Yep, well, complete and total lack of empathy is confirmed. He stated that it is impossible to feel what another person is feeling. The conversation started with me requesting that he knock off the stuff about explaining why I shouldn't feel a certain way when I tell him that he's hurt me, and that I would like for him to simply recognize that I'm hurting and apologize for hurting me even when that was not his intent, *listen* to what I say hurts me, and not do it anymore. He argued that if *he* didn't feel it was hurtful, then he won't apologize and he will 'state his case' for why it isn't hurtful. Um, yeah, okay, good luck with that!

Anyway, the conversation evolved into 'putting oneself into another's shoes', and he explained that it is impossible to understand another person's feelings unless you have personally experienced them yourself. Not just some like them; the exact same feeling, brought about by the exact same event. I mentioned the tough time of having all the littles (our three youngest kids) when they were all in diapers, and all very needy, and how worn out I was everyday from giving, giving, giving and it was all I could do to keep my head above water with the constant demands on my physical and emotional strength, and asked him if he could understand what that was like for me. He said, "Nope. Never did it myself."

So I tried literature. I read a lot, and what I enjoy most about reading is experiencing things I could only experience through literature, and properly rendered literature does create emotion in me as if I were experiencing these things firsthand. H does not read much, but there is one novel we have both read that stirred a lot of emotion in me. "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. Did it stir any in him? Nope. He enjoyed the book, but he did not go along on the emotional ride, according to him. I told him about my feelings of anxiousness, calm determination, disgust, and others while reading that book. He thinks that's CRAZY. And said that nobody can feel an emotion just from hearing about someone else's experience. It's impossible.

Huh.

So I'm nobody, then. A nobody married to a sociopath. Nice!

I already knew all this, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. You can't fix sociopath.