Cathy Classics by Cathy Guisewite for March 14, 2010

Women don’t always want their problems to be fixed, Irving. They sometimes just want them to be acknowledged.

This strip could almost be a companion strip to today’s For Better or for Worse. Check that one out, and you’ll see what I mean.

Right here we have the differance between men and women: men are logic driven and try to fix things while women are emotionally driven and try to help via comforting.

To quote Cathy herself—“Men: all solution, no sympathy.”

There’s an older Cathy strip where she tells Irving that she wants him to “be there” for her.

He says, “Doing what?” “Just be there being there!” Irving looks baffled, and says, “Then how will I know when I’m done?”

Problem solving is so much easier – it has a beginning, an end, and you know what success looks like. It must be a guy thing. (My wife agrees….)

We already know how to google solutions, and sometimes everything just piles up and we need to vent. Seriously, Irving, mind your own business… we’ll ask if we need your help.

This house needs a net all right!

Step on the trip line, and it scoops them all up to the ceiling so when the men in the white coats come, they’re “prepackaged” for pickup!!!

Read Dear Abby today. A woman is complaining because she asked her friend to commiserate about her husband so much that now her friend and the friend’s husband won’t have anything to do with the complainer’s husband. It’s ruining her social life. Moral: Think before you seek sympathy.

Sympathy is always a necessary component, just having someone listen to you helps a lot (and that someone will NEVER be Irving). Straight out of Men are from Mars… .

Sometimes in the process of “venting” a female may begin to come up with her own solutions to her problems. Because in the process of verbalizing the problem, she begins to understand it more clearly. Of course, that only works for problems where a solution exists that isn’t dependent on the actions of another person.

I myself could never understand why women would rather feel better about their problems (and let them continue) rather than feel like things are improving (by doing something about them). Don’t we have heroin for that?

I do think women and men both vary, though. Some women solve problems. Some men sit and cry a lot. Either one might feel much better as a result. But me, I’ll stick with the majority trend.

My sweetie has been driving me crazy lately, he’s started thinking out loud, he’ll go over whatever the problem is and says this helps him work out the solution. This is annoying to me cuz he’ll start by asking me a question, one which I generally do not have an answer to.

It’s not just women…we all need simple sympathy sometimes