Maybe I'm struggling because I'm not allowing myself to forgive me???
For what? For not being absolutely perfect? No one is. You, me, your H, my XW, the person next door, whoever. There is no such thing as the perfect person, perfect W or perfect H. You had your faults, you recognize them and you're vowing to do better. That's all any of us can do. But we're STILL not perfect. We stumble along through life falling and getting back up again. The only people who don't make mistakes are the ones that never try. Don't feel like you need to forgive yourself for being human!
I think your biggest issue is you.... can't.... let.... go. It's a classic case of saying you've dropped the rope while not-so-secretly holding it behind your back with a death grip. You keep hoping there is some quick fix that will put it all back to normal, that your H will have some epiphany and abandon his GF and come running back to you ready to recommit. It just never happens that way, and if you keep thinking "well I will be the exception" then please quit thinking that! As several of us keep telling you, there is hope, but it's distant hope for marriage 2.0 and a lot has to happen before then including you completely letting go of him, which as of yet you are unwilling to do.
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I need the mindset that he no longer exists.
I'm not sure about that, I mean he does exist and he's around now and then so you can't wish that away. Rather, your mindset needs to be that you let go of him and accept your new life without him. When you truly drop the rope then you won't care one bit about his FB status or who he's looking at in his yearbook or who he lives with or any of it. Someone here used to say you can look out the window and see your ex having sex in your front yard and think "that's strange" and go back to what you were doing. That is literally how I feel about my XW now, as hard as it may be to believe. I don't know if she's dating or serious with someone or hosting weekend sex parties and I could care less. It would be like hearing a stranger is doing it, I'd just shrug my shoulders and say "whatever makes her happy!"
