OG, I can see that you are a very sensitive guy. Sometimes when we see someone hurting, it's very painful for us to watch. Especially if it taps into our own pain. We want them to stop hurting, so we make comments that inadvertently sound like we are minimizing the pain. In a way we are... like saying to the kid whose puppy dies "We'll get you another puppy." We just want the child to stop hurting. But it's so important to permit ourselves and others to FEEL the hurt, even when seeing them in pain makes us hurt, too.
I think this is at the root of the guys' tendency to want to fix stuff. It's a lovely trait, really, and very masculine, IHMO. It's hard to just sit with someone and let them cry. A guy wants to get up and use a hammer or a computer or his fists to make it right. It's a good thing.
But a woman (and men, too) sometimes need to sit with a dilemma and feel what it feels like to be stumped, hurt, trapped, stupid, defeated, etc.
The next time your wife brings you something that seems like a simple dilemma to you, sympathetize and empathetize with her distress before you offer your solution. (You probably already do this. )
My BF is very challenged in this area. It sometimes makes me think he doesn't have an ounce of compassion in his body. I can't bring him my hurts, because seeing me in pain distresses HIM so much that he blows me off.
Yesterday on the highway I saw something that upset me and I wanted to talk to someone about it... just to express my dismay. There was nothing to be fixed. I knew that if I told him (because I've encountered this kind of thing a zillion times before), he'd just tell me not to be upset, that there's nothing I can do about it, etc. etc. I'd like him to put his arms around me and just say, "I'm sorry you're sad about this. I understand." PERIOD. END OF CONVERSATION. So I kept the whole thing to myself.
) 
