caring, even to us guys who weren't nearly as bad off as the souls on the ward. Now and then one of them would have a bad day. Sometimes the bad day made them snitty, or outright hostile, sometimes vanishingly sad, or sometimes just highly emotional. I guess if I have a point, it might be that your job may have taken a bit of your soul in tow, and your responses to your SO might be less than optimal from his point of view.

It was his friend in the coma, sure. Maybe it resonates more for him than it does for you. You aren't a monster. If that's the word he used, it's not appropriate, and I should hope he's trying to think of a way to un-say such an awful thing.
posted by mule98J at 12:31 AM on May 4, 2019


I’m betting that at work when you are around dying and grieving people, no one tells you that ‘you’re a cold unfeeling person!’ Probably because your job is not to share your ‘well, I don’t even really know your kin/the patient!’ attitude. You mop up, clean, care and say decent things, don’t you? Because whilst you may be used to people dying around your workplace, your training tells you to have an affect of care and attention, a way of verbalising around the family or friends of patients that doesn’t transmit existential disdain, a shrug or descriptions of how death is inevitable, so whatever.

If you can do it at work for people unrelated by kin or friendship to you or your partner, you could probably show consolatory kindness to your partner.

Your description of the argument makes me wonder how your partner could have escalated to the place they did, and it makes me wonder why you’re digging in, and turning a thing they need help with (consolation) to something about you and why you don’t have to do that. I’m sure your partner did not expect lamentations and hair rending, but I’d find it hard to imagine that there wasn’t escalation because your disdain for their situation was obvious (I feel there’s defensiveness and disdain coming through in this post) It must have been painful for your partner to share this event, and for a meta argument blow up about your attitude to suffering because of your work, rather than feel supported as they discussed their feelings.

When people are sharing their feelings about a difficult situation, be a warm, responsive and caring partner. Even if you have an existential indifference to life and death generally.

I would hate to be around such a situation and end the day with having fought over having to elicit care, the validity of the care. I’d rather just be getting care.
posted by honey-barbara at 12:57 AM on May 4, 2019


Part of it might be grief, but your partner might also be feeling fear or generalized existential angst, especially if this man’s condition was unexpected (an accident or a sudden medical event). Realizing that people our age die every day is a huge deal and something that everyone internalizes at their own pace. It can be really scary to have the veil lifted and confront the fact that next time it could be you, or your SO, or your sibling.

Being in the healthcare profession you’ve probably worked through these feelings already but this might be his first pass. You did nothing wrong by not being more emotional but maybe examine if you ought to have been more empathetic towards him and his feelings about it? He might not even know yet why this is affecting him so much.

(Not that being an asshole about it is okay, obviously).
posted by lydhre at 5:15 AM on May 4, 2019


What your partner is upset at you about might not actually be the fact that you don't feel sad about the death of this 4th-degree-separated relation. The fact of you not being sad might be read as you not being emotionally supporting your partner as they deal with whatever feelings this is bring up in them, and that is more likely why they're calling you a monster for feeling/not feeling the things you do.

Would this be considered a clear and direct way for your partner to express what's going on with them? No, not really. But having this guess in mind, maybe you could have a conversation with them about it at this level, rather than at the level of the death and morality, which is a macguffin--a fight about the actual fight that won't resolve anything. It's more likely to resolve your conflict if the two of you have a talk at the level of what is you're both feeling, how the conversation thus far as made both of you feel, what they need from you as their partner, and what you can do to help support them in that.
posted by obliterati at 6:32 AM on May 4, 2019 [3 favorites]


It sounds like this is someone your husband knows better - or at least, the people who are directly impacted are people he knows (his friend and friend’s family), so he is feeling it more strongly than you are. I think it’s totally normal for him to want sympathy. My husband has shared awful news about people he grew up with who I have never met, and my reaction is usually something like “oh no! That’s terrible.” I don’t cry about it, but I do acknowledge the bad news and his relationship to the person. I don’t brush it off as something I shouldn’t give AF about just because I haven’t met them.
posted by DoubleLune at 7:31 AM on May 4, 2019


Hey everyone, I’ve read over the question a few times and it appears to me that the OP did not gender their SO, even though it probably would have been easier for them to do so. It feels intentional, and we should probably honor that intention.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 8:27 PM on May 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


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