Stella responds to negativity with yelling and aggressiveness, while Stolas responds to it with crying and drawing into himself. Most people are going to feel more sympathy towards someone who is "sad" instead of someone who is "angry".
Similar thing happened in Full Moon, with Blitzø yelling at Stolas while Stolas was walking away from him. Blitzø is not acting in the most healthiest of ways, but you can't deny that this is from holding in his own feelings for so long. You can't deny that Blitzø is dealing with his own pain here, and Stolas is just not listening to this.
This is a main issue that Stolas has, but the show doesn't acknowledge, that's Stolas is a terrible listener. He either doesn't notice or blatantly ignores the obvious issues around him until it blows up to the worst of circumstances. For fuck's sake, when his own daughter said she would rather kill herself than go to a theme park, he's like "Okay then, let's go. And let me bring along the man I am currently having an affair with as well." There isn't some hidden underlying message of what Octavia's saying; she made it very clear that she doesn't want to go. Why should I think he acted any different towards Stella when he treats his daughter, the one person that he cares for and loves the most like this?