This was your first love. Most of us experienced the pain of our first breakup at 15, dealt with it in the way 15 year olds deal with everything (extremely) and figured it out... 2 or 3 more times and SOME of us were ready for longer term... for some of us, it was MANY, MANY more breakups before finding Mr or Ms Right. Not that a breakup is ever easy, certainly not hte breakup of a marriage, but it's CERTAINLY a lot easier that it's not compounded with the world-shattering pain that you feel at the time of the FIRST breakup of the FIRST love.

And You also are experiencing on TOP of that, the normal marital shatterng where your hopes and dreams, your future and what it COULD have been... it's all gone. You no longer have a partner in life, as inadequate as that partner might have been for YOU, at least it was someone to share the burden of decisions with. A face to envision walking side by side with you in the future, with a stroller and little toddlers tugging on your pant legs. She was the one you knew, wanted, dreamed with. Yeah, it's really tough to let go of the dreams... even if we see that the relationship is all wrong, the dreams of what it COULD have been if only she had been a little different... it's tough to give up.