You have received so many wise words of wisdom in your time here, I won't go back and quote them all, but will share a few things from my experience.
Do not delay the divorce proceedings. I wish that I had taken this advice when I was in the same broken state as you. If I could go back and do things over, I would have put a retainer on the first divorce lawyer I had a consultation with and went full steam ahead from there. As my own D has drawn out over the past year, ex has gotten less and less generous. It is only a piece of paper, if he decides he doesn't want the D you will know.
You can't nice him back. I played nice for nearly two years, hoping, believing that if he only saw me as I am, the kind, loving person he married that I am to this day, he would recognize his mistake and come running back. He did, actually, three times since D-day; professing his love and willing to do anything to make it work, only to run back to OW and the D path. I can't begin to describe the feeling of rejection in every cell of my being after the last of those times when he wanted to be intimate, only to turn to me afterwards and tell me he couldn't do it, he couldn't be with me. Don't be me. You can still maintain your values (kind, loving, a good person) and not put up with other people's sh*t treatment of you. Boundaries are kind as they allow the other person to experience the consequences of their own decisions and learn and grow from them.
Don't believe the 'I will take care of you' line. They don't actually know what that means, in the legal sense. At one point, ex believed that he would take over our joint business and pay me a 'stipend' to support me and the kids for the foreseeable future. Maintain my lifestyle to a degree *he* felt was appropriate and build his own wealth on the excess. I would be a 'kept' woman, performing all the wifely duties of keeping the kids cared for when he didn't want them or needed to work, housing and feeding them while he went off pounding the town (or another town, as it was). Once he was aware of how legally ludicrous that was, he turned mean.
And your poor aching heart. I know so, so well what that feels like. And the only thing I can say is trite but true: you absolutely will not feel this way forever. This too shall pass. I have not had any intimate relationship, nor dated, nor even flirted with any gusto in the past two years; all things I thought I would need before feeling over ex. But here I am, two years since a D-day I didn't think I would survive, an ongoing D that feels never-ending, an exH that still monsters at me and yet I am feeling pretty OK. You will get here too, I promise.
