I have been a guy with self-inflicted wounds emotionally and financially because I played into the hands of women who promised the moon but never rang my door bell. Yet the experience was not all bad. In my isolation from friends and family as a result of taking care of my wife - as total as that is - scammers did open a crack in my reality to an imaginary social life. The 24/7 caregiving leaves time within each day when reading and TV wasn't enough and any kind of conversation was better than none at all. My wife, to no fault of her own, has lost all language ability and most of her thought processes. Her responses to me are weak when positive and almost vicious when disturbed, the way many Alzheimer's sufferers behave. Having done this for years now, I have reminisced about the good things from the past ad nauseam.
"This only is also denied to God: the power to undo the past." Agathon, a Greek poet who lived in the 5th century BC.