Dear Mina:

You developed a strong emotional attachment to this man. What you are experiencing is the loss of that attachment. Maybe looking deeper into the nature of emotional attachment to another person will help you:

The first and most powerful emotional attachment to another person that a child experiences is to one’s primary parent, the one there taking care of the baby/ young child. For the young child the attachment to the caring parent is something like this: there is no separation between herself (the child) and the parent. The two are one entity, in the child’s mind. The thought, if it occurs, of losing the parent feels like death, certain and immediate death. There is no existence possible, in the perception of the child, without the parent.

We forget, as we age, how we felt as young children. And then we get involved romantically, as you have. In your relationship, you formed the same kind of attachment with added romance and physical intimacy to it, an intimacy of  a different kind, but the attachment is the same. When the relationship ended, it feels like death, just like it would have felt if you lost your caring parent as a young child.

This response to the loss of emotional attachment cannot be otherwise: having mutually agreed to the breakup, having predicted it, knowing it is the right thing, wishing him well… all these do not change the nature of attachment. Losing it feels like death.

It is not “self destructive behavior” that you are experiencing, I believe. It is the loss of emotional attachment.

I hope you post again with your thoughts and feelings.

anita