Yes - exactly, I should have realized much sooner that there was no compassion to be had. I'd had boyfriends like that too. At the time there was a self-help school of thought that you should show your partner how to treat you. As in, if you don't like his reactions, open up the dialogure and ask for what you want.

So the therapeutic advice in these books would be to go to your parner and say, "Hey, what you're doing is hurting my feelings. I assume you didn't know that before. So now that you know this, would you please not insult me/criticize me for every little thing/laugh at my pain/dimsmiss me, etc."

But that NEVER WORKS, because the person who has a need to hurt you, has a need to hurt you. You can tell them to stop forever, and it doesn't have any effect.

I've discovered so many parallels to relationships in therapy. My therapist totally lacked sympathy from the start, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes I thought, optimistically, that his behavior was a therapeutic mask, and that if I could move it aside, I could reveal the compassion hidden beneath. I finally realized that there was nothing masklike about his lack of compassion at all. It was the truth! He was toxic and empty inside, just as he seemed to be on the outside. Whaddya know! I told him (in essence) to take his tough-love crap and shove it. That just doesn't work for me.

What baffles me is why toxic, empty people are attracted to a profession in which they have to not only demonstrate, but FEEL, compassion for their clients. I'll never get it