Why is it that I'm so affected by my current relationship issues?

I feel like my life has been turned upside-down, and it's pretty tough to maintain any level of excitement about anything in the foreseeable future. Don't get me wrong, I know that I will be fine, and I know that my life is great, and in comparison to anyone with a disability or injury or poverty, etc I have nothing to complain about. But those are just thoughts right now. They aren't in line with my feelings. My conscious mind is able to deal, but the subconscious is still having issues.

So I wonder... why does this relationship issue affect my subconscious so much?

As I like to do, I came up with 3 reasons. None of them are super easy to understand (even for me, residing in the same body as my subconscious), so I'm not sure I will be able to describe in a way that others will understand.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not trying to reflect negatively on my parents... I no longer hold any conscious grudges against them - I'm just trying to understand myself

• Criticism - As a child, I developed a view that no matter what I did, it wasn't good enough and there was always something wrong with it. I've spun this into a positive view: that there is always room for improvement and that arrogance is not justified even if you are very good at something. However, this criticism from a young age led my conscious brain to develop defenses to never expect praise for anything. Meanwhile, I think my subconscious is desperately seeking that praise. I don't allow most people in my life past the conscious defenses, but I definitely did with the girlfriend. I enjoyed being closer to her, but now I've learned the price for that vulnerability. For the first 3.5 years, she was very very rarely critical; but due to the relationship shift, she has been more honest lately - even sharing tons of retroactive criticism. This cuts deep, because I never saw it coming and never had a chance for defense. Hopefully, in the future she can share these concerns when the events occur, instead of saving up until the relationship is under pressure and then suddenly open the flood gates.
  
  So, that seems to make sense. I think most people would agree that criticism tends to be unpleasant under any circumstances, but since I'm already viewing myself with a critical eye, learning that my assumptions about my girlfriend's positive image of me are not correct is an unexpected shock. The childhood background explains why it cuts so deep and isn't easy to recover from immediately.
  

• Abandonment - Until this relationship upheaval, I never saw much use for Freud's childhood based explanations of emotions, personality, etc. I always thought that I could overcome any childhood situations without lingering effects. However, reading Getting the Love You Want and understand my recent emotions through this lens has convinced me of the validity of a childhood personality formation.
  I've realized that I have a deep fear of abandonment. I can't trace it directly to specific childhood events; but I do think there's a good chance that my caretakers were often busy when I was little and that set a pattern where I crave attention and fear abandonment.
  I can remember specific incidents reinforcing this fear after that formative stage. At 14 or 15 I experienced what I interpreted as abandonment and I ended up residing which the other parent. After that each of my romantic relationships have ended with me feeling abandoned, and the current situation feeds right back into that fear. Now that I've written it down, it seems more understandable than I expected.
  

• Deserving of current position - The third point is probably not as easy to understand.
  Sometimes my parents' relationship wasn't very smooth, and my view at the time was that one of them was 100% at fault. When they divorced, I saw it as an overdue event. Since childhood, I've put much effort into shaping my personality as different from this parent, so that I wouldn't repeat this pattern in my own life.
  However, now, even though it doesn't make sense that I'm 100% at fault, I'm unable to avoid the fear that I am in some sense repeating the pattern. Since my girlfriend has been so good to me for 3.5 years, I know that she can't be 100% at fault, so that leaves the possibility of me being the problem. This is even reinforced by one of my criticism coping strategies, which is to assume that the criticism is correct and move on from there. That's great for dealing with most day to day criticism that I encounter. (For example: After someone honks at me while driving, I think, "So what if a random stranger doesn't like my driving? It's likely I'll never see them again - if I just let it go, then it will be over. After the immediate anger passes, I think "Do they have a valid point? Perhaps I shouldn't have pulled this particular maneuver - I'll have to remember that for the future".)
  
  This one is especially tricky, because my mind immediately clung to the idea that I'm deserving of this position, because I'm so familiar with that relationship analysis from my childhood. When I have noticed that my emotions are the same as the parent I considered at fault, it only leads credibility to the idea that I really am at fault. Even my sadness and pain leads me to feel responsible.
  
  I think I understand what I'm trying to say... Doubt anyone else would read this 3rd point the same way - LOL
  

hmm...
that's definitely enough self-evaluation for the moment. It does feel nice to have gotten some understanding of why this is so emotionally distressing for me. It makes sense that much of the pain isn't coming directly from my relationship - but from personality traits that I've had since childhood. Hopefully that allows me to deal with it better, and gives my relationship a much better chance of returning to having a positive effect on my life.

as an aside... I've stopped talking to my ex. She was supportive initially, but in general she tends to be pretty critical; and I don't feel like I need that right now. Plus, it's not fair for me to hurt her by telling her how dedicated I am to my current relationship.

that leaves only my MoM with whom I can chat with about all this stuff... perhaps that's how it's supposed to be. Even though it seems the GF has 10's of people to talk to who support her; but maybe that's just a "grass is greener" type reaction.