AmeliaBedelia
Crowing
Expressing sympathy is, in my opinion, less important than taking action to help. And I personally wouldn't be worried about feeling basically businesslike about slaughtering a mean farm chicken...I'd only be a worried if it were the highlight of your day or something.Well, I might have expressed more sympathy/commiserated with my wife a bit more. Or felt *something* when I butchered the roo more than a bit of irritation over its effect on the schedule/plan for the weekend. But there was no pleasure in it either, so there's that
Then again, expressing sympathy was a learned skill for me...I found that saying "Aww man, that sucks!!" Goes a long way for some people, so now I do it instead of jumping straight to fixing the issue. But it isn't my natural response - I jump straight to identifying and solving the problem. Which I think means a lack of sympathy (deaire to commiserate) not empathy. If I lacked empathy, I wouldn't care that they had a problem unless it inconvenienced me in some way.
Anyway, bummer about the rooster. Hopefully one of the progeny will work as a replacement, or you'll find a good option elsewhere.