divorce is never easy.....I cannot explain what is going on in your situation but it sounds like you need to keep the distance from him. I know my divorce was not too bad but I had only been married 2 yrs and she had been married five times before me. I did not see red flags....LOL she died of emphasyma almost 2 yrs ago now. I got word of her death from her niece when I came out of shoulder replacement surgery that night. it was a dm on nextdoor.com from niece.

I lost my husband (friends 18 years, married 8 years), home and career all within four months in 2020 at age 43. The pain is still there but not as bad 6 years later. I'm dating again and been in my current job about 4 years. You can rebuild.....step by step

youtube have all kinds of healing videos. There might be some videos that can help you with you pain. Just type healing videos after divorce. they really helps me with my suffering.

Big hug sweetie

I understsnd a desire to not want to lose touch but it seems to be hurting you

Why not block his number?

There are groups for women who have been abused
It might help you to be in a peer setting and gain support

You may have PTSD and there is trauma therapy as well

I'm glad that you came here
It took courage

I agree with baby steps
I'm glad that you have help with the nightmares...xo

Please cut all contact with him, block him or change your number. I would also not search his social media. Personally when I was in college I dated a terrible guy who was a compulsive liar and he stole money from me. I happened to find out who he was dating a year or more later after we broke up. So I sent them a message on social media warning them to be careful. I did it out of concern for the young woman because there are so many times in my relationships in life that I wish someone spoke up or gave me a warning.
I still have nightmares about some of my exes that did me wrong.

Welcome to the group. I can see you have already got some helpful replies.

Welcome to this place of healing! I am sorry you experienced such a bad marriage with a person with a personality disorder. The short answer to why they move on and why we don't is -- they need other people to use and abuse, make them feel superior, etc. We are merely pawns in their game. They do not love like we expect from the love bombing they tend to do in the beginning. It is they are not capable of the kind of normal love we think we are getting.

Someone on here once recommended the Youtube videos by Dr. Ramani about this personality disorder. She talks behaviors and our thinking and I realized so much helpful stuff from watching her posts.

The truth is their whole perspective is all about themselves, self-absorbed. We never really mattered to them except what they were able to use us for and get from us. Maybe we were the pretty little thing on their arm to make them look good.

As others said, we can rebuild a good enough, happy enough life if we want to. Or we can suffer in our victimhood. The traumatizing events are truly painful but we can move forward. I am over 17 years out from my marriage to a guy like you describe but I was checked out for 5-10 years earlier than that. I started to notice he was not normal and was incapable of change and was going to drown me emotionally so I got out. And I asked him why he treated me so poorly and he said --- because I can. So because he could treat me so poorly and all the abusive stuff and get away with it because I was weak, he did it. Taught me a huge lesson.

Thank you all so much for your words of encouragement, they mean so much to me and I'm so glad to a part of such a supportive group. I'm getting there slowly and yes I finally blocked him for good. I got a paid message app that instantly deletes messages from blocked numbers as soon as they're sent without me even knowing about it. It's been a refreshing three weeks without being bothered. The kids talk to him directly on their phone and he doesn't even bother to see them.
I've turned to God too and I hope one day I'll wake up stronger, I'm seriously only holding on because of my children they need me I can't abandon them like their dad did. I pray all of us here find our complete healing.

I'll definitely check out the YouTube videos thank you for the recommendations.

May the stars align for us one day.