A cold-hearted person isn’t going to announce their true feelings to you, but you can see it through the way they act when somebody else is hurting, and their response is a little too cold.
They wait on the sidelines
It’s not hard to see when someone’s struggling. Cold-hearted people, however, are the kind of individuals who stand there long enough to see how bad it gets. They’ll see that someone’s carrying too many bags and fighting with a stroller, but do nothing about it.
They’ll watch for a while before deciding whether helping is worth their effort. Taking the time to wait matters because it means that this person isn’t naturally empathetic. No, they’re unwilling to step in more readily to assist. They just don’t care.
Everything becomes a practical problem
Crying doesn’t work the same way on cold-hearted people. It has a way of making them weirdly efficient.
They’ll start asking who needs calling and what time the appointment is, as well as what the next step should be. It’s useful, sure. But it’s also pretty cold because it means every emotional detail gets ignored in favor of logistics.
It makes the whole exchange feel less warm. You’re not going to get any kind of emotional response from this person because they care more about fixing things. Sitting with your pain means absolutely nothing to them.
Nothing gets put down
Try telling a cold-hearted person about the difficult things you’re going through. You’ll probably find that they keep scrolling on their phone or half-watching whatever is on TV. It tells you a lot. Attention is part of how people communicate care, and a lack of attention shows that they don’t care.
They’re not present, and they’re not interested in what you have to tell them. That hurts. You don’t have to freeze in place every time bad news appears, obviously, but it’s pretty telling when someone continues like nothing changed.
The questions point backward
You haven’t even finished telling them your bad news, yet the cross-examination has already started. They’ll ask you a dozen questions about why you were there and why you trusted the other person. In other words, they stop reacting to what happened.
The cold-hearted person is hunting for something to blame you for. They want you to have caused your problem, and yes, it’s essentially a form of victim blaming. They prefer to believe outcomes are deserved because they’re that cold-hearted.
Once is never enough
It can feel pretty uncomfortable having to ask for help. It’s only worse when you have to ask twice. Some people make others do that on purpose, and they don’t make it easy to ask them for help. Yes, they’ll give you a vague ‘maybe’ when you make a simple request.
They might be silent, and then react the same way when you ask again later. Empathetic people are more willing to offer help. They don’t need to be pushed to do it. As for colder people, well, they’re going to turn help into something the other person has to extract.
The apology doesn’t end it
Good luck if you try apologizing to this kind of person. They’re not going to decide what they want to do with it, and they’re not going to let you know clearly whether they forgive you. They’ll let you dangle for a while.
You’ll have to keep guessing while they stay icy for another day. They might even make you apologize again, even though it was pretty clear that they understood you the first time. Cold-hearted people deliberately stretch out someone’s discomfort to make themselves feel better.
Bad news wakes them up
Tell these people about someone else’s good news, and you might get a flat ‘nice’ in response. But tell them about how that same person got fired or embarrassed, and they’ll be all ears. There’ll be a dozen questions to match, too.
Psychologists call this kind of pleasure at another person’s misfortune schadenfreude. It’s normal to feel a flicker of it now and then. It’s not so normal when someone gets noticeably more alive because somebody else is having a bad time.
The answer is technically right
One of the subtlest signs comes with their answers. They’ll tell you things that, yes, are technically correct, but they’re deliberately unhelpful, too. For example, you ask them where a file is. They’ll tell you that it’s ‘in the drive,’ and that’s true.
It’s just a completely pointless answer that doesn’t actually benefit you at all. That sort of ‘answer’ means they’re not outright refusing to help. But they’re also making sure you don’t get much help at all, and that’s one of the coldest things someone can do.
The subject quietly disappears
Serious news is a one-time conversation for cold people. You tell them about something bad going on, and days later, they fail to bring it up. There’s no follow-up question or any kind of attempt to see whether you’re okay.
It all boils down to the fact that they don’t care, simple as that. They’re too detached to bother asking to see how you’re doing, and they’re really not interested in circling back after something major happens. Your problem is pretty temporary to them.
Their eyes stay on the reaction
You might notice something after they make a mean comment about you. They don’t look away like most people, but instead, they watch and study your face for a second. It’s almost like they’re checking to see whether you’ll cry or not.
It’s quite a different reaction from somebody realizing they went too far and trying to fix it. They’re getting pleasure from your discomfort or pain. That’s not exactly the trait of someone warm-hearted.
Pain becomes irritating
Pain is something that doesn’t make a cold person concerned. It tends to just annoy them. They get irritated when someone cries too long, and they get frustrated because someone moves too slowly after being hurt.Â
Try talking about grief one more time, and they’ll say, ‘Are we still doing this?’ They have no empathy for the person that they’re talking to, and they’re not thinking about the person who’s suffering. All that matters to the annoyed listener is how inconvenient the suffering is.
Curiosity gets there first
There’s no question like, ‘Are you okay?’ when someone walks in upset. The first thing a cold-hearted person says is, ‘What happened?’ because they just want the whole story. They don’t recognize the emotional cues when something’s gone wrong.
For a cold person, the event itself is a lot more interesting than the person living through it. It sounds pretty nasty, but it’s true.
The words stay strangely neutral
Most people describing a funeral sound different from somebody describing a delayed flight. Cold-hearted people aren’t like that. They’ll talk about death and betrayal, even somebody completely falling apart, in quite unemotional terms.
They’ll say ‘There was an incident,’ or ‘She became emotional.’ Their language is neat, maybe too neat, and it’s because they have no attachment to what’s going on. They’re being sterile with their words. That’s exactly how they feel, or don’t feel, about the bad news itself.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
15 things women do that instantly break a man’s trust
Building trust can take years, but you can destroy a man’s feeling of security quickly by crossing these 15 boundaries.
