My life has changed hugely since reading WHLTM a few weeks ago and then discovering this website. It is as if I was in the right place at the right time and they were the last two pieces of the puzzle I needed to figure things out.

I had been aware that I felt things deeply and looked at the world a little bit differently but had no idea I took on the feelings of others around me to this extent. And until now I had no idea how that affected my relationships. Reading a lot of the posts from you ladies I can see most of you are in the same place I was a short while ago, so I thought I would try to write about what I have figured out so far. I hope it will help at least one of you understand their own behaviour.

I will try to explain it through what happened with the last guy I dated, the first proper relationship I had after the breakup of my marriage more than 3 years ago.

I met AC through an online dating website. He wasn't a very handsome man and was twice my size, but somehow there was something appealing about him which led me to make the initial contact. On his profile he had indicated an interest in the same sort of ethnic cuisine that I was interested in. So we had common ground. Our first three dates were for coffee over the course of three weeks and I didn't think there was any chemistry because it felt like he had a wall around him that I couldn't penetrate. I felt I couldn't get a sense of who he was. Even though I had very little understanding of my empath ability, I knew this intuitively. He showed no interest in any sort of physical contact, not even a casual peck on the cheek in this time. Then his birthday came up and I got my courage together and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Around the same time I ran into him in the local mall with his daughter. I had this strange feeling my world had tilted on its axis that day. Like my feelings for him had changed somehow.

We began meeting for dinners at my house and gradually our relationship evolved. One night he gave me a foot massage. And that changed the ballgame for us. Suddenly I felt this intense attraction to him. But he was a man of few words and I had very little understanding of his feelings for me. I did ask him if he wanted to be just friends or something more and he always had various excuses about not knowing what he wanted. Finally when I said I was at the point of making a decision myself and wanted us to just be friends, he gathered up his courage and we took out relationship to the next level. From that point onwards I was hooked. Within the space of 3 months I was totally in love with him to the point where when he did something bad like standing me up for a movie he had promised to take me to and going out of town one night, I couldn't be angry at him because I was more worried about the hurt I will cause him than being open about my own feelings. I knew I was in trouble but couldn't help myself. I tried talking to him about it to say, don't consider me a doormat because I let you get away with this bad behaviour. I could see he was ashamed of what he had done, but he also couldn't also figure out why I was being so passive about it.

From time to time he would tell me not to change what I wanted in order to please the other person but I kept reassuring him I was happy if he was happy. We spent three weeks away in Europe on holiday and my love for him intensified, but I could also see how selfish he was sometimes. I also kept wanting to stay in physical contact with him all the time which he found rather strange.

Something he said about a week or two into our holiday made me realise that although my feelings had intensified, to him things were the same as they always were and nothing would change in terms of him sitting on the fence about our relationship status once we got back to real life. I tried to talk to him about it and finally as a last resort I told him I loved him. We were sitting by the River Main in Frankfurt and I felt this intense grief that he did not return my feelings and all I wanted him to do was put his arm around me and hold me. Of course he didn't do that and when we got back to our rooms I said I was leaving him and checking myself into a hotel room. As usual he struggled with his words and couldn't really come out with anything to connect with me. As I got up to leave I turned to say goodbye and on impulse reached up and gave him a hug. Suddenly I felt this strong feeling of regret and sadness coming from him. Anyway, long story short, we ended up talking and agreeing to come back home and work things out.

Once we were back home we continued to see each other once or twice a week. He would never stay over and often would spend 2-3 day times in a row with me, but would make no moves towards initiating intimacy with me. About a month later it got to the point that I made an issue of it and said I wanted to be with him when he really wanted me, but not if he was only doing it to please me. A couple of days later he turned up and said he didn't think a relationship would work between us. We broke up and stayed away from each other physically for about a month with emails exchanged only for practical things like returning each others property. I made contact with him last week and asked if we could be friends. Since then we have spent a few hours talking and I shared with him about my discovery that I was an Empath and we have been piecing together how it affected our relationship.

I realise now he was one of those people that keep themselves closely guarded from the rest of the world. When I am in his presence but not touching I cannot feel his energy and therefore cannot feel what he is feeling. Because he is not good with expressing his feelings through words either, any connection I feel with his is superficial. The only time he lets his guard down is when he is around his kids. And that is why I felt like I had this sudden connection with him when I saw him with his daughter all those months ago.

As soon as we started touching though I could see right down to his core and feel what he was feeling. And my connection to him was intense. But of course he doesn't have my ability, so he is only connected to me at a superficial level. I am sensing his attraction to me subconsciously and acting on it to initiate a physical relationship and as he doesn't know it is his feelings I am acting on, all he sees is this crazy woman coming onto him. That is why it felt like I was taking all the responsibility for the relationship and doing all the running around. I kept telling him I felt like I was on the outside of his life looking in and he kept telling me he could understand why that was. Now I know he didn't feel strongly attracted to me the way I was to him and he certainly didn't see any reason to let me into his life. He only got a superficial sense of me through the various encounters we had had to date. But I was connected to him at a visceral level.

I was fortunate that I had this encounter with an honourable man. His problem was he wasn't open to letting someone into his life or was otherwise known as an emotionally unavailable man. Imagine if he had been a Narcissist, where I would be today. Being an empath had up to now meant I took on the other persons feelings and enabled them to be acted out all the while protecting the other person from the consequences of their actions. I was inevitably attracted to what I call lame ducks and abandoned kittens and had come close to destroying myself completely more than once in my past.

In the simplest terms what this has meant for me in the past is meeting someone I had a modicum of liking for, letting them get close, feeling their desire for sex, letting them do it because once I take on their feelings they become mine I can't tell which is mine and which is theirs and then finding myself in situations that I can't get out of with people that I don't really like...

When I meet someone that I able to connect with at the core of their being, I am in bad trouble because I crave that sense of connection and will put myself through whatever pain and suffering to keep experiencing that sense of comfort. Those are the relationships that bring pain and keep us connected for ever....

I don't have all the answers figured out. But I know why relationships haven't work out for me in the past. I know I married someone simply because I felt their loneliness and desire for a physical relationship. I also know I need to do a lot work on figuring out what I really feel before I can let anyone else get that close to me. For the moment, AC and I have agreed to be friends. I have also made friends with a fellow empath, but that is a different story altogether.....

I hope this will help some of you understand your relationships a bit better...