Ah, yes, old friends meaning well and setting you up, remember it well. It was also a disaster for me too, was nowhere near ready for that and everything just felt entirely foreign, strange, the wrong person in front of me.  It’s ok to just say I appreciate you want to help but no thanks, it’s just part of sticking up for Sylvie.

I would actually say the opposite about trying to focus on something else. Think of it as a bruise or a cut, you know, when you keep poking it to see if it still hurts and unsurprisingly the constant poking just makes it worse and it takes longer to heal.  It’s the same with emotional pain.  Most definitely you don’t want to avoid the topic but it’s all about how you are thinking about it. I bet you spend most of your time remembering the good stuff, whether true or not and taking perverse pleasure in trawling through all your good times together and how perfect he was for you etc etc? Which is just keeping your attention in the past and isn’t actually dealing with anything at all, it’s just poking the bruise, scratching the itch.  It’s another way of keeping the relationship alive and not letting go. And a new future with a happy you and either him in it or not in a new happy relationship is just not possible until you let go of the old.  Absolutely you need to work through this – why did you became so dependent, isolated with this guy, why did you accept less than you deserve, looking to improve your own self-esteem & confidence, on listening to yourself, to Sylvie. Basically, don’t ignore it at all but deal with it by working on you – not the relationship.  That’s the difference and you will be amazed at the impact.  When you feel the need to scratch that itch, that’s when I would use the other ‘mini-projects’ to distract myself from the habitual romanticising of the past.