Reddit hates cheaters as a general rule, but I do not. I think cheating is just one of the many ways a relationship can end. Yes, you betrayed her. Yes, you feel like shit. What you did was wrong, no question. But I think it is time to step back and look at the whole board.
You were with her for seven years, which means you were 21-22 when you met? You were a baby, so was she. An adult, sure, but basically a neophyte in dating. And no, a dead bedroom isn't an excuse, but it has driven many, many people into infidelity. That doesn't mean you did the right thing, but it does kind of mean that the relationship was already broken. What was the better outcome? Being with her and sexually frustrated your entire. fucking. life? You screwed up but the end was coming one way or another. You might have been best friends, great partners, but you didn't want to fuck each other anymore and that's a deal-breaker for basically any relationship. It was already over. And I'm really sorry for that and I know that by doing what you did you took on all the responsibility for that ending. But it wasn't all you. It really couldn't have been.
I tend to think about my life as having epochs. I kind of split my childhood into various periods of time where things were one way, then changed. For example, at 13 my mom and I started a placement home for foster kids. My life radically changed at that point. After my dad died and I started college, those four, four and a half years are their own, separate time in my life. I can also do it by relationships. My life with my ex was very different than my life with my current partner. Even with my current partner (going on seven years now) I can split by the states we lived in. Chicago was different than the East Coast which is different than where we live now. Each beat in the story was its own, separate thing that I went through, lived with, and grew by. I cherish those times for what they brought to me, and what they took from me. They are like acts in a play.
You are starting a new epoch. This is going to be a new thing. And it starts with grief. It must. But you're looking backward at what you've left behind. And that IS depressing. But you're not even thirty, you have a fuck ton of road ahead of you. Try all you want to claw your way back into the past, but it isn't going to happen. All you can do is move forward and realize that you left that time, that person, that life behind and there's a new life waiting to start. And you have vast, almost infinite amounts of control as to what that new life is going to look like.
You will fall in love again. You'll be better, smarter, more careful. You can take this disaster and make it integral in terms of who you are. Our bad acts always define us, but they can do so in a positive way. Knowing now, as you do, what the consequences are, you are far more prepared to deal with challenges that come up in the future. No one ever got better by doing it right. The only way we improve is to fuck it up, learn, and then start again. This is true for walking, dating, riding a bike, learning to ski.....mistakes are the way we learn. It is basically the only way TO learn. The most ignorant people are the ones who fear making any mistakes at all. They are the ones sitting at home, 28 and virgins, because they are SO SCARED they might do it wrong that they won't even try. Well....you tried. And you fucked it up. Welcome to the club of everyone.
WE ALL FUCK IT UP. In a thousand big and little ways. We're all screw ups. We try to hide it, we try to fake it, but deep down we're all just a mess. You find a way to forgive yourself, you find a way to find peace with your fallibility, and then you square your shoulders and keep moving forward. And people will love you for it. Because that's all we really want. No one wants the perfect, the ideal, we all just want real people. And when others see that you're the guy that can accept what he did, accept the consequences, learn from them, and then keep pressing onward they are going to see you as the great person you aspire to be.
But it is a choice. It is a choice to forgive, a choice to heal, a choice to not worry about "closure" (basically the loch ness monster of breakups) and find the inner strength to move on. It is easy to wallow, forgiveness is much harder.