I think this feeling won't last forever. I'll bet it comes and goes. But in the morning you might not feel the same. I wonder if you are in love with a man who never really existed. I did this with an ex bf. after 6 months of being apart I realized I had been in love with a bf I had made up in my mind. Being apart gave me perspective and I finally saw him for who he really was, a passive aggressive, emotionally abusive whiney a-hole. I did not think if him this way right after breaking up with him. I just thought it was his kids I couldn't handle. Turns out he was the real problem.

And I also went through major withdrawal. I couldn't stand being alone and without a man. I went to the gym and lost weight. I did the online dating thing, met a number of guys and emailed a lot of them just to stave off the loneliness. It wasn't great but it helped. Hoiday weekends were tough. We weren't married but we were seriously considering marriage, or so I thought. That was the worst part, seeing my dreams go down the toilet.

Seek counseling if you find yourself getting weak and wanting him back. Or talk to your wonderful SM to get through the rough patches.

You can do this. And you are not alone, you can be a single mom, and don't hesitate to ask your Dad and SM for help being a single mom.

I'm really sorry for what you are dealing with. Please don't try to reason or get answers with him, it will set you up to get hurt time and time again. You have a son to put first and he needs you to be there for him. What the cheating DH was doing is not what love is. Keep moving forward with what you have and don't look back.

Also remember that when one door closes another one opens. (((HUGS))) and hang in there.

I'm so sorry that you are going through this.

I'm older so that means I have probably been through more breakups than most.

There are the ones where you can't wait to be gone and have no regrets at all. Then the ones that you leave and almost minutes later realize that you are glad to be rid of them.

And then there are the ones that literally break your heart. Where you want them back no matter what horrible things they have done. Shoot they could have slept with your sister in front of you but you are willing to overlook ANYTHING to get them back. Those are the really, really hard ones.

But you have to protect yourself and not let your very being be destroyed. You may be miserable for quite awhile but yet you will know that you are doing the right thing. It's almost like having to go thru chemo - it will make you miserable but you come out the other side alive and healthy and not dead.

You are doing the right thing.

Oh Honey! Please don't think that there is any way to rationalize cheating behavior. There is nothing you did wrong here. If he was "so unfulfilled sexually" he should have talked to you like an adult. He should have tried to romance and seduce YOU back in to his life like a REAL husband should do.

I was a single mom before I met STB-X-DH. Believe me, it is not that bad. I actually love the time I get with my kids. You get to cook what y'all like to eat, your house will stay sooo much cleaner, you won't have any anxiety about having to make someone else happy all the time. I am looking forward to it being me and my kids again. It will be a very long time before I will bring someone into our lives again.

I'm so sorry that you have to feel like this...losing someone you thought you'd spend your life with. You deserve to be loved and be in a relationship where you are respected and needed.stay strong and I think you will see how liberated you can feel, how another opportunity will come along where you can be happy and loved.

Honey, there is no reason that is going to make you feel better. And you don't even know that he'll give you the real reasons. AND he doesn't seem to be the most emotionally intelligent man, so any introspective insight into his reasoning probably didn't even happen.

Based on what happened and having known men like him, here are the reasons:
1 - You got a better job, he felt threatened by your success so he tried to bring you down the only way he knows how. He is weak, and he tried to make you weak. Don't let him succeed.
2 - He is a cheater. He wants his ego fed by other women when he starts to feel bad about himself. Unless he gets himself into intensive therapy to understand why he does that, he's not going to change. He has to want to do it and he doesn't.
3 - He looks to external sources to fill up his unhappiness. This is a losing strategy and he will continue to have unhappy and unsuccessful relationships until he can learn to make himself whole and happy.
4 - He projects insecurities onto other people. "Hm, I'm not happy in life? It must be _____'s fault." and then looks for reasons as to why that is true. You were in the line of fire, but it was all about his being unhappy in his life, and any faults he lists are going to be ones that he cherry picks to help him to justify why he treated you like he did. They're not going to be true and they're going to be hurtful.

Out of those 4, do any of them have to do with faults of yours? No, they do not. So you need to stop handing him an opportunity to bring you down further. It's going to make you feel worse, get you distracted from healing, and won't help a thing in the long run.

a) I read a previous post of yours where you wondered why you "weren't good enough" and the men you date cheat on you. Sweetie, again that has nothing to do with your worth. It has to do with the type of men that you are choosing for yourself. See, the men who cheated on you gave off red flags early on in the dating process, and you explained them away in order to keep dating them. A woman making healthier choices for herself would have seen the red flags and left. You stayed. That is why you get cheated on - your subconscious is choosing men capable of cheating.

b) I read that early on in your relationship with this douche, you cried and he promised he'd never cheat on you and hurt you. Don't do that again. Don't tell someone your worst fear and how to hurt you. Why? Because the emotionally healthy men who want an emotionally healthy woman will not want to stay with you because they can see that you still have baggage. They don't want to have to suffer because of your past relationships. And men who aren't emotionally healthy will sit and soothe you, stick around in the relationship, and put your worst fear in their back pockets to pull out when they need to bring you down emotionally. By trying to weed out the bad ones by holding on to your past hurts and announcing them to new suitors, you are actually weeding out the good ones.

c) Also, men capable of cheating tend to go for women with low self confidence. They have a fear of being left, so they are not going to go with women with self-respect, because they know that she's capable of seeing through his bullshit and leaving.

So, in order to make better choices for yourself, get yourself in therapy if you can. In order to prevent "a" from happening, you need to think back to all these men who have hurt you and find some commonalities in the beginnings of the relationships. You are trying to figure out what traits they have that attract you. Selfishness? Emotional immaturity? Fear of strong women? What is it that draws you to these men? Find it and then don't ever go for that type of man again.

To prevent "b", get into therapy and learn to truly let go of your baggage. If you try and carry it into a new relationship, thinking that you can find a man who will help you get rid of it by treating you so well, you are mistaken. It is up to you to let it go and to then find the courage to approach new relationships with a strong, open and trusting heart. If you don't do this, you'll continue to drive away emotionally healthy men and guess who you'll be stuck with? And you DON'T NEED A MAN TO SAVE YOU. You can save yourself. So do it, and only then find the man who will treat you well.

And for "c", again, therapy. Learn how to feel better about yourself and what you deserve. This is your third line of defense against future douchery, because weak men will be scared off by your confidence. And don't worry about those men, because you don't want them anyway! Now, don't get me wrong, you can be feminine and confident. You don't need to speak loudly about how great you are, just show by your actions that you know what you deserve in a relationship. If someone treats you badly early on, get up and walk away.

Be strong. These feelings you have are totally normal. I know it's a lot to take in and sort through. My ex cheated on me too. I was a mess. Flash forward ten years later, and I still wake up once every six months from a nightmare. Fortunately, I am in a much better place now and I am in a much healthier and more loving relationship. You will get there too!

A good friend of mine gave me this advice which I will share with you. "Six weeks from now, you will still be hurting, but at least you will be in a different place. Six months from now, you will no longer be hurting and you will be in a happier place. Six years from now you will be happy and in a place that you truly belong."

Don't contact him. You wished you could go back to how it was. It was only like that because he was being FAKE. Now he is showing you who he truly is and what you truly mean to him. BELIEVE IT.

You won't find a REAL relationship if you stay fixated on a fake relationship.

You want him to give you a reason because you are frightened of being alone and you want him to give you some excuse so you can justify getting back together with him. I get that, I've been there myself. I think it's even harder for you because you left him recently and then reinvested emotionally, its even more upsetting to detach again now, but in truth the fact that he did not recommit emotionally himself tells you all you need to know, he does not love you the way you deserve to be loved and he does not respect you. Each time you forgive the unforgivable and go back you lose a piece of yourself and lower your standards and self worth a little more. Don't do it, a man who threatens to take custody of your child after he screwed things up by betraying your trust is low and cruel and manipulative and not worth fighting for.