To Feel or Not to Feel

For Nicky and Darren

Here's a question I recently discussed with a boy I know. A beautiful boy, I might add.
Is it better to feel pain than to feel nothing at all?
I recently broke up with my boyfriend of three and a half years and it hurt. It hurt lots. When I thought about the relationship in retrospect I realised that it generally hurt quite a bit and often but I don't regret a minute of it. I don't regret it because it's these painful experiences that make life real. I know people say they're character building and all that shit, but I don't really know about that. All I know is that these things we feel are real. They aren't informed by society or the media, they're our real reactions to a situation or person.
According to some theorist dude called Fredrick Jameson, we are suffering from media saturation to the point where everything we see and hear is perceived through a media filter. For example the type of people we find attractive are often the people that the media tells us are attractive by putting in these fanciable roles in films and stuff.
At least when we feel pain we know it's real and it's not what we think we aught to feel because of some subliminal pressure to feel a certain way. Another example of this is the way people get all sentimental over things, like babies or views of fields and cows. Do these things really mean anything to us? They may to some people but they certainly don't to me and I get called a misery or a cynic because I don't go all gooey over these things. I can't help it if they mean nothing to me and I'm not brainwashed enough to think I feel something.
The bottom line of this argument I had with this beautiful boy was whether it is worth allowing yourself to feel something even if it results in pain.
I say it is because feeling nothing is the pits.
Sure, if you don't allow youself to feel something profound for a person you won't get your heart broken but what's the bloody point of being alive if you don't allow yourself to feel?