Anita,

You wrote : shift your focus from him to you and to engage in empathy for myself

Can you explain this in more details?

How can I do this?

Anita,

I cannot help but laughed when I read your sentence :

“…. poor Gyunnie, he must be suffering right now. He must be overwhelmed with his study load, and thinking about the upcoming military service… and that he lost one year and-”

I feel like you went inside my head and heard all those thoughts. This indeed very accurate, that is how I think about Gyunnie most of the time.

I have reached out to a couple of my close friends, and they said the same thing as you and Gyunnie said,

“Monica, are you out of your freaking mind? You almost died, and you are suffering so much every day yet you are still CONCERN about how HE is doing or feeling? Think about yourself, worry about yourself.”

I understand this concept and I am slowly grasping it as well.

You wrote : “it is not his pain you are experiencing, it is your pain.”

I am not really understanding this sentence. What do you mean by MY pain? I mean … I was feeling a lot of pain BECAUSE of him. His pain became my pain, correct? Please enlighten me.

You wrote : “Focus on how to relieve your own pain when you feel it.”

I am not sure how I can do this…

-Monica

Anita,

I understand. What I have been feeling is not his pain, but my own.

Gyunnie did not created it, I created it by myself, my own mind created it.

I agree with the statement that those around me are indeed sometimes feeling sad / discontent but I never acted like this, I never actually “tortured” myself.

I mean yeah I feel sorry / bad for them but it will just be for a moment and I won’t even let it affect my life, at all.

Me “concerning” Gyunnie is indeed a form of self torture.

Self torture that comes from my own guilt, for not being the best girlfriend for him. For not being more supportive and understanding through his difficult times, maybe things would have been different IF I were more supportive of him, who knows.

I blame myself for losing him, it is my own fault that I lost someone that I loved.

I deserve to be punish for that, and that punishment is – feeling that constant concern and worry over Gyunnie happiness and well being.

I do not deserve to be happy if he is not happy. I do not deserve to be healthy if he is suffering mentally.

-Monica

Anita,

You wrote : “It is this emotional attachment that makes this difference.”

I am well aware, but how can I fully dis-attached from him then? Like how I am not attached to other people?

How can I put Gyunnie in the same category / level as other people?

You wrote : “I believe that Gyunnie is not the first person in your life to whom you felt such strong emotional attachment.”

That is true, the last time I have been romantically this attached to someone was to my first love.

I looked back at that experience, and I felt a lot of similar situations but this time – it is even stronger and deeper than what I had felt when I broke up with my first love.

I think the reason why this break up is very hard on me is because I do not have any support system here in Korea. All of the people that I trust is in my home country, and they are often unavailable to talk or give advices due to college assignment and exams.

I often feel alone, I have no family or a lot of close friends here. That is why losing Gyunnie was really hard to the point where I had thought about killing myself. My friends back home pushed me to just find a few friends that I genuinely like to survive for 3 years that I have left here.

Due to my relationship with Gyunnie since we dated from the very first semester of college, it was hard for me to find a lot of friends due to time and priority conflict with my boyfriend. People usually find as many friends as they can during the 1st semester but I was not able to do that due to being in a relationship. That was a mistake on my part, I admit that.

I often feel homesick and cry because I missed my home country. I have mentioned the pressure here in Korea is really tough to handle. From physical looks to personality – I have to be the one adjusting to the Koreans. I have to do things THEIR way and I feel like their culture is too single minded and too competitive for me in general.

I do not know what to do with my studies as well, I am feeling lost for a lot of reasons.

I lost my boyfriend, my reason or hope to study here at K University. I am not even sure if my major is the right major for me, there is no option for a major changing here, so my only option is doing double major which is very hard.

I am confused, no one here really believes in me (as a person) either. I am not getting acknowledgement from anyone.

-Monica