"Somehow it is as if a huge weight has been lifted from my back...and placed directly on my shoulders. I have no idea what to do. 7 years of being married, having all those things to do when I get home, someone there."
Not true, Tyguy. You are now free of a cheating, ungrateful wife. One who clearly did not love or even respect you. You now have the opportunity of a fresh start. Read my first long post to you all over again. Start living the life you were meant to live. Start being the man you have always wanted to be. Discover your purpose. Get all that underway. When the right kind of healthy woman comes along, you will be ready.
"It feels like someone stole the very best years of my life and now I have nothing to show for it."
Not true either. You have learned some of the most important lessons a man can ever learn - about himself, women, sex, truth, choices, and responsibility. Those lessons have undoubtedly cost you in time, money and of course emotional pain. That's life. There aren't (and never were) any guarantees that your life will be (i) easy, (ii) fair, or even (iii) filled with love and sex! The only guarantee is that you have within you right now all you need to cope with the rest of your life and whatever it brings, to be a good father, and to act with integrity and courage in all that you do.
That is what a man's life is about first and foremost, not staying with a woman no matter what she says or does to him.
Some men die without ever learning what you now know. So stop thinking of yourself as a victim. You walk out of this marriage a stronger, better, wiser man. Be grateful for your lessons and start acting accordingly.
You will not make the same mistakes again.
Thanks for keeping us informed.
S&A
"A man can be destroyed but not defeated" - from The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway.
Which I take to mean that every man has within him a spirit of relentlessness and optimism. Its already there; he just has to cultivate it.
