I separated from my husband (he cheated, plus other bits around infertility) in 2013. I spent a year recuperating and rebuilding (lived with parents, continued to work, saw friends, bought and renovated a new house, which now I come to think of it, was a huge amount for that year!). During that year, I was desperately unhappy, which I dealt with by reading the complete works of Georgette Heyer and re-watching all 15 series of ER.
Then I moved into my new house and, once I'd got over the rage that no one ever put the bins out for me, discovered that I loved living on my own and making all my own choices. I pottered for a year and rebuilt my confidence, then started online dating once I felt better, which was a good 2 years after the original break up.
My experiences of online dating were really positive. I found that all my friends were agog for funny stories, most of the men I met were normal decent blokes - I kept thinking that it was like going to the pub with a pleasant new colleague rather than anything more high stakes. Then, after a 4-date weekend, I met DP - he was date 4 of 4 in 3 days.
We had a couple of years of being on and off (he's a widower and struggled initially to deal with being in a new relationship and opening up) but have been together solidly for 2 years so if we gloss over the dodgy bit (which I do) we have just had a 4 year anniversary. The thing I like about the relationship is that as we are older and don't need to worry about buying houses, getting married, having kids, etc, we can just pootle along at our own pace.
Life's good. Being single in your own place is great. Meeting nice new people is great. New relationships, once you're ready, are great.
I like the quote from Josephine Hart's 'Damage' that says 'damaged people are dangerous: they know what they can survive'. I don't consider myself either damaged or dangerous, but I really like knowing what I can survive and come back from. I feel like my strength has been tested and proved itself to be sufficient. I'm quite proud of everything I've achieved in the last six years. I know that I'm different now, but all my core values and personality traits have held true.
I think it's useful to have a timeline - here's mine:
Year 1 - protect yourself and deal with what you can, a bit at a time; let your friends rally round
Year 2 - find your feet; discover what you enjoy about being single; deal with a bit more and start to feel pretty much better
Year 3 - test yourself - the grief of the break up does bubble up with new relationships etc, so deal with that when you need to; finish sorting out all the practicalities (actually get divorced, assuming you go for the two-year separation version) and change your name (absolute ball-ache, make sure you keep your marriage certificate because you will need it for everything)
Year 4 - normal life onwards
Wishing you good luck, strength and calmness. It will get much better.