TITLE TYPO: empathize*, not emphasize

I've lurked around forums, including reddit, of manosphere men who are more on the "depressed" side than "angry" side of expressing their situation. Lots of demoralization, which isn't surprising given their circumstances. But since we're deviating from rage-posting and instead we're going more into the territory of "my life is shit" talk, one common theme around these guys is the specific extent of their desperation and the kind of stuff they are willing to tolerate just to avoid being single.

Lots of these guys look at men with abusive girlfriends who physically and emotionally torment them, and think, you know what? I'd rather have that than to continue being single. The main rationale is that "at least someone is attracted to me enough to be in a relationship with me, even if they're a bad person".

On youtube there was a channel that would sometimes rehost tik tok videos of women being horrible girlfriends, and there is the occasional comment saying that they'd happily take a girl like that if the guy doesn't want her. Can't find it anymore.

It really isn't surprising after all to see sentiments like this, because, well, that's what desperation does to you.

So my question is directed to you if you're a guy who has (had) a girlfriend that you'd call abusive. Suppose some guy finds out about your situation. He says that he is jealous of you: he knows that this girl is abusive and treats you horribly. But because he's desperate, he wishes that he was dating her instead, because he'd gladly take the abuse over being single.

My question is this: how would this make you feel? Would you feel offended that he's essentially minimizing the effect of abusive partners, or would you empathize with him because you understand that this is what being desperate is like?