Please explain to me compassion and how one can show it

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My boyfriend broke up with me because I lack compassion, empathy and sympathy. He says I don't show it at all and it bothers him alot and so he had to break up with me. I understand what empathy is, I think. I am pretty sure its when you feel someone elses feelings because you love them. If I am correct I really don't want empathy! Why would I be sad if some one else is and I am precfectly happy? But after thinking, I would like to aquirre compassion. How can I do that??

Compassion and empathy are far easier to show (and to learn to show) when you have experienced similar things yourself.

If I recall correctly, you have been a victim of a lot of nastiness and bullying, which made you build up defence mechanisms and take it too far the other way?

Experience of life will help, trying to notice what other people go through, and learning from your own experiences, all supported by the right therapy. You could read books on it which could also help.

No not really. I just want to know how one shows it. I just don't get how someone could acuttally show a feeling other than fear, happieness or sadness.

You don't show compassion. You show its (desirable) result: comforting. Google "how to comfort someone".

I used to have a best friend, many years ago. I left the friendship for her lack of compassion, because it resulted in such coldness, standing by doing nothing in moments when I needed comforting, just a word would've done a lot. Her bf left her for the same reason. Then she met someone who, like her, is only interested in money. They're both uncaring. They're very happy together.

Often showing compassion means doing or saying things that lets the other person know that you realize they are in distress and that you care and want them to feel better. I don't know that you actually have to FEEL their distress, just recognize it and show a desire to want to help. Does that help?

You can't make yourself feel something you don't feel naturally, and it's pointless to try. You can't learn an emotion. Maybe you're better off alone.

No.. but you can learn to recognize social situations where certain types of responses are expected or appreciated, and then learn to do them, in order to better fit in & have better relationships with others. It may never be perfectly natural or intuitive, but we have the ability to intellectually process & learn better ways to react and respond to things - so why shouldn't we?

I'm no Trekky, but it's like Data or Spock asking & learning about the human race so they can better comprehend people and then using logic and rational thinking to better mimic human emotions and social responses.. exactly like that, and like those fictional characters we're capable of doing the exact same thing by trying & practicing and seeing what works and what doesn't and figuring out how to do it better.

To accept utter failure at interacting with others and show genuine compassion or concern for people in an appropriate way that's accepted and embraced by the recipient is nonsense & a self defeating self fulfilling prophecy if that's the way you choose to go about your life, continuing to be a bumbling robot who's opted to give up vs. try. Some of us may be able to learn to do these things with greater skill and capability than others, but every single last one of us can try.

OK, one thing - autistics don't lack compassion. If you genuinely don't feel anything when you know someone you're close to is upset, that's a separate thing from autism.

However, many autistics have trouble with the communication aspects of compassion, both input and output.

On the input side, firstly, social cues can be hard to read, and it can also be hard to understand what someone else is going through if their experience differs from yours. It's quite common for autistics to miss cues that would be obvious to an NT. Some autistics also have trouble with the cognitive aspect of imagining being another person, as well, which means they won't infer how someone else feels by how they'd feel in that situation. And sometimes autistic traits can make you feel differently in certain situations, so if you do imagine yourself in their position, your reaction would be different. (For example, I've never felt embarrassed, so that makes my reaction to certain situations quite different.)

On the output side, well, autistics can be as hard for NTs to read as NTs are for autistics. We often produce different social signals for various emotions (I used to sometimes laugh when I'm afraid, which got badly misinterpreted). Plus, it's harder to learn the cultural rules for how you should express certain sentiments, because of all the input-related difficulties.

There is no easy solution. It takes a lot of work to learn these things. It also takes understanding from the NTs in your life. Did you tell your boyfriend about AS?

You're better off than I am. I do feel empathy. When someone close to me is upset, I get upset. When I get upset I shut down. They don't find this very comforting. If I didn't actually feel upset I would be able to exhibit the appropriate comforting behavior, or at least try to.