When is it time to admit "its over"?

I'm divorced now for over a year.
Every once in awhile I question if I made the right choice to divorce instead of stay and cheat OR try for an open marriage.

I always after logically thinking about it come back to the same answer.
Yes I made the right decision for me in my best interests to divorce.
My ex was jealous over men that I had no sexual contact with so he would have never agreed to an open marriage.
I did not like sneaking around either.

I got to a point I no longer desired to kiss him or even eat at the same table with him. I was so resentful and disgusted by the neglect I had to divorce.

Our relationship is healthier now. We are friends and co parents. Things are better.

Divorce is not the end of the world. For some it can be the beginning of a new and better life.

I totally agree with the psychologist friend. Imagining a situation because someone asks you to picture it vs. naturally, unprovoked daydreams about a future (for me, alone was a vast improvement fantasy and with someone who wanted to have sex with me was actually beyond my wildest hopes at many times).
I liked the Elephant Journal article on another thread that walked you through imagining if you won a lottery and could do anything with anyone, who in your current life would you retain/keep in your "dream life" you are picturing? Their point was that if we are hanging out with toxic people, those who drain or don't support us - those we kind of dislike so much that if we didn't NEED something from them, then we wouldn't keep them in our life - then they are probably not that healthy for us to be hanging out with NOW either. But as applies to my SM - when I tried to picture "if he could magically start wanting sex with me again, would it be enough" === the answer was NO. Even if he were able to attend therapy (he wouldn't have agreed to it), or willingly participated if he got there (instead of trying to show he was smarter than a licensed therapist), even if some fairy godmother waved her magical wand to rejuvenate and restore his manly wand - - I wouldn't WANT him anymore. Then - I knew.
I was lucky enough to not have minors (our grown children were all "his" before they were "ours") and so I didn't have to delay a timetable beyond apartment availability arrangements. Limbo period was still a weird & precarious balancing act and mine was very short.
I have thoughts once in a while about "what if" but then I remember how much deliberation I DID perform. I did not jump into my decision on a whim. The divorce was not a result of poor impulse control. It was in fact, maybe the most well-thought-out plan I've ever executed. And it has worked wonders in my joie de vivre levels.

I'm with @geekgoddess here. I'm not divorced yet (it'll take a year in our wonderful state), but we've been separated since January, and I'll be telling her in our next couples session that I'm done.

I realized a while back that when I thought about the future, I didn't see my wife in it in any way, and the plans and goals that are important to me for pursuing my dreams don't align with what she wants out of her life. It's told me everything I need to know about what path my future lays along.

VERY telling, @dan! So rather than thinking of this as actual limbo, it's really just Step One or Part A to executing what you envision.

I had already started clearing out files and compressing my belongings (donating lots to Salvation Army) - this "habit" began a few years before I found EP, actually, but later I realized how grateful I was that this became my pattern. And - when I moved with such ease (moving most belongings in my Prius) - I wondered if I had subconsciously been "down-sizing" so much because I was trying all along to make it easy to run away! Because, honest, the Ex was VERY surprised how few times I asked if he could help me with the truck (dining room table, treadmill, the guest room mattress, my desk). Almost everything else in my apartment was moved in a hatchback. I was like Jack Kerouac or something, I was THAT ready to hit the road when the time came.

Deep down, I knew my marriage was over for a while, I just wasn't quite willing to admit it. The moment I realized it was during a homework exercise from our first couple's counselor. Doing my part of the assignment, to arrange a date for us, and he basically shit all over it and talked down to me about not being able to remind me to do my homework (we were allowed to make it a surprise date, which is what I did). In that very brief encounter, I saw that that was how he had been treating me for years, and he would never change. It has taken me a long time to not cry when I recount that entire story. I had planned something I knew he would like and enjoy, and to have him react that way was so awful for me. It was right then that I knew I was done, I couldn't live like that anymore and I geared my efforts to researching divorce, and planning my life without him.

This reminds me of our post about "tipping points", all good discussions.

For me, three things aligned toward making the decision:

1) Understanding that I no longer had a sexual relationship with my wife and that she no longer desired one with me. She might have desired to desire one with me, but that is not the same. Maybe add to this, awareness of the limits of my tolerance in a mere dating relationship with someone new. I think most people enlist in this board under the assumption that they are plummeting toward the earth on a bunjee cord, expecting somehow to land back on the bridge from which they fell if they just do X,Y,Z.  When I decided to change the nature of my expectations of marriage (even its definition), and later on, to leave totally - I realized I was merely standing on the ground looking up at a bridge, same as everyone else. There was no tether that would snap me back toward a natural state of intimacy, as I'd assumed previously. It was a profound shift in thinking.

2) Understanding the resources, tools and aid that I had tried and exhausted to either change or endure the situation. The most important resource was my spouse's own enthusiasm for enlisting in a process to change. I realized that I had gone farther than I imagined I ever would in accommodating her stated needs to create the conditions for attraction to occur, and that with each goalpost met and knocked out of the park - they shifted farther, demanding more, rather than less.

3) Understanding the trajectory over a larger span of time. Which way was it pointed under the best of conditions (directed therapy, giving her what she said she needed, and "save the marriage" vacation), with lots of help and measures of assistance, and which way was it pointed under normal circumstances? Also, how would I compare against someone new, coming in cold?

Of those three, trajectory was the most important to me, or at least the final one that slotted into place. It was a matter of hours upon realizing that all three were aligned to pulling the plug. Maybe minutes.

Prior to that, years.