I am not completely divorced yet, but we have been apart for over a year. Sometimes I think I am fine, but the last few weeks have been lonely and full of grief. Probably because I have moved on to my own place (finally) and realize I am doing it alone now. I haven’t been able to find the desire to even start dating someone else yet. I still feel too hurt and don’t want to date with the pain still so fresh.

Like you said, I am grieving the loss of being married, being with someone who I truly thought would be a forever deal. Of course I don’t want to go back to such an emotionally unavailable and dead man, but I miss the “could have been’s” and still feel grief over all the loss.

Divorce isn’t just the loss of a relationship. It’s the loss of those hopes and dreams and plans that you had, the identity of being in a couple. People don’t assume you are damaged when you are married, like they do when they hear you are getting a divorce. You lose that assumption of completeness. So many things are lost when a relationship crumbles.