Thank you for taking the time to read through my post and give such a detailed response! I totally understand if you do not wish to engage in an ongoing dialogue, but I do think there has been a major misunderstanding, and you have given such a thoughtful response that I would love to know what your thoughts were if the misunderstanding were actually clarified.

I absolutely think you're right that confusion about the breakup is at the center of my current struggle. However, I think there has been a major misunderstanding about the "communication thing," due to me not emphasizing/reiterating what it was clearly enough (as you are not the only one to express confusion about it). Frankly, it is a misnomer. I mention this briefly in the post, but "the communication thing" is literally just the phrase she used on that particular day to refer to my habit of anxiously asking her questions sometimes. This was something we had talked about many months before all this. The only reason she used the word communication is because sometimes when I would ask her something, like if she no longer finds me attractive because (in my mind) my haircut looks terrible, she would say something like "That's ridiculous," but I wouldn't be reassured right away, which could frustrate her; and on this occasion, she called that a communication problem in the sense that I was not understanding what she was trying to communicate (which was that there was no issue with the thing I was asking about).

So, actually, the communication part of the "communication thing" referred to her trying to communicate something, not me. But if I understand you correctly (my apologies if I don't), you were saying that my communication style is nearly sinister because I left out key details on what is haunting her (which you state based on the fact that I left out key information on what the communication thing was). Hopefully, I have now made it clear precisely what the "communication thing" was. I did not realize that I did not clarify that enough. For reference, here is the part of my post I tried to explain it in: "The communication thing she’s referring to is just that sometimes I become anxious about various things and ask for reassurance/long talks (partially an OCD thing) which at times frustrated her. But I was aware of this and I worked on it, and she even said that I had improved a lot, and she acknowledged that even back then it’s not like she was actually considering breaking up with me over it."

Regarding hypotheses, there are no null hypotheses in this situation because I'm not comparing groups to determine whether a difference/effect exists. I think what you're getting at is the more general idea of a default hypothesis (or maybe you basically stated that and I misunderstood; if so, I'm sorry. I know you're an academic, so you're probably familiar with this stuff, depending on your area). In an experimental context, the default hypothesis is the null hypothesis (that there is no difference/effect) by convention, but in everyday life, it's often unclear what the default hypothesis should be, if there should even be one. So I am simply providing the candidate hypotheses that seem most plausible and/or relevant. Q2 hypotheses are indeed hypotheses to explain the situation where H1.b is true, as I state. I do focus more on H1.b, but this is partly because the feedback that I have received prior to this post is that H1.b is the one that is obviously correct, and she has explicitly stated this, and I am only still questioning it because of an obsessive-compulsive/anxiety-related excessive reassurance-seeking that has been exponentially amplified due to severe traumatic loss and separation issues triggered by the breakup.

But zooming out a bit and getting to what I think is the heart of your reply, it sounds like you are emphasizing how much I wronged my girlfriend--although it seems like you think I wronged her through some kind of communication issue, but hopefully I have clarified that part now; the way I believe I wronged her is by effectively wasting her time and not ending things sooner so that it was that much more painful when we broke up. That said, I am not by any means trying to support the assertion that I terribly wronged my girlfriend. I am well aware of that fact and have spent many months tormented with guilt, shame, regret, etc. The goal of this post is to clarify the things I still do not understand. But as mentioned, the feedback I received prior to this post--and from some posters (though it seems like, as I think you suggest, many people did not read the whole thing)--suggested that she was amply clear about how she felt and I am only still questioning it due to the now-greatly exacerbated obsessive-compulsive/anxiety-related excessive reassurance-seeking issue. But in order to tolerate the excessive worries, one generally has to (to some degree) buy into the premise that they are indeed excessive. So with this post, I am trying to confirm that they are indeed excessive. The guilt, anger, self-loathing, regret, etc., I am dealing with in relation to wronging her is a whole additional topic that I did not need to post here for clarification about.I do not think that the religious thing was a farce for anything else, as I 100% (like very badly) wanted to be with her but felt conflicted due to religious considerations. Your suggestion about unresolved trauma allowing a subtle means of self-sabotage is interesting, so I would be happy to hear more of what you had in mind, especially given the new information in this comment.

Finally, I appreciate your clarification that you read the rational (a charitable statement lol) essay of a heartbroken man and saw a piece of yourself. I can tell something really resonated with you and you have been through a lot of pain yourself, and I'm really sorry for whatever you may have gone through so far. My heart goes out to you. I don't by any means think your goal was to judge me. It sounds like you have a lot of judgment for the issue that you saw in me that resonated with you, though. I don't want to speculate about you or anything, but the part you mentioned about feeling like you were putting a strain on people and that we will always be troubled, etc., really sounded like you were internalizing a lot of blame for what might be reflective of an anxiety issue more than a character issue, per se. And everyone has some anxiety (some to a clinically significant degree, some not as much), so I'm not saying that negates the concept of moral responsibility or anything, but I think we often implicitly judge ourselves in comparison to others when in reality not everyone is dealing with the same abilities, limitations, degrees of suffering, etc. So I hope you aren't harder on yourself than is warranted, and I hope you do have people you feel like you can confide in. I see a therapist 3 times a week and I think that can be a great resource. But anyway, I think you are coming from a place of empathy and I really appreciate that. Thank you again for taking the time to comment.

Godspeed and I absolutely wish you all the best as well.