Would you be willing to trade places all the way? He spends a week as you and you spend a week as him. That might be instructive in a marriage.

But I'm with Christina. I would not wish my traumatic history and various afflictions on anyone else, ever, even for a single day not even in the hope they might start understanding and treating me with more sympathy. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

When I was young, I often thought I'd like to be able to experience life through somebody else's perception and mental/physical feelings for just a few days. I thought that would be really cool. But not so much any more. Instead I try to practice empathy and compassion and acceptance.

Maybe their experience would leave me shattered and I wouldn't be able to pick myself back up again or -- and this is a dark thing to admit -- it might lead me to feel less compassion and acceptance. I mean, what if my response was something like, "You call THIS pain. HAHAHAHAHAHA!" It wouldn't help much, would it?

I'd much rather take a person's word for it that they're suffering or tortured or in pain without having anything to compare it to. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want people inside my reality because for some my experiences might be piddling little misadventures and for others it might completely put them under. Each person is different. If someone says they're suffering, I figure it's my job to accept it because it's their true experience. I've had some truly terrible, ghastly things happen to me by any objective measure, but I know other people have had much worse things happen to them. Much worse.

I also know there are people who over-dramatize and catastrophize for the attention. I wouldn't really want to know for sure that's what they were doing because it would probably leave me feeling sour and unaccepting toward them forever.

No, I don't think I could take trading places. I might not like the outcome.