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There is a big misconception when it comes to empathy. Some people will tell you that people with empathy are weak or that they're not capable to defend themselves. That having empathy men's to treat people who are bad to you good.

Well what having empathy means it's understanding cause and effect. Understanding why someone is behaving the way they are, or why does someone experience those emotions at that time.

If you're going to do a good enough job to understand other people around you. You're also going to understand the risks and limitations that other people bring, so you're more likely to defend yourself or separate yourself from others who are dangerous towards you.

Empathy doesn't contradict self-preservation it's actually part of self preservation. Tolerating abuse is not empathy it's naivety. Empathy sometimes leads to forgiveness and repairing the relationship you have with that other person, and  sometimes through understanding the cause and effect you might reach the conclusion that it is best to go in separate ways. 

If you keep your connections with people who treat you unfairly it means that you don't understand them enough to realize the risk that this people bring to your life. Or that you don't understand yourself and you don't have enough empathy toward yourself to manage your own emotions and behavior in a way that keep's you safe.

In order to stop the abuse you have to develop empathy towards yourself and towards your abuser. From that clarity you'll be able to deck the best course of action possible at that time.

Understanding the wrong and the effect that those wrong actions created, it what allows you to blame the right people and hold them responsible. As well as rejecting to cause other people the same type of sufferance.

People with a high amount of empathy don't mix well with people with a low amount of empathy. Empathy is a generally speaking, higher in intelligent people, it is based on the ability to recognize patterns and making associations, which is what intelligence is, this is what we measure with an IQ test.

It is almost impossible to have fair relationships with them. Because they will hurt you and don't register any bad emotions after they do, this would trigger the cycle of retaliation, making the relationship somehow more fair, with someone with a low amount of empathy.

But if you have a lot of empathy, you probably will understand that retaliation is an infinite cycle, in which both parties involved are constantly hurting each other for they're own personal gain. So you might have a problem doing that. If you are around abusive people and you don't retaliate you are in a massive disadvantage. So that makes it impossible for you to be treated fairly by this people this is why you have to avoid them.

Your reservation to retaliate don't necessarily come from the desire to protect your abuser, but from the desire to protect yourself, because if you retaliate you continue the infinite cycle of causing each other pain.

I am not saying to dance sick retribution if any of your property was damaged. That would be considered a self defense action. There is a very big difference between retaliation and retribution.

Retribution means recovering something that was previously yours from someone who took it through force, through committing a crime. While retaliation is not necessarily a way to recover something that was previously taken from you in an unfair way, as much at it is about defending your ego.