Thank-you to for these responses. I do appreciate it. I still do question myself almost every day.

I would like to think that I did as much as almost any human being could. For some reason, however, I can't seem to accept myself as human. I look at the mistakes that I made throughout the course of my relationship with my (now officially ex-) wife, and I can see that for the most part I was coping as best I could, trying to do what I needed to do to stay sane and fulfill some of my own needs and desires while upholding her interests too. I know that I worked hard and sacrificed a lot. Yet I still think that, somehow, I should've done more. I wasn't "perfect," and therefore I am unacceptable and should suffer.

It is an awful feeling, and I know it to be "wrong," yet it is the thought process that has been drilled into me, over so many years. I've been made to feel, so often, that no matter I ever did, it was never enough. I could never, ever make her happy. She was always depressed, always upset or even angry about something. Her state of mind made her incapable of truly appreciating any of life's "good" moments. I've been trained not to "enjoy" life, and simply cannot see any value to my own efforts or even my own existence at this point. It all just seems pointless.

She was truly my only reason to continue existing. I poured everything of myself into helping her. Now, without her, I simply don't know what to do. I have no friends or close family with whom to interact. I have no one to talk to. I know that I could go out and perhaps find some new friends, but it's a difficult enough process at this point in my life that I really don't want to. It's easier to just be alone than to face the almost inevitable rejection, and the realization that at this point in my life I am almost certainly not going to form any additional close ties with anyone. I look into the future and just see an abyss. I see my worst fear coming true: dying alone, babbling to myself, in a crumbling old house. It's terrifying to me. It weighs on me every single day of my life.

I would like to meet someone new, if that were possible, but I am so appalled by the prospect of what it entails. In that respect, particularly, I have been incredibly down on myself, my entire life. I am just too shy and have too low an opinion of myself to ever really make the effort. I can't tolerate the rejection and I can't face going through the stages and struggles of a new relationship. I just know that I can't do it and remain sane.

Had I known that I would feel this way, day in and day out, I don't think I would have ever initiated the divorce. I would have chosen the day-to-day misery of the relationship, with the occasional highlights of nominal contentment. At least in that context I had the baseline satisfaction of knowing that I was acting as a provider and defender, of sorts, allowing my wife to live with some semblance of comfort and security. That was something. That gave my life purpose, at least. But now I just feel like a complete and total failure, as if my divorce is the final toll of my string of small failures as a husband. I don't think I will ever reach a point where I am capable of giving myself credit for having done all that I could in support of my wife.