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Suryc11 comments on Open thread, July 23-29, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I posted this comment on how to optimally (in the vast majority of situations) handle a break-up.
Since the parent thread was massively downvoted and my comment itself received relatively positive feedback, I thought it may be beneficial to post a link to the comment here.
Also, I'd like to note that LW massively helped me in getting through my break-up. It seems like a sort of trivial/silly situation to talk about on LW, but (at least for me previously) it's tough to understand just how painful heartbreak can be until it actually happens to you. If it were not for concepts like the Outside View or distinguishing between System 1 and System 2 thinking, I'd be in a worse place than I currently am; so, thank you.
Upvoted the original comment. Is your goal to do a self-hack to eliminate the (now) troublesome feelings towards the SO or to simply 'move on' while maintaining some of those feelings?
Thanks! I actually hadn't thought of it in terms of self-hacking, but that's a really appropriate term for what I've been trying to do.
And I suppose the former. I don't think it's quite possible to fully move on unless I really have no feelings (either positive or negative) about my ex. I drew an analogy between breaking up and withdrawal, and I think it sort of holds here; if there are still feelings lingering, it makes it so much harder to resist the temptation to "relapse," in a similar way to how it's harder to prevent relapsing if one hasn't addressed the underlying triggers/causes of an addiction.
I think part of the reason why No Contact is so effective is that it removes all temptations, in the same way that it's much easier to stay committed to a diet if the foods you're trying to avoid simply aren't in your presence (related to lukeprog's Good News of Situationist Psychology post).
Another intriguing quasi-LW-related aspect of No Contact is that it can be likened to spending a chunk of willpower all at once in the beginning so that you later won't have to expend (more, if aggregated) willpower constantly to, say, not check up on what your ex is up to. It's an investment for your future self.
Yeah. I think of it as No Attention rather than No Contact. Out of sight out of mind works.
Right. I should have specified that No Contact, the way I'm using it and have seen it used, doesn't only involve no contact; like you said, No Attention may be a better way to put it.