We cannot be convicted of abusing a lovers empathy with our self-created misery but we can still be guilty. Our ability to feel what we think is one of our conceptual powers. The mind does not communicate to the body in language but instead uses impulses. Those impulses cause real feeling. If we are unaware that we can generate any feeling including misery, it is likely that we impose those intense feelings on others. We not only abuse lovers empathy, we may even flatter ourselves for sharing honestly about our felings when to a large extent our emotions are rooted in fiction. Let’s take care that out imagination does not rob us of the good things we actually have in our life including friends and lovers.
By Todd Vickers