be able to recognize them and how difficult they can make things for a person even preventing them from fully realizing their predicament . If they genuinely don ' t know that x action leads to y consequence then the deserve sympathy for their ignorance , but if they ' ve constantly been told by living according to their methods they are creating the likelihood for y consequence and continue x action despite an awareness of the correlation then no , they don ' t deserve sympathy for reaching the consequences of their actions that they ' ve been informed of . It will get irritating if they ' re staying over and they lock things you don ' t want locked , turn things off that shouldn ' t be turned off , etc . etc . too . But what is the y consequence to these actions ? That one day they ' ll piss off one of their friends and not be invited over ? If this friend constantly lost their relationships because this behavior interfered then I would , initially , be very sympathetic to their situation . However , if , after they ' ve lost multiple relationships , this person doesn ' t try to find guidance or help to find some kind of compromise or doesn ' t say hey , my disability has this consequence so its best if I create z boundaries to make sure I don ' t offend my friends , then so be it . There is a grey area that I ' m discovering as I write this . If this person constantly loses friends and , as a result , chooses not to stay over at their friends house or has to purchase some sort of private space to prevent them from enacting their OCD on others and laments their conditions , I ' m inclined to be a little more sympathetic of them . That they have found an alternative method that has the unfortunate consequence of alienation which they lament is a rock and a hard place . I was deliberately trying to avoid including people with illnesses and disabilities because there is a degree to which it is outside there control but the consequence of this is putting myself in the position of qualifying what is and is not an illness or disability . In essence , my argument was coming down to if they can control themselves and dont and yet lament their circumstances , why should I feel sympathetic . # 8710 With an instance of illness or disability , there is a level of control that the person just does not have . That inability for control or selfrestyling lends itself to a sympathetic occasion . While I still have a hard time accepting that the 3 anecdotes I introduced show a real inability to take control , I acknowledge the illnessdisability of their circumstances are not obvious .