I lost my wife on March 3rd of last year. I was devastated by that and other events that have taken place before and after which I have posted about in other support groups and my journal. Things just kept getting worse. I was glad when I was in morning over my wife that I didn't have many people around. I had a few people to talk to and that's all I needed. In July I found out that my step son was a pedophile which devastated me even further because the children he had abused were my nieces and nephew. I put a lot of blame on myself and I had A Nervous breakdown over that. I was still in mourning over my wife and that knocked me down into a pit even further. After a couple of months of talking with family that reassured me that I had nothing to do with it and my therapist telling me that I had nothing to do with it, I felt at peace, I saw alight at the end of the tunnel. By December I felt almost normal what ever that was. On the 27th of December I got a pop up app on my phone. Meetme. com. I thought hey maybe I'm ready to date again, so I made a profile and not an hour after I put up my profile I got a message from a beautiful, sweet, kind, and caring woman or at least I thought at the time. We talked on the phone and on messenger for 3 days nonstop and we decided to meet on January 1st. I thought I met the next woman that I was going to spend the rest of my life with. For the first month it was like I was living a dream, we made love every weekend, if we lived closer it would have been more. She lived 45 miles away. She told me every day how much she loved me. We talked non stop. I felt like my life was back on track. Month 2 hit and she started to make excuses on why I couldn't come over. We would have fights over the dumbest things like how I left the bathroom light on. We broke up on and off. I was so devastated by that when she broke up with me I decided to have a fling with some girl I had met on the dating site. I was chasing the feeling that I had with her. It just made me feel worse. A couple of days later she called me and told me that she loved me and wanted to start a new. I was overjoyed. No I didn't tell her about the girl that I had slept with but she had broken up with me for the 3rd time and I wasn't technically dating her at the time. We'll it didn't get any better and by the end of March she informed me that she was getting back with her ex and it was over between us. I had a herd time handling thar and had spent the next couple of weeks trying to get her back. 1 night I had a nervous breakdown thinking about what they were doing. Shortly after that I started dating again and I find myself chasing women that I like away. I think that most of my insecurities about dating comes from the negative experience I had with the fist woman I had a relationship with since my wife died. I think that I am going to take a break from dating. I need to recover from my bad experiences I have had while I was dating her or all of the women I date will see nothing but a very insecure person. What can I do to prepare myself for the dating scene again? When will I know that I am ready to date? Questions that I find hard to answer and fear that I will never find an answer to.