can two empaths become close?

I used to know someone who was regularly upset with me because he felt my pain. He wrote, via email, that I was supposed to keep my pain on my side of the 'net' and never sully the table of friendship with it.  Sometimes, I acknowledge, I offloaded pain when emotionally hurt and not being mindful of both the fact that I was triggered and then acting out by offloading my pain.  I don't know anyone who has not done this, including the man I refer to who demanded, yes demanded, that I take responsibility for his experience when I was in pain. I was in pain over my stuff. I've never had a friend, and I don't want such a friend,  who thinks I am 'going over the net' for revealing honestly what was going on with me.  I don't want to hide who I am, giving up who I am as the price of knowing someone else is a price I don't think anyone should ever pay.

I think this person and I are both high empaths, which means we tend to feel a lot of the energy of others.

Gosh, I was in my forties before I realized I am an empath, before I realized that quite a lot of what I felt was other people's stuff. I was much less able to remain grounded in equanimity when I was unaware that I felt other people's energy as keenly as I do.  I've become more mindful over the years, more away of where my energy ends and the energy of others begins but it is ongoing work. Mindfulness work, I guess, although I am a little uneasy with the sudden hipness of mindfulness. I was meditating for thirty years but now it's all about mindfulness. Whazzaup with that?

I think two empaths who feel attracted to know one another closely would have to do a lot of work together, work which can only be done by spending lots of tie together, sensing into one another to know where one person begins and the other person ends. Almost a high wire act but work worth the effort.  The rewards, in the relationship I have alluded to, would have been awesome. Both he and I are, as he once put it, such very special people.

Special people need special people. I need someone like him, as sensitive and brilliant as he is, but someone who loves me back unconditionally. I deserve it and I will call such a man in.