Was there real romantic potential here,

The spread splits your question in two, and neither "it was real" nor "it was an illusion" survives the draw whole.

Past — Two of Pentacles, reversed. Something real lives here, and it wasn't the spark: it was the footing. Reversed Two of Pentacles is balance that didn't hold — too much in the air at once, or one of you never had the room the other needed. Whatever this was, it ran on something wobbling, and that footing is a fact, not a feeling.

Present — Seven of Cups, upright. This is the seat your word "illusion" lands on — not to say everything was fake, but to say that what exists now is a row of cups: versions, possibilities, one life where it worked out, all still up in the cloud. The Seven of Cups doesn't accuse you of inventing anything. It says the shape of this in your head right now is mostly pictured, not lived.

Future — The Devil, upright, and only if the cups stay in the air. It isn't a doom card, it's a chain card: attachment, a bond that feels fated because it's familiar, the pull back to the version that was never actually inhabited. It only gets a vote while the possibilities stay un-landed. The moment one of them stops being a possibility and becomes something you either do or set down, it has nothing to hold.

So settle it against the record, not against the memory. If the thread — messages, calendar, the last six weeks — shows ordinary repeated time: plans that actually happened, contact neither of you had to manufacture, effort spread both directions, then what existed was real, and the fog you're feeling now is the Seven of Cups doing its work on top of a genuine thing. If the record is mostly plans, few real hours, and the vivid version is one you assembled after the fact, then what you fell for was a picture, and the chain the Devil names is the picture — not them, and not a missing you.

Your step tonight, alone: open the actual thread and read it oldest to newest, writing down only what is verifiably there — who started each conversation, how often, how much real time, what was said in writing versus assembled in your head. Thirty minutes, and you are not rereading your own feelings while you do it. What the cards can't hand you is how often this actually happened; that's sitting in the thread, and the thread is the only place it lives.

Want this spread drawn as a picture, or this reading saved to your journal?