2.5 year old waking at night and won't go back to sleep

[Momof2yearold]

My lo is 2.5.  He has always been good at going to bed by himself.  I have always just layed him in his bed and he has put himself to sleep.  He has been potty trained for about 6 weeks and about 3 weeks ago we moved him to a bed.  Now he still goes to sleep by himself but he wakes every night around midnight insisting that I lay with him.  I have laid beside him, sat beside him,  and can do this for 3-4 hours- without him falling asleep.  I'm losing patience fast.  Not sure how to help him?  Trying the WI-WO method.  It seems that it's only infuriating him.  Im on my second night.  The first night I ended up just sitting with him for an hour after 2 hours of trying the WI-WO method.  Can somebody give me any advice on how to help him?  He is now overtired through the day and because of it he's not napping the greatest either. 
Schedule before we started staying up:
6:30 wake up
7:30-8 breakfast
10 snack
12-1 begins nap.  Sleeps for 1.5 to 2 hours
3 snack
5:30 supper
7 small snack (cookie or yogurt)
8 bedtime

Any advice is greatly appreciated.  My fiancé works away through the week and is only here on weekends.  He's not much help when it comes to sleep training . He would rather just sleep with him then hear him cry.  He is much appreciated through the day though- since he takes the load off of dealing with a cranky toddler. I'm one for trying anything- but this is a battle which I'm currently not winning 😔. And at this point every night- I honestly could just cry my eyes out.

[Momof2yearold]

I also forgot to mention that when I finally do get him to sleep, regardless of being up for HOURS, he is waking even earlier.  He will now get up as early as 5 am. Which I'm sure is just from being over-tired also.

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

I wonder if this is that start of the 1-0 with the nap and he needs it capped in order to be tired enough to sleep all night? You can get into some nasty ut/ot cycles during these times (ie they are tired enough to take a good nap but then ut for bed or have nw and then get ot from lost night sleep so crash for a long nap etc...).

[Momof2yearold]

We finally broke the habit of getting up through the night for hours.  WI/WO is definitely effective if you can force yourself to be patient.  Now have to work on the wake to sleep method- sleeping all night but getting up too early.  So we'll see how it goes 🙂

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

Oh that is great! Yeah patience is not my strong suit so I get that completely. I have only used wake to sleep on DD2 when she was about 5 months old, I hope it does the trick for you!