Have you ever met someone who has no empathy?

[Wivern]

I was wondering about this today after I met up with a friend who meets this description but who I still value a lot because we have been friends for a long time. It made me wonder how many people are like this which we never realise unless they do something absolutely horrific and cruel. The latter are probably the ones that get noticed but I wondered about the ones who don’t because they just blend in and don’t commit crimes?

No. That's not the same as having no reaction to someone's distress or pain.
The people you describe would probably put in extra boundaries, would probably not work in such a profession, or at the very least would occasionally or regularly 'crack'. The person being described is far too consistent with being on the far end of the low empathy situation.

My aunt has no empathy for anyone. She'll tell anyone distressed to 'Buck up'. At a funeral I've heard her tell a bereaved family member, 'Don't cry, we don't wear our hearts on our sleeves in this family'. Never comforts anyone who has had some bad luck or is unwell.

Then her own mother died and she utterly utterly fell apart. I had to hold her up at the funeral and she cried for weeks. We were all so kind to her but there was a lot of 'perhaps now she'll understand and soften a bit' between the rest of the family.

Nope. A few months later she snapped right back to how she was before, perhaps a bit worse.

@User7989776 that dark empath sounds like quite a few men I have heard saying many terrible things about the mother of their children. You can hear the hatred in their voices and the complete blame put on them for every negative attribute or action the child might make. They hate the ex so much that it clearly doesn't register with them that saying such bad things about their mother to the child will hurt them in any way. Very interesting.

Yes, me I’m afraid, and some of my DC. I’m not unable to imagine other’s feelings and I’m not unkind, quite the opposite. I also think I’m quite decent at actively empathising in conversation. I just don’t automatically feel for other people most of the time.

I keep trying to teach my DC that they need to at least pretend to care when someone else hurts themselves. My one empathetic child has been kind to injured people since infancy. I reckon the others will take til about age 25 to do a convincing fake.

Neurodivergent. There is empathy with neurodivergence. Huge amounts, in fact. But there's also a different way of processing situations and the need for the most efficient way of doing things (only as an example going on your example here) sadly over-rides social programming, giving the appearance of being low in empathy. Information basically travels along different pathways, first. It's actually hugely misunderstood how it all happens but it's ironic just how much it can give the impression of the opposite to the intention meant. Written down, it sounds obvious that one should not tell people how they were wrong and what they should do. The problem is not with not understanding this (at least not having that at the forefront of their mind in that very moment). The problem is that one person is possibly a bit too faithful to the objective truth and efficiency combined with believing that you'd want the same, rightly or wrongly. A lot of this will be subconscious, probably. Anyway, it's easy to see how it'd be interpreted wrong. Even time and time again.
Neither side is wrong necessarily but the results are often messy.
I just feel that this may have been the case here...:)

My husband

My mother
I remember being about 15 and had period pains so bad,i couldn't stand up
I was in agony (childbirth,years later didn't come close)
She just walked away after telling me I was 'making a fuss over nothing' and refused me painkillers

Another time she passed me a jar that was filled with boiling water
The jar shattered in my hand and burnt my private area-it burnt all my public hair off and burned my skin down to blisters
She refused to take me to hospital and I had to walk,by myself to the doctors (after school) to have the dressings changed as she refused to give me a lift (ill never forget that pain-i walked like a crab for months and was badly bullied after because of it)
She even refused to give me a note to skip pe
I'm still to this day scared 'down there'
The hair never did grow back properly

I also remember a friend of hers
The friends house burnt down and she had no insurance (skint single mum)
She lost everything she owned-all she had was the pyjamas she was wearing and her two dcs (who,thankfully where ok)
I saw the mask slip while she was patting this woman on the back and cooing that 'it'll all be ok' then I heard her tell my father later 'it's not my fucking problem'

Saying that he has the empathy chip missing too as he finds others misfortune funny

I remember him waiting to meet me in town and a mentally disabled lady got talking to him (I do not mean that in any way to be offensive)

She was telling him all about her life and he thought her life sounded awful (apparently she'd been abused and was still going through hell at the hands of her carers but couldnt see how bad her life was/make changes/complain because of her disability)

I walked up and he made his excuses and left her
He thought her life sounded 'hilariously shit' (his words) and was laughing about it (I was so angry with him for taking the piss out of this poor lady but he didn't care,he just carried on laughing)

Both stood by and watched me go through hell as a single parent and did nothing at all to help (physically,mentally,emotionally or financially)

I remember them laughing about the fact I was living hand to mouth and that i 'cant afford shit' (they even made me pay them back for every single penny they spent on my dc)

I know she's a narcissist and he has something missing

I'm nc with the whole family-theyve passed the gene onto my siblings who are exactly the same-its every man for himself with that lot

My stepdad. He was very good at mimicking empathy and concern to appear likeable, but behind closed doors was full of contempt for everyone. He absolutely didn't care about the wellbeing of anyone, but enjoyed being liked and admired.

I find that hard too, unless something really bad has happened to someone. Often I just don’t understand why someone would react the way they do to something as I would react differently.

However they may love her to her face only. When she needs empathy lots of time it just won't be delivered just like she never delivers. I seen it happen.

I feel that I've become less empathetic as I've got older. I'm mid 40s now and am less affected by sad events than I was say 20 years ago. I'm not heartless and can see other's opinions and struggles and react appropriately but I don't carry it like some people might. I've worked in children's safeguarding and can absolutely'put up a wall' at times and almost detach from situations so that I can remain calm. Maybe life toughens you up?

I worked with someone several years ago who was absolutely vile towards me. She bullied me so ruthlessly I was on the verge of being suicidal. It was horrific. And I wasn’t the only person she was like this too either.

The funny thing is she’s a vegan, and it’s always made me wonder how can someone have so much compassion towards animals that they make the decision not to consume any animal products whilst being such a bully towards their work colleagues?

Me, I genuinely don’t care about other people especially if I don’t know them.

Sob story on the TV switch it off - honestly bores me to tears.

I know situations are sad for people and I know what society expects as a reaction from me and I can play that part. But do I genuinely care about another persons sadness if I don’t genuinely care for them - no I don’t. And I m not sad about it.

I can experiences intense empathy as if it’s me that’s experiencing the pain or had the thing happen to me, it can be something pretty small, it feels worse if it is linked to injustice or something that would be an unexpected sadness and I don’t even need to know the person. Then in other situations which are completely tragic I just feel nothing. I’m autistic but I’ve learn to feign empathy at the times I know I should because it feels like the right thing to do. I’m not heartless and I don’t want hurt anyone’s feelings. I just literally feel nothing even if I know logically something is really sad, even deaths of family members or friends! It just feels inconvenient and upsets my routine but I’d never dream of saying so!

My son has no empathy. He’s AuDHD.

I'm the same line of work Maybe it's burnout. It fluctuates with me, sometimes I'll think to myself it's weird how much my empathy has declined, but a week later something can catch me off guard and I will really feel for someone.
I've never had much empathy for temporary physical pain though, chronic or serious illness yes, but if someone breaks a finger or has a headache I don't understand why they complain and want sympathy. It will be better soon, just get on with it.

My husband. He can perform it I’ve realised but there are cracks. He pretended for first 1-2 years and I fell for the acting. But realistically not he’s incredibly self centred and can’t see beyond anything to do with him. He cannot put himself in another persons shoes

Cognitive empathy (the first) and affective empathy (the second). I'm the same!

I’m regularly told I don’t have much empathy, I do but I maybe don’t show it in the way people expect. If it’s someone I know I care about them and what happens to them, but people I don’t know I just don’t really care, my job involves dealing with people who are vulnerable and I think it just wears you down after a while, compassion fatigue.

Someone I worked with quit her job because her grandad was ill and she wanted to go him, and I was surprised by this, I couldn’t understand giving up a job for an ill grandparent, I might for a parent and 100% I would for a child, but to me it was madness to do that for a grandparent, you expect grandparents to die, it’s not an emergency situation it’s just part of life, but all my colleagues thought I was heartless!

Yeah I had to do an empathy quotient as part of my diagnosis. I thought I was quite empathetic and would ‘pass’ easily. I scored 7/80 🤷🏻‍♀️😅

Yes I married one 😡

I don't do a caring job, so perhaps haven't had the same degree of exposure/toughening up, but I'm a similar age to you and feel I'm much more empathetic now than when I was younger. I used to be able to read and watch things that I just can't now because they upset me too much. Having children made me much more easily upset by other people's pain and it never went back to how I was before.

Yes my daughter,
she 8

My dad.

Dead 13 years now, but I still think he had no empathy.

I've actually brought it up to my family that he might have been a psychopath.

All glib superficial charm, but would sit down at our family dinner and tell us (me and my mum) about some horrific animal abuse case in the news that day despite me telling him not to. It was almost like he liked doing it as it happened often enough.

Had no real feelings that I could detect. Just all superficial emotions.

I don't feel like I knew the 'real' him, and I don't think anyone did. Least so my mother.

I’ve known a few people with no empathy but a strong sense of justice and fairness (as most people would understand it) which means they’re decent people, if quite rigid and sanctimonious, remarkably uninterested in other people, and often unfriendly.

I’ve known others with no empathy and a strong but very warped sense of justice and fairness that centres their own interests and doesn’t recognise anyone else’s, finding any situation unfair if it doesn’t favour them explicitly over others. These people are noticeably socially impaired, often vexatious, bullying others horribly while genuinely convinced they themselves are victims. They are very difficult to get along with in most contexts. Not psychopaths, but sociopathic. I think most abusers fit this profile.