Your guidance really helps me. I have never felt this helpless in my life and I will never be the same person I was 2 months ago. He is gone and now I have to figure out who I am now.
First of all I will second Cristy's comment -- you really should sign up for DB coaching. You will feel much, much, much better after talking to one of the telephone coaches. I know the most common objection is "I can't afford it". To that I say "if you fell down and broke your arm and the bone was sticking out, would you not go to the hospital because you couldn't afford it?" Your psyche is broken -- how is that worth less than money?
In any case, regarding your comments above, those are absolutists statements and they are false. You may of course become the same person you were two months ago, and you may become someone better. There is no "never".
Here's a truth for you -- your wife wasn't perfect and neither were you. You were single and survived just fine before you met her, and you can easily survive after she leaves as well.
If you remove the veil of your current desperation, there were plenty of things she did that upset you or made you feel alone or left you with unmet needs.
We put a lot of value in the stability we feel in a marriage -- it's something we can rely upon, someone who is there for us and has our back. When they leave the relationship unexpectedly, it is so catastrophically upsetting.
The reality is that the feelings you're feeling have much more to do with feeling like you're out of control than anything to do with your wife.
You crave having stability back, and the reassurance that "if you do X you get Y". If you're nice to your wife, she will be nice back. If you buy her a gift, she will be appreciative, etc. The predictability of this is comforting.
When your wife leaves you keep trying to do X but you don't get Y, and that makes you feel completely out of control, which in turn makes you panic. Reality has shifted, and your problems can't be solved like a math problem. Suddenly you can't get what you want no matter how hard you try.
Time will heal this wound, you will once again feel like yourself, you will once again be happy, and you will once again feel in control, and hopefully will do so as a more evolved version of yourself.
When my wife left I put her on a pedestal and viewed getting her back as the only way I would ever be happy or whole again. As time passed I have seen this for what it was, a desperate attempt to regain lost control and comfort.
I've now been divorced for two years and I am much happier than I was when I was married. My relationship skills are better, my comfort with "who I am" is better, and I have a relationship with an amazing woman who I am much more compatible with than I was with my wife.
I still totally believe in marriage and DB, and I think you should do all you can to save your marriage, so that you can live with no regrets, but divorce is completely and entirely survivable, happiness awaits and there are many many fish in the sea, and that's a fact.
Acc
Married 18, Together 20, Now Divorced M: 48, W: 50, D: 18, S: 16, D: 12 Bomb Dropped (EA, D): 7/13/11 Start Reconcile: 8/15/11 Bomb Dropped (EA, D): 5/1/2014 (Divorced) In a New Relationship: 3/2015
