The second step in this two-part empathy process is what makes tragedies tragic.
Between Tom and Summer the empathy switch is slammed off. Neither one can read the other with any reliability. Readability is part of it. Summer plays things close to the chest. But it's mainly an issue of interpretative frame. Tom's general filter is biased. From day one he is convinced "she is the one," despite her straightforward stance that love is a fantasy and that Tom is just a friend. This premise of irreconcilable differences causes a cascade of misunderstanding and misinterpretation that, in turn, cause discord and discontent.
An example of the common and comical way in which Tom and Summer experience the same set of facts in polar opposite ways is provided by Alan Sillars, a communication researcher who wrote (Mis)Understanding. He describes a couple that is describing the husband's drinking problem. "The wife has a series of related thoughts: the husband knows he has a problem but he will not accept it; until he accepts it, they cannot work it out; he never wants to talk about it, always makes it into a joke, needs to wake up...she is sick of his tactics and may move out if he does not understand. At the same time, the husband constructs a different scene: he drinks because he wants to, it is not an escape; he loves her, even know she is overly critical....but she needs to relax and is getting offended for little reason; he thinks that bickering is a waste of breathe; she is trying to intimidate him and resorts to name calling because she knows he is right."
Tom and Summer suffer a similarly chronic case of misunderstanding. She first meets him in an elevator and says that she likes The Smiths, the band that he's listening to on his headphones. She departs and he says, "Holy Shit," because he is in love with her. Being consumed with this vision blinds him from the simple fact that all she loves is The Smiths. Deep down he knows that she is not likely to reciprocate. So, he does the next best thing, he refuses to see any other reality than the one he wants. This is accomplished by a massive self-conspiracy in which he acts ambiguously and relies solely on difficult-to-read non-verbal communication. Consequently, he can misinterpret the equally ambiguous responses that Summer is cornered into making with relatively little cognitive dissonance or unavoidably contradictory evidence. For instance, when they have the "I like you" conversation, Tom throws out a tentative "You're swell" instead of the "You are the best thing that ever happened to me" we all know he's thinking. When Summer gives the "You're very swell" response, the rails are greased for Tom to misperceive the potential for hidden love. She comes across as equally if not more excited about a relationship, because he sets the bar low and then over-estimates her great performance. He persists in thinking the thoughts of a hopeless romantic while verbalizing the vague half-measures of a guarded, nerve-racked adolescent.
Like drugs, this self-delusion is high on short-term pleasure and low on long-term happiness. He becomes miserable. This emotional dependence and withdrawal is the consequence of his biased interpretative filter, so the question becomes why doesn't Tom adaptively "reframe" his perspective with more quickness and efficiency? The difficulty with correcting interpretative filters is that we use these frames so automatically and ubiquitously that we are rarely aware of the fact that we see the world not as it is, but as we want it to be. From birth we are constantly developing this sort of subjective, idealized prism. Further, we are experts at inadvertently constructing our frames to be impenetrable to attack. We tend to create supporting narratives of our worldview that are high in plausibility and in consistency (with internal perceptions and external facts). Leaks are therefore difficult to identify, even if the ship is sinking.
Meanwhile, circling back to step one and the full blast of empathy that the audience has received (we are meaningfully attached to Tom and receive information exclusively from his point of view), we have become co-colluders in this self-conspiracy. We have submitted with gleeful passivity to seeing what Tom wants to see.
The turning point comes about two-thirds into the narrative when Tom discovers just how biased, if not blind, he has been. In this dramatic "reframing," the blinders come off and Tom realizes that Summer has never loved him. This becomes clear in a clever retrospective montage that replays an unbiased vision of Tom and Summer, in which Summer is either complacently dissatisfied or hostile. Their incompatibility and his one-sided love affair become painfully obvious. The next scene drills this point home with a split screen that chronicles both the reality of Tom's interaction with Summer at her house party, and his idealized expectations. In the latter scenario they rekindle their flame with intimate conversation. In the former, he discovers she is engaged to her true love, someone other than Tom. Ouch.
Though Tom does not walk off into the sunset with Summer there is a lesson in the silver lining of his mind-blindness for relationships that involve mutual love and affection. Research has shown that when insecure, highly dependent partners (like Tom) are in high threat situations (the other partner is harboring rejecting/hurtful things about the relationship), an inaccurate reading can prove protective to long-term stability and happiness. Indeed, the skill of knowing when to stay out of another's head can be a critical boyfriend/girlfriend skill. This is called motivated inaccuracy. That is, partners whom momentarily convert themselves into wildly inaccurate mind-readers (worse than a total stranger) during such "threatening" moments enjoy longer, less conflicted relationships. Of course, an important qualifier to this is being accurately empathic in most other situations.
If Summer had ever become invested in the relationship with Tom then the positive side of his motivated inaccuracy would have become more apparent. Tom's overestimation of partner strengths, avoidance of partner problems, and the generally unsuspicious mind all serve to buffer the relationship from corrosive relational forces.
In the final scene, the filmmaker throws the audience a bone of relief and enjoyment, as the empathy switch is turned on for Tom. Thank heavens.
Tom meets a prettier version of Summer (named Autumn, naturally), and the encounter is a highly empathic one. This can be gauged by the degree of synchrony. Tom and Autumn meet in the waiting room of an architecture firm for which they both want to work. Synchrony is everywhere, physically, emotionally and cognitively. Their speech rate and body posture match and mimic each other. They mirror each other in the degree of pleasure they express about getting the architecture job and the degree of timidity they express over agreeing to a date later that night. They finish each other's sentences, and they laugh simultaneously at unfinished punch lines. They even look the same. Now this is the kind of romantic comedy we all know and love. And it only took 95 minutes to get there.
