Empathy, again, is the power way to understand and imagine another person’s feelings. Sympathy can be draining, but empathy cannot. Sympathy leads us to feel that we have to do something. Empathy empowers us by providing a special sense of togetherness and connection that is formed by powerful, mutual identification for the one you love.
So loving someone automatically means being empathetic with them, right? Not necessarily. According to Webster’s New World Dictionary the word “love” means
1) strong affection or liking someone or something,
2) passionate affection of one person for another,
3) the object of such affection, a sweetheart or lover, and, last but not least,
4) tennis, a score of zero.
Jeffrey Bernstein
