The Pretend World of Married-ness

I am struggling with an essay I am writing about someone I dated about two years ago. Something about this relationship broke me, and I have been apathetic ever since about finding anyone new. It doesn't stop me from browsing Match, or even going on the odd date, but I seem to lack the enthusiasm I once had, and as a result one date has yet to turn into two.I am struggling, in this essay to discover the reason for my shut down. Was it that I still missed my husband, and this guy didn't measure up? That doesn't seem to quite ring true. At the time, I felt sure that I was ready. Now, I feel I would be if the right person came along.Then I worried that loneliness had skewed my intuition about people. I seem to be in this pattern of jumping into relationships, thinking I know the person and falling for them, even going so far as to repeat gestures and feelings that I had once had with my husband. I seemed to be trying to recreate something that wasn't there. In each relationship I have had since my husband died, I have woken up to the real person I was dating and realized I hadn't actually fallen in love with them, but had just tried to recapture the feelings that I once knew with Arron.And now I don't trust myself at all to make a good decision about anybody. Even if I were to somehow meet someone, I worry that I would slip into this pretend world of married-ness, without doing any of the work required to get to there.I wish I could find a conclusion to my essay that didn't sound trite or insincere. I wish I could trust my intuition again, maybe even get excited about someone, at least enough to make it to that second date.