Yep. Been thru the same as Sax describes.. You can't do anything about that dead-end, but you can make the best of it. It's a giant, possibly life long hurt, but.. It's a good hurt. If you use it well, the rest of your life burns "Good". Sooner or later you can make peace with the hurt and still keep that fire burning.
IMHO unless the other guy is Jesus, keeping your head straight this way, it's really hard - if she's decent - for the other guy to not seem at least that little bit less respectable if/when she sees you again down the road. At very least he'll not have gone thru that trial by fire, and more likely he'll also have been slacking. Resting on his laurels.
It's good to binge and purge (e.g. dissolving in booze) if you have to at first, but eventually it's a waste of time. There's no point disrespecting, torturing yourself for what she does or doesn't do. If it's truly love then it should, eventually, inevitably lead to a better outcome - a better you. The rest of it - work etc, that is more like routine. If it doesn't kill you, it strengthens you: “We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.”
