Divorce after 11 years together

I left my husband of 11 years 2 months ago. Honestly, there had always been problems. He was very critical of me, but at the beginning I figured there was a lot about myself I had to change so I did the hard work. I got therapy, looked at the parts of myself that were holding me back and became a better person overall. My friends and coworkers say that I am kind, funny, and smart. I dieted a lot of stay the weight he wanted too.

He seemed obsessed with me being very fit, any jiggle to my belly and he reacted with disgust. I'm 5'9 and he liked me to weigh 130lbs at maximum. Of course, being that thin meant I didn't have much in the way of ***, which he would make a lot of jokes about. He also wanted me to dress a certain way, think the ultimate in performative femininity: dresses and heels at all times, wear sexy little nighties to bed every night. When told him that I didn't mind dressing up sometimes but that doing it all the time didn't fit my lifestyle and I didn't find it comfortable he got pouty and said that it was "such a small thing" and he didn't understand why I couldn't do it for him.

The thing is, even when I was thin and dressed how he liked all I got was "you look nice". I guess it was expected, so it didn't warrant anything more than that? However, one time a woman at his work started paying attention to him. He works in film, so he's surrounded by beautiful women all the time. This girl was a makeup artist: stick thin, big ***, really really pretty. She started talking about going to D&D with him, something he and I did all the time. He came home and was so excited, he said to me "can you imagine everyone's face if I brought in a woman that beautiful? Their heads would explode!".

It really made me realize that no matter what I did it was never going to be good enough for him. I looked after the house, work a demanding job, and twice cared for his mom when she was critically ill (she died of the second illness). I did everything I could to be a good and supportive partner and he took care of me financially but emotionally made me feel like absolute garbage.

I ended up getting PTSD from being a COVID nurse and he supported me through that, but I started doing a lot of therapy and realizing that I didn't deserve to be treated how I was. The flaws I had were human and didn't mean that I deserved to be treated like less. Overall, I realized that I was living under this feeling of constant "wrongness" with him. I'm not even sure what it was, it just felt like I was always begging for love and affirmation and only getting crumbs. I had all but begged him to do couples counseling and he refused. We were only ever common law, he refused to marry me despite owning a townhouse together. It just felt like being suspended in a sort of half-relationship where I wasn't ever going to get my needs met.

I told him that things were at a critical point and that the relationship was on it's last legs. Per usual, he refused to go to counseling and was so furious at me for being "ungrateful" that he didn't talk to me for 2 days. He managed a bit of insight and openness with me, but by that point it was too little too late. He had already broken my heart time and time again with cruel and insensitive behavior and I was just done.

So I left. It's been the most devastating breakup I've ever been though, and I don't fully understand why. There's no doubt I wasn't happy but I had really bought into the idea of him being my "forever person". I wanted him to be the love of my life, and there were so many things I liked about him: we have the same sense of humor, we're both creative but also practical, he's reliable and responsible and he's smart. He should have been perfect and I was so head over heels in love with him that I was willing to do anything if he would just love me as much as I loved him.

No I'm just struggling with what I guess is grief. I don't even know where to start processing this because I'm not even sure what the feelings are. Is it grief for the life that I thought I had? I mean, my life was linked with his. I had expected that this was the man I was going to spend the rest of my life with. Part of my identity was us as a couple, me as his partner. I was always so proud to call him mine. Now I'm a 42 year old single woman and......what? That's the thing, I don't know what I am or what my life is going to look like. All I know is I'm so lonely and grief stricken and scared of what my future looks like. I don't know how to start to process this and move on with my life, but I desperately want to.