Eventually, you’ll wangle a date. As you dress for your coffee or lunch or whatever it is, you’ll look in the mirror and think: “Dating. Conversation. Condoms. Texting. Friend her, don’t friend her. Ugh.” You’ll sit across from this person and listen to her go on and on about her ex, her kids, her job and so on, but you won’t get up because where else have you got to be but back in your little bachelor nest with the couch and the computer? You’ll think back to your wife 10,000 times a day. You’ll look at photos from 1999 and wish you had worked it out somehow, some way.

Money would have helped, you’ll think. It was lack of money and the bickering about it that first drove a wedge between you. Don’t believe it. As far back as 2008 I realized I was starving, longing to bat the ball of relating back and forth with my partner. “Tell me what’s in your heart and soul,” I’d say again and again. The silence was deafening. I didn’t have a single friend to talk to, except you and one other person.

Now, in my solo life in a new town, I have an actual circle of friends, male and female, young and old. I am invited to parties, to dinner, to music performances and out on dates. It took awhile. I spent three months on an uncomfortable mattress on a freezing floor, and then in an upstairs bedroom in a relative’s apartment, feeling like a loser. For a good year, I called suicide hotlines almost every night.

I’m saying that I’ve been at the bottom of that well, and I’m telling you there is a way out if you just hold on and show up.

Listen — you are going to go through hell. Your mind is going to be loud. You’ll scream into a towel and talk to the walls and maybe even smash a glass or two, kick a door, or worse. You’ll see couples on Facebook congratulating each other on 10, 20, 30 years together and you’ll hate them. Sometimes you’ll feel as if you deserve this, to be all alone, away from your family.

Then one day you’ll come out the other side. You’ll see that you were desperately lost for years and you had to wait until things got really, really bad before both of you said “anything but this” and agreed to go separate ways. Would it have been great to stay in love, for both of you to prosper financially, to achieve every dream you ever had for yourself and hold hands on a beach somewhere at age 65? Possibly. But it didn’t work out that way, and that’s all there is to it.

Your heart will be broken for a long, long time, and that’s what will keep your new girlfriend or possible second wife away. It’s not because you’re older or broke. You’ll go through the OkCupid thing and then the Craigslist thing and then stop trying so hard and you’ll be O.K. waiting for the right person to come along, if she does. You’ll accept what happened, and along with that you’ll realize you’re not alone, though it sure feels that way sometimes. Then you’ll start to see couples who have been together 40 years and who are miserable, who regard each other with contempt, and you’ll think to yourself, “My God, that used to be me.”

It’s not you anymore, my friend, and it’s not me.