Buy this book, read it, then invest heavily in your own happiness for the next 2-4 yrs. The demise of a marriage is no less traumatic than the death of a loved one and takes the same grieving cycle to get through.

Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself
Melody Beattie

This book, ~$10,000 in marriage counseling/therapy and 3-4 years is all it took for me to get past my first marriage. No big deal! :?

It took me about three years to rediscover the Rags I like after my divorce. I grieved, I got mad, I was in denial, I rationalized, I bargained, I got depressed ...... I repeated the grieving cycle countless times before I came out the other side as the guy I was before I married my XW and accepted the demise of my marriage. Only I was a whole lot more confident and more emotionaly healthy and experienced than I was when we married.

Greiving is not a series of stages it is a roller coaster. But ...... give me a roller coaster over a merry go round any time. A roller coaster has slow times followed by times of terror. A merry go round just goes around and around.

Give me the excitement of the roller coaster any time.

The demise of my marriage sucked. But I commited to myself then that never again would I stop being the guy that I like being. Though I loved my XW dearly and was commited to her and our marriage I am a far better husband to my incredible Wife than I was to my X. I am also far, far happier. My marriage is a huge add to my quality of life rather than the drain my first marriage was. I get emense joy out of loving my Wife, supporting her and making an amazing life together. I spent most of my time and engergy in my first marriage trying to avioid getting my ass kicked emotionally.

Hang in there. It will only hurt really bad for a few (3) days then it will get a little bit better every day until eventually you will have only the occassional unpleasant memory. At least this is how it works for me. This what I refer to as Rags' 3day rule.

Best regards,

Success is rarely final. Failure is rarely fatal. It is character, courage and consistency of effort that count. Vince Lombardi (with some minor Rags modifications) To each according to their performance, screw Karl Marx. (Rags)

My heart just goes out to you Living... I've been in your shoes, but the first thing I want to ask you to do is look... really look at the name you are choosing to go by on here.... You can't move on until you make the decision NOT to live in regret, not to live in indecision, not to live in limbo, not to live in anything less than self love, accpetance, understanding, etc. You are strong Living, you just forgot who you are somewhere along the way. You are strong and you will make it through this and you will even be better for it in the end. I went through something like this recently and it hurt alot. It wasn't until I truly distanced myself from the situation and started making new (and old) friends and started finding myself again that I was really able to accept that he left and that I couldn't change that fact.... I also couldn't make him love me again, and that became okay as I realized more and more everyday that I loved me and that is enough.

Funny, just dawned on me that I learned all of this from my daughter's SM! Such an amazing woman :).

When my last relationship ended I decided that something needed to change. I was tired of relationships ending and I began to look at myself and decide what I was doing wrong. I learned that my part in the relationship ending was due to the fact I too was living in regret. I was unwilling and therefore unable to move past the hurt and rejection of my failed marriage.... I regreted everthing and I wouldn't allow myself to even look at much less address what happened.
My daughter's SM also went through something similar, and she told me that when a relationship ends it "breaks" a part of us and we have to work on ourselves and become "whole" again before we could successfully move on and move into a healthy, functioning relationship. Whereas I had always just moved on to the next relationship never taking the time to come to terms with the wreckage along the way. My daughter's SM and my ex have been on-again, off-again for years in large part because she was still living in the hurt from the end of her marriage and she couldn't let her new man in fully until she accepted her life as being perfect and complete just the way it is.

I don't know if this is the situation for you, but I would suggest looking within and looking to the past, own whatever your part was in the end of your marriage, own it, accpet it, forgive youself and move on with your life. I know that it's not just that easy and it will take time and you will have bad days.... and please feel free to come on here anytime that you need help.

I also will say that when my ex and I broke up I also lingered around hoping that somehow sparks would fly again.... they didn't. He looked at me differently, he acted differently toward me, the love in his eyes had completely dissapeared and I was nothing more than a body to fullfill his needs.... I am better than that. YOU are better than that. Don't do that to yourself. I heard on Dr. Phil once, "More often than not we divorce someone different than we married".... The man you married is gone, he's been replaced with the man you see now.... mourn your loss... that's normal.... What you had is gone. But remember that you don't like this new person, you likely wouldn't date much less marry this new version...

I hope some of that helps.