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Comments

• FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I think you’re a bit selfish. But not broken. I’m the same way so I’m not judging you. I do the exact same thing. I try my best to objectively appreciate what I have and those around me. Try going out of your way to show appreciation to others, even if you don’t immediately feel it yourself. Sometimes the feeling of appreciating others comes after you demontrate to them and to yourself that you care.

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• southsamurai@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Broken.

  That’s an interesting term for this.

  What you’re describing is a lack of empathy, to a degree that night be called narcissistic or sociopathic (though we’re talking colloquially here, so don’t be wasting time with formal usages of those terms).

  But, yeah, that would mean you diverge a good bit from what’s considered normative. That’s one usage of broken. If that was caused by an external event or events, even more so.

  The best definition of love I’ve come across is the feeling that another entity’s happiness and well being is central to your own happiness and well being.

  But that still doesn’t really get the job done.

  Love, when it’s washing thorough me, is a sense of rightness that the entity I love is in my life. A sense of completion and connection that goes beyond the practical. It’s also the feeling of recognizing that without that entity in my life, my life will be wrong.

  And I say entity because love isn’t limited to humans. There’s still holes inside me shaped like dogs and cats and rats that are no longer alive. There’s even a hamster shaped hole there too.

  You get enough of those holes, and there’s not enough left to be. You’re left a shredded and drifting thing, waiting for whatever final damage rends you into dust.

  That’s part of what love feels like, that feeling when it’s gone.

  Take that as you will.

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• BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  If you’d be willing to put yourself in harms way for another person, you love them. By harm I don’t necessarily mean dying, harm could mean even a risk of an injury or something.

  Just to be clear, love doesn’t necessarily mean romantic love, it can be love for a family member, a friend, or even just society in general.

  I’d jump in front of a car to protect my wife and kids, but probably not my dad. He’d be okay with that since he’d be the one jumping in front of the car to protect me. If he calls me up and asks me to help him install something on top of his house (he has a history of falling off ladders) I’d go do that for him though.

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• frankenswine@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  not everybody is able to feel empathy as much as others do. and since i doubt that one can learn it all i can encourage you to do is learn how to integrate socially without offending too much

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• kender242@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Imagine something more valuable than your life. Every moment you think of a loved one being well you feel joy. When they are hurt you feel a physical pain in your chest. You would do anything for them. The world is no longer about you.

  Looking from the outside that sounds like a very vulnerable and unattractive situation to be in. But I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

  (Disclaimer: It’s still possible to hold unconditional love and betray that love in a self centric way, I have, but the above is how I would describe the ‘feeling’ of it)

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• kayzeekayzee@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Sometimes a lack of empathy can be due to a hormonal imbalance. You might benefit from some kind of hormonal therapy, if that’s something you want to bring up with a doctor.

  One of my close friends was affected by something like that

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• spankmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  You aren’t broken if you are just becoming aware of how you feel. People can feel love for one or many people, pets, and other things and if someone can only love one person then someone can love no one.

  Being aware that you are looking at things selfishly* doesn’t mean you need to change necessarily if you still have good relationships. Those and future relationships might improve if you start to conciously think about putting others first or how others might feel differently from you. Or they might not, hard to know.

  As long as you don’t think you are superior or that others are beneath you it doesn’t matter whether you love them or not. I don’t love strangers, but unless I know they are terrible people I still treat them with respect and assume they have things going on in their lives that might make them happy or sad. This tends to improve interactions with strangers because it means I don’t let small things they do bother me, even though I don’t really have feelings about them one way or the other.

  *Thinking selfishly is fine as long as it dpesn’t lead to something that negatively impacts others for your benefit. We shouldn’t always put others before our self and we shouldn’t always put our self before others. Somewhere in the middle.

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  • pinebud@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    [deleted]

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    • spankmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      But if it inconveniences my life, then it bothers me

      That’s fine. It only becomes a negative when you react to it in a way that is a detriment to others.

      I care about other people in various levels but there was one person who had made my life miserable for reasons that weren’t really their fault for months and I was happy when they died because it was a benefit for me. It wasn’t even their fault, but not knowing them means that while I can have empathy for their situation, that doesn’t mean I needed to suffer. I’ve also been extremely sad when someone died, even through it had a negative impact on me, because I enjoyed interacting with them a few times.

      But I’ve also put my life at risk to help other people in dangerous situations even if I didn’t know or care about them because sometimes humans have to help humans. I’ve also avoided being involved when someone else was clearly better able to handle the situation.

      If you always think about yourself, but it isn’t harming anyone else, that’s fine! We all have different levels of caring about others, which can include zero.

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