DadFMF - You're only 35 years old. You have plenty of life left and time to find love. Think about people going through this at age 45 or age 55. When your wife and you met, you were in your early 20s. I really do believe that the two of you were never right for each other. That's unfortunate, but it happens. I believe your wife has fully made up her mind that being married to you is not right for her. Maybe it's not for me to say, but I think being married to her is not right for you. You spoke, I think, about not putting enough energy into doing things with your wife. You are sounding like only part of this is grief over the breakdown of the marriage, but not all your sorrow is that. I think, maybe, you're a guy who doesn't like the challenge of adjusting to the demands of change, partly because it takes effort. You want to keep mooning over how heartbroken you are and how awful it is to lose this "good woman." I'm going to be real blunt with you. She's not that good, and what you had with her wasn't that special. You're kind of wallowing in this being all tragic. You need to knock it off. (And I say that out of concern.) You're making yourself miserable. When a woman who no longer is in love with you decides to leave you, it's not all bad. It means you can be free to make a better choice of a partner. You're pretty much insisting that life was supposed to go a certain way, and you're just not going to accept anything different. Have some pride and dignity. Stop wanting someone who doesn't want you. And - yes - that can be done. You don't really want your wife . . . I don't believe. The woman you want doesn't exist. You want who you thought your wife was. That person probably never existed. And your wife is sick to death of you mistaking her for who she is not. That's why she is so cold and unimpressed with your hangdog yearning for her. I don't believe the two of you really knew each other when you got married. She's decided that she made a mistake. People don't really change much in their core, regardless of how many visits to therapists they make. You can't become what she is looking for in a man. It's not who you are. You need to, one day, find someone who can love who it is that you are . . . someone who you can love for being who she is.

You're at risk of becoming one of these sad souls who goes through a divorce that they never recover from. I've known men like that. They buy into a narrative that their life is tragic. They stay obsessed with the one who got away. They make themselves unattractive to other women. They make the woman who left doubly glad she did. The more you pine away wishing she'ld come back to you, the more uninteresting you become to her. You are making yourself unnecessarily pathetic.

Yes, this is painful. It's not the end of the world, unless you make it that. Stop wallowing. Being rejected is awful. But the more someone rejects you, the more you need to go in a different direction and seek acceptance from where it can be found. Don't keep banging your head against a wall. Don't stay utterly dependent on her to decide what your future holds. Get a life. Get your own life. Be willing to put in the effort.