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It’s hard for me to get inside the mind of someone who lacks empathy. It just seems so arrogant to stomp through life putting your brand on anyone and anything that gets in your way, without taking the time to feel what the other person feels. You have to have blinders on to be that self-centered, and I don’t get it. It’s true, though. I have no empathy for those who have no empathy.
Can’t people (like, say, Tim, just to give a random example) see what toll their attitude takes on the people around them? Someone who demands his own way all the time leaves a wide swath of misery behind him, and probably ends up getting what he deserves.
I know for a fact that Tim has driven away a lot of people who could have made him a happier person. I’ve met some of the girlfriends who have given up on him because he asked more of them than he did of himself. I know his mother is a good and decent person, but he won’t have anything to do with her because of something he can’t even remember. That’s so stupid and self-destructive that it’s beyond my poor power to assimilate. I couldn’t live that way.
It’s pathological, isn’t it? It might help me understand if I knew there was something clinically wrong with a person like that. Maybe medication can keep him from spreading misery. He can’t be a happy person. I can tell by the way he freely tells me what’s wrong with every other person in the world. I can tell by watching him demean and belittle and roll over people who step the merest inch out of line, if the line is a line that he’s drawn for them to walk. The trouble is, you never know when he’s moved the line, until he lays into you for making a misstep. | 
