This may sound harsh, but should you be spending so much time thinking about you when you are seeking to restore your relationship? Shouldn’t you be thinking about your partner’s feelings; their insecurities and anxieties given your transgression?
Speaking from experience here as someone who made lots of mistakes in his attempts to move forward after infidelity (i’m the offender), I suggest that you and your partner first determine *IF* both of you are first ABLE and WILLING to move forward. Some relationships simply cannot be salvaged. What I’ve learned over time is that an affair unleashed on a marriage is like a giant iceberg that has broken off off of Antarctica and it is on a collision course with your boat. You only see what’s above the water line and the dimensions beneath are incalculable. Some marriages simply cannot navigate around it and end up smashing apart against it’s cold icy mass.  I suggest that both of you spend some time in counseling and take stock. When you have an affair, its almost like you create a new marriage. Its not the same and you cannot expect it to function like it did in the past. Be 100% that BOTH of you are fully committed to each other AND the marriage and are both willing.. AND ABLE (physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually) to work through all the challenges, seen and unseen. Wounded people staying in a damaged marriage will only continue to wound each other and damage the marriage more when the process of healing and reconciliation isn’t approached properly.

I’m glad that many people responded to your post! I read it early this morning and became very angry. I wanted to tell you that you don’t need to cast your pearl before swine. The love that you are giving this woman is better spent on someone else. Even if this the relationship with the new guy doesn’t work out for her, I would argue strongly against you running back. She seems like she wants to have her cake and eat it too. Don’t give her the luxury of having a “fallback” guy, unless you REALLY want to be “that” kind of guy.
I suggest that you follow the advice of others and begin to erect some mental barriers around your heart as it pertains to this woman. Get busy! Start dating! Find happiness outside of her! She is not the only fish in the sea. Sometimes being too into a person/relationship can cloud our vision and dull our senses. I have the feeling that you’ve already come to some conclusions. While you wait in limbo for this person with your heart completely overwhelmed, you may be missing the love of your life who is standing right before you.

Hello Jan. Are you in your husband also in marriage counseling? Do you both have a strong mentor in your life that can help you guys as you seek to rebuild your relationship?
Getting over hurt and pain is very challenging. My wife and I are trying to stay together. I’ve been married for 14 years, have 4 kids and the last two years have been very rocky, mostly due to me 🙁
You never really get over the old memories. As time progresses, they are more and more replaced by good memories and positive feelings of hope. The good stuff simply outweighs the bad stuff..
The challenge here is that the bulk of the burden will be on you. Since you were the wronged party, the pace of the restoration will naturally be set by you. Rebuilding trust is very difficult and often times, we over-estimate our capacity to forgive and forget.
Depending upon how long you’ve been in the relationship and what is at stake, its often times easier for the parties to give it up entirely vs working to make something that is horribly broken and FUBAR’d a viable relationship again.
If you and your husband are serious, I suggest you enter into a new relationship (not the old one) with rules, boundaries and guide lines. Your husband needs to understand and anticipate that you are still recovering from the damage that he did. He will need to be extra patient, extra loving and extra careful. You also need to understand that HE IS TRYING HARD. If he brings you a cup of coffee in the morning or runs out to the store late at night to get you something to eat because you are hungry; those are efforts for you. Sometimes, the offended spouse in this kind of recovery is quick to list out everything that other spouse is doing wrong but omit the things that he/she is doing right or his or her efforts. There needs to be rules that govern what happens when someone is angry or frustrated. What should that person do? You need keywords that both of you will respect and honor. Finally, I think you both need to set a timetable. IF 3 months down the line, you find that you are very unhappy and things are simply not working, its ok to both admit that you tried. I don’t believe God intended for folks to stay married and unbearably unhappy for the rest of their lives for the sake of staying “married”.
I sincerely hope this helps.

I’ll relay my experiences. Hopefully they can help.
I’ve been married for 14+ years. I have 3 kids from my marriage. My wife and I met online and married after 6 months of knowing each other. At the time we met, I lived on the West Coast and she lived on the East Coast. Before we married, we probably saw each other 2 or 3 times and spent very little time together. We are currently on the verge of divorce and have been so for quite a few years now.
When my wife and I met, we were head over heels for each other. We both had people in our lives that tried to give us advice to slow things down but we did not take any of their advice. We saw those individuals as hindrances to our “plan”. Because it was difficult maintaining a long distance relationship with each other, we rushed into marriage, ill prepared, with very little knowledge about each other. I’m cautioning you to not make the mistakes we made.
If there are people in your life that love you and want the best for you, don’t be afraid to factor in their advice even if it puts at risk the thing you want the most. Our hearts are deceitful and cannot be trusted. The same heart that causes a man to fall in love with a woman and marry her is the same heart that will cause him to fall in love with another woman and cheat on his wife. Sometimes we need people who are outside the influence of a heart in love to help us make sound relationship choices.
If you really want to gauge whether or not you and this fellow can make it, then someone has to move. If my wife and I had perhaps spent more time together to delve into each other at a deeper level, we could have avoided some challenges we faced today.