An AGONIZING question for someone with empathy...."So, If they CAN'T control it or be helped...shouldn't I pity them?"

When your EMPATHY causes confusion and self-doubt

Can they love?

Can they love our children?

Can they be held accountable if they truly cannot feel love?

This is where it can get a little difficult to comprehend how they "work". 

IMHO...at least in the case of the abuser I dealt with...I believe he THINKS he loves and is attached to people. Since he has no normal concept of "love" as we know it...he ASSUMES he loves. I TRULY believe that he goes into relationships hiding his motives (even partially from himself) and that he believes that THIS IS THE ONE. 

I think that it is even more complicated than we sometimes imagine. 

While I KNOW that he targets people for REASONS...I also think that he convinces himself that he truly DOES love them and that these are merely "benefits" of this love. In his case, I think much is at a sub-conscious level in the beginning as he enters into his delusion of "perfection" and a doting, worshiping soul mate. 

His NORMAL behavior is abusive...which begins to wear on, and damage, his victim. As the feelings of "love" for him begin to be cooled by abuse he begins to demonize the victim for "lying to him" when she PRETENDED to be so in love with him and for no longer seeing him as perfect due to the abuse she endures. 

The spiral continues and his anger and rage grows until either she leaves him or he discards her.

In the interim, he senses her pulling away and may try to do things designed to get her back to the worshiping stage. 

The one thing he CANNOT do is change the abuse he doles out on a daily basis because he does NOT SEE IT AS ABUSIVE. 

While the victim enters a stage of realization of his imperfection and may STILL be willing to stick around (since normal people KNOW that NOBODY is perfect) the abuser CANNOT TOLERATE being seen for what he is (even if the VICTIM is willing to accept him for what he is) and DEMANDS that the relationship return to the stage of her seeing him as "perfect". This is not possible for the victim because the abuser is OBVIOUSLY not what she thought he was. 

In a NORMAL relationship this is seen as relationship "maturing" and is seen as NORMAL. In the abusive relationship this is intolerable to the abuser. 

Eventually either she leaves or he discards....at which time he determines that she is to blame because she LIED to HIM when she said she thought he was "perfect".

She then becomes the enemy to be destroyed and he will commit PURPOSEFUL harm to her feeling very justified in doing so because she is a "LIAR" and never "REALLY LOVED HIM". 

He finds another doting, worshiping victim and the cycle starts all over with him BELIEVING that THIS TIME he has found the RIGHT ONE....

Male or Female....many any times the abuser never believes they have done anything wrong and that is why it is so confusing. 

They DO KNOW that what they do would be wrong for others. 

They KNOW morality and they know right from wrong. 

They would quickly condemn others for doing the very things they do. 

The thing is ...they TRULY think that they have acceptable reason to do what they want. The BELIEVE the rules should not apply to them. They are INCAPABLE of experiencing accountability. So while they do very evil things they do NOT see themselves as evil or wrong. 

It is almost like dealing with someone who has an emotional/mental deficit.

It leaves MOST of us, at some point, scrambling to come to terms with our duel feelings of anger at them and pity for them. Truly...if they CANNOT SEE that what they are doing is WRONG...can we hate them for it...can we even EXPECT them to understand it? Many of us have had to pass through this process. 

In the END, the truth is, they are harmful. Whether it is their fault is immaterial. No matter what delusions they hold, or why, they harm one person after another...including innocent children. 

Whether to hate or pity or both depends on the victim, but the fact that what they do is wrong and unacceptable is a fact! And no one deserves to live that way!

Pitying them will not change what they are...nothing will. We must escape it or be destroyed by a person who has no chance of not destroying everything they touch and, eventually, destroying themselves...whether or not they ever see that.

I think, eventually, we end up neither hating or pitying...but we come to point when we see a lost cause for what it is and simply walk away and live a normal life. It is someone else’s turn to take the journey. We have paid enough.

I equate it to this. 

If a Doctor told me, TODAY, that everything I think and feel is a delusion, that nothing is as I thought it was and that there were a range of feelings that I simply did not possess but other people did would I ever accept that? 

Likely not.