> My wife does not like when I solve problems instead of just acknowledge the problem and say "that's a shame/sad/terrible", but I can't help it, we as engineer

> My wife does not like when I solve problems instead of just acknowledge the problem and say "that's a shame/sad/terrible", but I can't help it, we as engineers are wired to do solve problems, not just acknowledge them. There is also a strong gender imbalance there, in that men have been evolutionarily hardwired as problem-solvers. This is evidenced by the near-ubiquity of women who have been enraged by their male partners always trying to solve the problems that they bring up, when “solving” wasn’t even in the same universe of why they raised the issue. It takes an immense amount of effort for most any man to just sit there and listen to a problem brought up by someone they care about, and to not offer up any solutions to that problem. Mainly because the only reason why any man would proactively confide in others with a problem is when they are actively soliciting for - or, at least being open to - advice on how to solve it. We simply cannot imagine why any proactive b*tching about a problem isn’t done explicitly for the purpose of finding a solution.