Dear Mina:

I am clear about the breakup communication on his part. And yours, I believe.

As to the “difference between real pain vs pain that I am only feeling by myself to comfort myself”-

First: in your case, “real pain” would be pain over the relationship being over, his choice, his stated choice. And the other pain is the pain following what you tell yourself so to comfort yourself, things that have very little, if anything, to do with reality, for example, that the two of you are still friends (reality: there is no contact) and that he will always love you (you wrote “we” will love each other, and “he” is part of the “we”)

In my experience, the pain I felt and feel over reality (what you termed “real pain”) felt more raw at first, of a different, raw quality, but once I didn’t escape it, but stayed with it, it got weaker quickly. It didn’t lead to overthinking or to depression. The pain led me to better understanding and more and more moments of calm.

The pain I felt when not facing reality was less raw but it was excruciating. It was not a lesser pain. It lasted much longer than the first, on and on and on, leading to a lot of overthinking and to depression, to hopelessness. The only breaks I got from the misery, the hopelessness is through daydreaming, fantasy. There was much comfort in my fantasy, made believe.

And this is a major difference: once you commit to reality, you don’t have that fantasy available anymore to escape to. Borrowing the concepts of heaven and hell, being committed to viewing reality as is, you are no longer in hell, but you don’t have heaven to escape to. Avoiding reality, you are in hell and sometimes on vacations in heaven.

anita