Thank you for your kind words. Hopefully, it will get better.
One thing that kills me, is that I am 35 and I have to deal with this shit during most productive years of my life and I can't fix them.
I'm 37, so I know that feeling well. There's a sense that others are moving on with their lives, both professionally and personally (eg getting married, having kids) but you are stuck and not going anywhere. Honestly, I'm not through this and still feel much of this, but through therepy I've realized that this keeping up with others isn't a helpful thing. Plenty of people are late bloomers (here's an example, obviously less inspiring now than it used to be). https://500hats.com/late-bloomer-not-a-loser-i-hope-ac0ec49a... For me personally I've realized this period is one of intense personal growth and it's brought up lots of issues from my past patterns that I hadn't dealt with but needed to. I'm confident that now I'm better placed for success both at work and at home, though I still need time to heal and rebuild myself inside before that happens and that's a process that just takes time.
Wow, we have a club. A similar thing happened to me a year ago; not as dramatic as your story, but my girlfriend left me a few weeks before I was going to propose to her (she never really did explain why). The relationship felt so perfect from the beginning that I never even considered the possibility that we wouldn't get married. I was caught completely by surprise. I'm 37 now, and it took 15 years of dating to meet someone I had no reservations about spending the rest of my life with, so it's easy to convince myself that I lost my only shot at happiness. I also moved around a lot over the last 10 years so I don't have any friends now. The last 12 months have felt like an eternity. There are only two things keeping me alive right now: one, my dogs make me feel like I'm not completely alone; and two, I started dumping all of my energy into skill training, and I'm getting so much better at everything I enjoy doing. I tried dating a few months ago but it was just a string of terrible experiences, so I'm in full hermit mode now.
I am sorry this is happening to you as well.
My last 10 months also have felt like an eternity.
It also took me many years of finding someone I felt comfortable being with and having a family. In our age bracket loosing someone is extremely hard, especially when you have family plans on the table. It came to me as a surprise that she had this dark side. Just one day, out of blue, entirely different person starts sending me text messages filled with hatred, rage and every line is soul-crushing. She felt no remorse and was pro-actively doing it, even when I have asked to stop, because my heart was in pain [have minor heart problem]. When she told me that she is taking out IUD and planning to have kids with "him" and listed names for kids they already picked, I went into shock-mode for a week. She basically used her new engagement/relationship as a tool to destroy me for her own pleasure. Karma is a bitch and her engagement collapsed in less than 6 months.
I really can't do/study anything as of this moment. I tried doing CMU Advance Database Course, printed out a lot of research articles and it feels like I am staring at the screen/paper.
Dating is hard as well. I registered on match.com the other week, but all the women look very unattractive, even a very-very attractive ones. (I was genuinely surprised by the number of single 30-40 YO women, many of them are divorced and have kids.)
Geez, that sounds seriously traumatic. You might benefit from a couple of months of therapy if you haven't already tried it. Sometimes you just need someone to listen. Maybe you would have more luck doing something creative instead of mentally taxing software development. I started drawing again and it has been really relaxing. It's nice to just zone out and listen to music while I sketch. I hope you can find something that helps.
Run as far as you can from the atttractive ones. Good looks are a crutch. They let people slide by without ever developing character.
Get an ok or ugly one. They aren’t in as high demand so less likely they will leave you. More importantly the benefit of a hot wife is far less than that detriment of her destroying you.
I grew up with this belief, but to be honest reality, if anything, seems the opposite. On average, the very attractive people were also nice and... stable, often frustratingly so. And most of the nastiest, unstable people I've met were often on the unattractive end of the spectrum. I've also recall reading research that came to a similar conclusion.
And when you think about it, it actually makes sense. Sure, attractive people have it easier in a lot of ways, and the 'bubble' is a real thing. So perhaps, maybe, there's some correlation between attraction and competence or work ethic or whatnot.
But I'd argue that being bullied, ignored, ostracized, and so on, is a much more likely source of being 'terrible', or unstable, or unpleasant than being coddled a bit more than others.
That said I would argue that the 'safest' person to date, if you're going to account for looks, is the average-looking person who feels comfortable with being average-looking. Ideally about as average as oneself.
I've put my full focus on trying to develope different skills after being used by someone. I'm much better off spending my time on me rather than anyone who doesn't appreciate it. The way I figure, if someone appreciates me enough to be around me, its their choice to do that. In the meantime, there's absolutely nothing wrong with being alone. I've learned to enjoy the solitude while I have it.
I'm going through the same thing, more or less, at 39. On top of that I haven't accomplished what I expected to and see people much younger than myself do.
It's very hard and I have "started over" so many times that the energy that you get from that is starting to wear off which is almost more scary. I am starting to feel that I really need some sort of lucky break from the universe or I will never move on. Which is scary because I am not very spiritual and I don't really believe that is likely to happen. But I carry on because I wouldn't know what else to do anyway.
Also I fucking hated people when they said 'it just takes time' because it makes the situation seem so hopeless when you are hurting today. It is true though, and there will be ups and downs along the way.