Lately I’ve really been struggling. The second anniversary of the divorce being final was this month.

My EW left in Jan of 2022 to be a poly swinger. We tried some kind of non-monogamous bullshit for about a year before that, which nearly killed me. We were married in 2004. She’s on reddit advertising herself as in search of ‘casual encounters’ with ‘men, women and couples.’ In short, she likes sex with strangers. Its gross. She’s a ho.

I think it’s because it’s been long enough since the divorce, but lately I’ve really been missing having a woman in my life.

I’m on bumble, which never goes anywhere. And I just keep circling back to the feeling that I’m worthless and unloveable. For some reason that word bounces around in my head all the time: ‘unloveable.’

I know I’m a good person. I’m a social worker, I’m a good dad, I’m a force for good in my community. I pay my taxes and obey traffic laws. But good isn’t the same as loveable.

I also work constantly. Every waking moment I’m not at work I’m driving Uber or doing odd jobs to make ends meet.

And that’s the irony of it all. No matter how good I am, or how I look or how hard I work, my nightmare life is something no sane woman would want a part of. So, I’m unloveable, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

It’s just wearing me down to feel so sad all the time. It’s embarrassing. I live in a constant state of shame and embarrassment because I’m not special to anyone and probably never will be. My EW didn’t leave me for ‘someone,’ she left me for anyone; everyone. I tried so incredibly hard at my marriage and wasn’t good enough. I’m not good enough for anything other than work. I think about going through the ‘self-checkout aisle’ all the time, but I can’t (yet anyway) because I have teenage kids. It’s so frustrating to just be the waste product of other people’s lives. I’m a spent fuel rod, ready to be buried under a mountain, radioactive but useless. Unloveable.