I completely understand what you are saying. I’m getting out of a marriage right now, and like you, even when I look around me no one I know is satisfied with what they have. In fact the happiest person I know has actually been single, not dating, for a year. I do still believe in love, and the ability to be satisfied with your partner. But I’m not ready for that reality yet and if I met the right man the timing would be wrong. Maybe you just aren’t ready. I know for me I’m trying to focus on what went wrong on my side last time and maybe doing a little more emotional maturing. I used to believe being all tied up in one another’s lives and having that all consuming love was romance. It clearly is not.

I really hear you on this and if you can look there is goodness to take from this. It sounds like you’ve tapped into the pain and possibly the root cause of your divorce. Everyone shares responsibility in the ending of a marriage, so it is not just yours alone. Stuffing your feelings won’t work out in the long run, they always catch up to you. And what a beautiful lesson to learn. Isn’t that what ‘failing’ is all about? Educating yourself about your own emotional intelligence will only get you further down the path of moving on through research and reading you may even have an ah huh moment or two And accepting what is and what you feel. Just treat yourself as you would your best friend or own child. Would you tell him to move on already? That this should be behind him by now? Likely not. I’m also going through a divorce and when I look at my ex, who seems totally fine and happy I remember that he suffered a loss too. And, painful as it is, I am no longer in his life so I don’t know his real experience but it’s never quite what I imagine.