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Love to see so much support here in asklemmy. This community is really great.
I went through divorce at the age of 27 and is one of the hardest things I've ever experienced. It is a lot like a death. Obviously not of a person but a dream and perhaps an identity. It's the type of thing that can feel like a personal failure and really leave you feeling hopeless and in despair.
In the first months I don't think it's reasonable to expect that the feelings will just go away or even lose their potency, and they can be extremely powerful. Perhaps they just become muted more and more as time passes and you fill your life with other people and activities. Hell, to this day (now I'm 45) I still think about her occasionally and wish it could have been a different outcome, but so much of my life since that time never could have occurred had I stuck with her. In other words I've come to learn that while I'm grateful for the good times we had, I'm also grateful that it ended and I too could move on.
The most important thing you have to do now is find out who you are as a single man - and as a human - by nurturing and taking care of this new found sense of loneliness. Find your new identity. I think you really have to lean into the pain you're feeling and express it deliberately. Let it move and let it get out of you.
It especially helps to fill your time with activities you love that also nurture you. Maybe that's being outdoors, maybe that's gaming, whatever it is you know it better than anybody.
We really need healthy people around to support us during this kind of time and it's a shame that the people you thought would be there aren't. Maybe they can still be your buddies but now you know they're not the type to really have your back when the shit hits the fan. But those kind of people are out there and now it's your mission to go figure out where they are.
I went through a divorce at 31. For me, it was more like a liberation than like a death. My ex felt the same way. We were too young when we first got together and ended up going in very different directions in our lives, though we're still close after all those years. I'm on good terms with most of my exes.
You're right about how to deal with it. In my case, I walked to a nearby pond with a friend, pronounced the ritual formula "There goes nine years of my fuckin' life" and threw the wedding ring into the pond. Then I went back home, got drunk and boned my friend. She was wonderfully supportive during the whole process.
After that, I was done with it, except for some paperwork. A quick catharsis, then I got on with my life.
And yeah, when you go through big changes, you quickly find out who your real friends are. The ones who supported me during that time, and during an earlier period when I was temporarily destitute, are still people I'm close to decades later. I don't miss the others, though I now understand that in many cases, their lack of support was due to their own problems and weaknesses, and not just a betrayal of me. But some of the people who were there for me literally gave me the shirt off their own back. And since then, I've been there for them, too, and have in some cases sent them airline tickets so we could get together again.