A reader recently asked me about how I feel the different types of love (e.g.
Éros, storge, philia and agápe). When I love someone like a close friend or family member, it is primarily a feeling of gratitude for who they are in my life. I don't typically "need" anyone, so I do not identify with a desperate, needing sort of love. To the extent that I feel passionate or intensely for another person, it is because I have become obsessed or fixated with them. It does not always mean love, though, and love doesn't not always mean intensity, at least to me.
I can connect with people in various ways but I don't have vicarious feelings like empathy. If I show interest in someone else's suffering or happiness, it is more like a very strong curiosity. I have always felt like so much of the world is hidden. There is always a special pleasure for me in hidden things becoming revealed. It must be why empaths experience voyeurism and schadenfreude. Actually, one of the main reasons I enjoy longer term relationships is that eventually I can reveal to them all of my machinations from the beginning -- what I did to them, how I engineered particular situations, my foresight and skill throughout the early stages of the relationships during which I was required to keep everything hidden. There is a very pleasant tension and release aspect to that activity. It's almost sexual.