Men aren't necessarily well known for their showing of sincere sympathy or compassion.

It wouldn't be too far off the mark either to say that most men completely miss most signs of pain or sorrow in others altogether.

But are we completely uncompassionate?  Do we not care ever?  No.  It's just that if something doesn't affect us directly, then we don't really have enough interest to even fake any believable emotion in the matter.

But we are still capable of showing extraordinary amounts of compassion in some instances.  It just takes something extra special to bring it out of us.  And I call that something special "fear".

Take for example if one of our guy friends calls us up and tells us that he was just arrested and is now in prison.

Our heart will immediately drop, and the sincerity of concern in our voice will have no match as we ask what happened.

Then, once we establish the fact that we ourselves were never part of whatever landed them in prison, the compassion in our voice quite quickly turns to relief.

Hey, sucks for them, but the game is on and I'm sitting in front of the TV with a couple beers.  Good luck man -- protect your anus.

Another similar situation where we express unbelievable compassion would be if our girlfriend calls us up from the doctors office with bad news.

"Hi, honey?  I'm at the doctors, and I have some bad news..."

A man hears those words and immediately freaks out out of fear that she's about to tell him that she just found out that she's got a disease that she may of given him.

"What is it!?  Do you have a disease?"

"...Yes..."

"Oh God!  Oh God!  I can't believe this!"

"I know, I know!  It's just such a terrible shock!  I mean, cancer -- I never would have expected this."

"Cancer!?  I've heard of that!  That's bad, that's very, very bad...oh God...we're gonna die!"

"I know.  They've given me six months..."

"Six months!!!  I've only got six months!?"

"...You?  I'm the one with the cancer, not you!"

"What do you mean?  It's not contagious?"

"No you moron!"

"Oh, Jesus Christ!  Wow!  That's was a fucking close one!"

"Close one!?  I'm going to be dead in six months!"

"Oh geez, I know, I'm really sorry.  I just got caught up in the moment, that's all...so, six months eh?"

"Yeah...what are we going to do?"

"I don't know...did you want to go sky diving or something?"

"No I don't want to go fucking sky diving!"

"Okay, I'm sorry!  We'll do whatever you want baby, I love you, you know that..."

"I know..."

"...So...I don't know how far along the funeral arrangements are at this point, but do you think that I could be seated next to your friend Nicole?  I always kinda had a thing for her..."

No, men are not uncompassionate beings.  In fact, it's really quite the opposite.  You will never find someone more emotionally involved in a bad situation than a man -- it just has to directly involve him, that's all.