When you have a baby, you are desperately vulnerable. Your body is pretty much trashed there for a while, you are usually fat and you have a weird apronny bit where your tummy used to be, plus stretchmarks in most cases. Your whole world is completely upside down and who you are and where you belong in it has changed. You are exhausted because caring for a baby is a 24/7 deal - you can't call in sick, even if you want to die, and if the baby is crying at 3 am then you have to get up and see to them, even if they've been doing it on the hour every hour for the past 24. You NEED your baby's other parent to support you and engage with you and to feel that you can, actually, manage this monumental job of actually being totally responsible for another human life. You will never be more vulnerable, or more deserving of your husband's love and support. It's a tough time. A special time, in other ways one of the most joyous, but it is tough. So tough. And to deal with an affair then? My God.
A man who decides to fuck another woman in that time is a total fuckwitting arse. Beneath contempt, tbh. Diddums isn't the centre of his wife's world? Please. Grow the fuck up. A woman who decides to go with that... well. Not exactly overflowing with empathy, is she, to do that to someone. Never mind what the mess could do to that tiny new life. And it will also potentially mean irrevocable damage to the child, should the mother suffer emotionally, because babies gain their security from their mothers, and personally I don't know how much I would have been able to offer my son if my husband had cheated on me then.
You decided not to go with that. You decided the wife and his baby deserve better. Good for you. Please accept that YOU deserve better - this man is not a prize. Unless it's a prize loser.
My husband is a genuine grownup. Our marriage was definitely not in a good way after DS arrived, because I was exhausted and so was he and sleep deprivation makes saints of nobody, but he'd never have had an affair when I was that totally vulnerable. What kind of sociopath would?
Please don't do this. Please. I agree the primary responsibility is with the man who made the vows, but come on. You're an adult. You can't get involved with someone, knowing what that could do to two other people, and knowing how horrible an act it would be, and tell yourself you bear no share of the blame. If you do this, then yes, you are also culpable. Your friends need to grow the fuck up if they are saying anything else. This is a man willing to fuck a woman over as badly as it is possible to do it - why in the world would you decide to assist him?