More Than Half of Women Think Their Sick Boyfriends Are Faking It

According to a new poll, men and women have very different perceptions of what goes on during cold and flu season (or as I don’t EVER like to call it, cold and flu SNEAZON!). Basically, women are heartless bitches who think their dudes are exaggerating symptoms in order to get attention/sympathy/unlimited soup. They’re also slightly less likely to care for their “sick” partners. (This seems to apply only to heterosexual partnerships. Apparently nobody cares about how gay, lesbian, and otherwise queer human beings treat the sickly?)

Here are all the stats from this legally binding and 100% true survey:

Some 53 per cent of women think their man overplays his symptoms, while only 20 per cent of men accuse their partner of the same crime.

…Some 89 per cent of men look after their other half when she is ill, compared to 83 per cent of women.

…Just over half of women say they want their partner to give them sympathy and make them a meal.

A third of women are keen to be bought a cold or flu remedy and 17 per cent just want people to stop fussing over them.

However, 41 per cent of men want to be bought medication when they are ill and 42 per cent want sympathy.

29 per cent want to be cooked a meal while another 29 per cent just want to be left alone.

…The study also found that 29 per cent of men think their partner makes a bigger fuss when she is ill than they do.

By comparison, 67 per cent of women think their partner makes more fuss than they do.

Look, I don’t know. People are people and people are different and not everything divides cleanly along gendered lines. Some people are whiny babies when they get sick. Some people are soldiers. Some people are skeptical dicks. Some people are exaggerators. The worst, maybe, are those who can’t abide other people getting sympathy, so they turn everything into a “more sick/tired than you” contest.

Also, I’m sure there are some unseen cultural pressures that condition people to categorize themselves as more nurturers than nurtured, and vice versa. Anecdotally, I discussed this poll with a couple of female friends, who said they’ll soldier on at work through the gnarliest shit, but their male partners will take three “woe-is-me” days off for the tiniest baby-sniffle. But that’s a biased perception too.

Anyway, who knows. Let’s leave it here: Don’t manipulate people by pretending to be ill when you’re not! It’s rude and weird! But if someone you love and trust says they’re sick, give them the benefit of the doubt! Be kind when they don’t feel good! Take care of them!