I can so relate to you. I am very hard on myself for things I know are my fault. I am continually critical of myself, even long after my wife has forgiven me.

Please stop that behavior. It is very destructive to a relationship, and only serves to deepen problems and discover new ones. In effect, this is what happens: First, you realize the wrong and feel guilty for it. Then, the brain tries obsessively to identify as many factors as possible that contributed to that wrong. This is prevalent in perfectionist-type personalities such as mine. You want to know every tiny little thing that made you do what you did, so that you can prevent that in the future. But what it does is create a much larger list of problems, and a magnified sense of guilt. And each and every one of those factors that the brain identifies, has its own set of guilts, and again, you obsessively pursue each of those sub-factors.

And the guilt compounds exponentially.

This is a huge roadblock to recovery, and true forgiveness cannot be attained whilst ignoring this problem. How can your wife possibly forgive you if you cannot even truly forgive yourself? Putting yourself in a perpetuating spiral of guilt only serves to hurt the both of you. Your wife is less inclined to love someone who is continually hating on themselves and making themselves and their partner feel bad. It revives those bad feelings and doesn't let them simmer down. That is why sometimes you have a good sex life, and other times you're back in the hellhole of guilt. Your constant feelings of guilt serve as a constant reminder to your partner the despicable acts you did.

At the same time, cycling through those feelings of guilt serves to make you yourself jump to conclusions about your bad behavior, and make presumptions about yourself. A lot of the time, these presumptions are inaccurate, or wildly wrong. This serves as a delay in the recovery process and the unearthing of new problems. Actions like what you did are usually rooted in more subconscious issues that need to be explored. You chose to look at porn because of problems in the bedroom, but were there other problems, such as communication or trust? If you feel that you had fantastic communication and trust with your partner prior to the incident, does she feel the same way, and to the same extent?

These types of things are commonly caused by numerous factors, and can be complex. But constantly putting yourself on guilt trips will do the opposite of what you intend. It will make you feel continually worse about yourself, it will make your wife feel less connected to you, and it will impede progress to recovery and forgiveness. These factors need to be talked about openly and calmly, with an attitude of understanding, and without any bias against oneself or shaming going on.

I have experienced a similar incident to you, and occasionally do still have problems with it. I have the same nature to be overly critical of myself, but am only recently realizing the effects that behavior can have. It is an ongoing process for me too, but I know that being overly hard on myself is a destructive behavior and unhealthy for a marriage relationship.

Also, refrain from continually thinking of your wife as an all-amazing and wonderful person. In a way, it's a subconscious justification for one's acts; you feel great remorse for your actions, and so any contrast with your wife becomes a very stark contrast, and results in the extremely positive classification of your spouse. By comparing the despicable with the good, the good becomes wonderful, even divine. And this creates another agent in the army of factors building on your guilt.

It's great to love your wife and to think highly of her. But if you take it to the extreme, repercussions take place and balancing has to take place as well. And it usually balances in the form of you putting yourself down, and taking that to the extreme like you are doing. We should indeed think highly of our spouses, but at the same time we should think highly of ourselves. How can our spouse think highly of us - as we do to them - if we don't share those same feelings about ourselves? Partners in a marriage relationship are meant to be equal. Each person's thoughts and feelings should have equal importance.

I notice this kind of "immortalizing the wife" behavior especially frequently in religion, at least in the LDS faith, because of where I live. It is applauded and encouraged, but is very damaging and unhealthy to the relationship. One partner feels like they are above the other, and the other is convinced they are indeed below their partner. That's an extreme, but it is so common here it's like a massive plague. The person who puts themselves down and puts the other up has their self-esteem and self-value at stake, and the person who is being treated as the higher person either feels higher and more mighty because of it, or they feel sorry for the other person and unattracted to them, do not desire to be around them anymore. Either way, it is a destructive agent to an otherwise healthy marriage relationship.

My guess is your wife has some deeply rooted insecurities about various topics such as pornography. I am not condoning the act, I'm saying her insecurities and anxieties need to be talked about. They need to be approached in a calm and loving manner. The following is within the context of the LDS religion. In the LDS religion, many, many women are like your wife, only to a dangerous extreme. Buried way, way under all that cultural conditioning is a real person who has real, genuine thoughts and feelings on things, even if they are unrealized. Great effort is required to be able to peel back all those layers and talk to the real person, to discover their true feelings. And yet, that is what is necessary to even begin the road to a happier place.

Please do not think that in order for you to abolish your numerous feelings of guilt means to feel okay with what you've done. Those are two extremes that are not okay. There is a healthy balance in realizing the wrong in what you've done, but realizing that we are all human, and sometimes our actions are caused by a complex series of factors and conditions, and we need to realize that. Then, we need to realize that our partner is every bit as susceptible to the same amount of factors and conditions that can cause them to do things they'd regret.

We need to realize that both us and our partners are these horribly imperfect and flawed beings that love each other. And we need to be okay with that nature of imperfection, else we are living in denial and an imaginary world in which we create numerous more problems for ourselves and the ones we love.

Because there is that love, every ounce of effort possible should be spent in trying to truly understand the other person, and what ultimately matters is that you love each other.

My apologies for anything I wrote that is not applicable to you and your wife. More than likely, it is a reflection of my own experience.