This post breaks my heart. Not just because of your story, but because of your conclusion.
First you fell in love very hard and got hurt. And so now you put up a wall and "opt out" to keep yourself from getting hurt.
Your conclusion is just the flip side of the same dysfunctional coin. In your relationship, you had no boundaries. Now, you've decided to put up a wall. But what you need are healthy boundaries and healthy expectations of someone.
So, and this is a bit blunt, but I consider you a friend after reading your posts and will tell you exactly what I'd tell a friend: your conclusions are coming out of a wound, not the truth.
Here's how I can tell:
- Victim thinking: You write, "My heart was broken." There's no personal responsibility there for your own emotions.
- Idealization of the other: He was your "teacher" and you put him on a "pedestal." That's not love. It's partly infatuation, it's partly having someone fill a "father hole," and it's an unequal power dynamic, especially the idea of making him "better than" and yourself "less than."
- Codependency: "I felt his pain, pleasure and everything he experienced." Mature love is when two whole people meet to create a third whole, the relationship, which they feed and nurture together. That "merging" with the other, and so much more in this post, is classic codependency.
- Misunderstanding what love is: Our culture feeds us all these lies about love ("you complete me"), and we mistake the greeting card sentiments for real love. Think about it this way: A child is dependent on its parents. So childish love is emotional dependency on someone else. An adult love is interdependent.
There's so much more to say, and I'm only able to guess at all these things because of your vulnerability and honesty and lucid prose. So here's what I'm going to conclude with: Read "Facing Love Addiction" by Pia Mellody. It will help you understand how your own childhood set you up for this unhealthy relationship, and how it is part of a very common and tragic relationship dance of the "love addict" and the "love avoider." It begins with infatuation and idealization, and ends in disillusionment and pain.
So here's my conclusion for you: Opt in.
Opt in to understanding yourself. Opt in to understanding the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships. Opt in to becoming a scientist of your own emotions. Opt in to taking responsibility for yourself in choosing him and getting caught up in him and losing sight of who you were. Opt in to growth and understanding and finding your own strength to love again--in a new, emotionally whole way--knowing that the only person who can ever really abandon you is YOU.
I say all this because I've been through it. And I made every evolutionary, logical, and technological argument there was against "romantic love" there is. Very persuasively. But it didn't make me any happier until I spent two years working on healing my own emotional wounds, and came out the other side with a happiness--and a relationship--I didn't think was even possible.
Hope this helps and makes sense.
Yes, you are correct. I self-identified as a love and fantasy addict in 2009 and I went to some meetings where I found people like myself. I wondering, how do I begin? What do I do? How can I heal by myself, is that even possible?
How does one heal a life lived? You do what you did then, and what you do right now, you continue to move through time, forward. Hopefully you get to pluck from the experience and time that flows around you, and find the answers we're all here in this river panning for ;)