His wife is pregnant and he's completely shafting her

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I set up a writing group in my local area, and one of the first people to join was this guy, let's call him Steve. We got along really well, and became friends. He has a wife and she's five months pregnant.

He alluded to having had an affair before, but even before that, I just got this sense that he wasn't entirely 'kosher'.
I introduced a new woman to the group, let's call her Amy. Sure enough, he started sleeping with her.

Because of my own issues (my dad continuously cheated on my mum when she was pregnant with me and my sister), I completely lost my shit. I won't give you the details, but it resulted in me having a drink too many and properly laying into him in the bar where our writing group meets. Steve is always cosying up to everyone, you'll know the type, the type that comes across as a softly-spoken Mr Nice Guy, and so he was painted as a bit of a victim, and me as some kind of vicious lunatic. We eventually made up, and he even managed to guilt-trip me, saying that I had made him look like a 'dog' in front of all our fellow group members, and now he was tarred with this brush, etc etc. I actually did feel bad for giving him a public dressing down.

Amy never came back to the group. But that's okay, because now two months later, Steve has started another affair with another one of the group members, let's call her Helen. The sickening thing is that Helen had been witness to the dressing down I gave him, and had actually agreed with me when I'd been ranting on about how among women we should have a sense of female solidarity.

I don't know why I'm posting really. I feel so pissed off. I feel pissed off for his poor wife, who is five months pregnant and who apparently has been feeling really hurt (he almost boasts about how upset she is, she apparently doesn't know, but he says things like: "Today she was saying again how she barely ever sees me and I'm out all hours, and she feels like I don't even want this child, and she doesn't know what to do - all the while I was texting my lover").

I also feel a bit pissed off for myself because I feel like (am I wrong to feel this?) he's disrespecting the group I started, which was to share our writing and meet fellow writers, not sleep around behind your wife's back.

What should I do? I don't feel comfortable telling his wife, I don't know her, haven't met her. She must surely know or guess? He would 100% know it was me telling her. I feel so bad for her.

Jesus did he actually that!? ^
Yuck!!

Kick the slimy rat out of the group

I can't Biscusting, all the other members of the group love him. 😣

Yes tell her. Although she won't thank you for it.

Yes tell her. No, she won't thank you right now. But it's the right thing to do. She's five months pregnant and it gives her chance to consider her options before the baby is born.

he's disrespecting the group I started, which was to share our writing and meet fellow writers, not sleep around behind your wife's back.

Er, hasn’t the most distinctive thing about historical literary coteries always been their members’ tendency to bonk one another? It was what the upper middle classes did before dating apps.

Start a new group leave them too it.

Oh no, I know the type and so many people are happy to sweep it under the carpet. I’m very much like you OP and I’m happy to point it out but I also go the step further and tell the other half. I hate cheating with a passion. I also hate slimy men that think they’re God’s gift to women 🤮

What a prick. If you don't want to go straight to telling his wife, you could tell him that that's your intention unless he stops behaving this way or leaves the group? I expect he would continue regardless because he's a prick.

Totally know the type. Charm gets them through life so easily. It's not always the Alpha males you have to watch out for, these charming and seemingly sensitive types can be far worse.

Contact his wife. Tell her everything that's been going on, then ask her if she'd like to join the group and that you'll back her up to the hilt if she does. I think he'll lose interest in writing pretty quickly & "Helen" can squirm with mortification over her own appalling behaviour.

Put your writing skills to use and write a thinly disguised short story about Steve and self-publish it, hoping that his wife recognises him or make it some sort of murder mystery so that you can find inventive ways to kill him off and vent your frustration that way!

He's really vile, not only cheating on his pregnant wife but boasting about it too. I can't believe they are fawning over him, yuck.

I'm sorry that he seems to have taken over your group and turned it into his personal fan club/hook up club. Leave it and do start another one.

If I was her, although it would hurt to hear what he's been up to, I would rather have the information I need to make informed choices about my future and that of my child.

I struggle to see how you have been made to be the bad guy here? Pregnancy is such a uniquely vulnerable time - surely the rest of the group do not approve?

Well, he sounds like a covert narcissist.

The only way to ‘win’ with a narcissistic is to ignore, reject and move on.

I would be v wary of narc revenge if you took action, they’ll never forget and will be happy to serve that dish ice-cold.

Like the ever wise GhanaGirl says, time to start a new group, leave this mess behind.

Use him as a character in your next book - enact your revenge and sweet justice on him that way?!

Definitely write him into your work. I was going to post almost exactly what Blocked and Deleted said.

Why do the rest of the group love him? Do they really?

Thanks for your replies!

I'm in France so there's a slight cultural difference here - obviously cheating on your wife here is seen as bad, but it doesn't quite seem to provoke the same moral outrage as in the UK. The attitude seems more to be 'none of our business'.

As BlockedAndDeleted says, I'm instinctively a bit wary of retaliation of some kind if I told his wife, and as I say, he definitely would know it's me. He's set up a website for the group (I stupidly agreed to that before this all kicked off), so he actually has some 'power' over the group. To make it even more galling, he lives mortage-free in a house his father-in-law gave them!

People like him because he runs his own (failing) company and is a highly functioning alcoholic - this means he basically spends his working days in the bars, meeting up with individual members for boozy lunches and after-work drinks, etc., whereas I have other stuff to be doing. That means that I rock on up to the group once a week, I casually chat to some of the members on WhatsApp, but I'm not super involved and seeing them one-on-one for socialising outside the group.

Also as I say, he's this really softly spoken middle-class type, whereas I'm pretty gregarious I like to think, but also a bit...struggling to find the word here...maybe a little more intimidating? I think people definitely like me, but I just don't come across as 'gentle' (LOL) as him.

I have actually been toying with the idea of ditching the group and starting a new one, the reason being that after a month or two, to make things feel a little more fluid, I gave 'privileges' on Meetup (which is how I run the group) to two or three people (including Steve) who were really energetic and full of good ideas. I basically made them admin. That then gradually turned into them having more control over how the group is run.

I really don't want to make this into a feminist issue but... I now feel a bit like a bunch of men are squeezing me out of the group that I bloody set up! That's a minor issue really, but I'll admit it had crossed my mind to just leave them to it and set up a new one, this time drawing on the lessons I was able to learn. On the other hand, I think why the hell should I?

Why the hell should I?

Because life is too short to be in a losing power struggle over a hobby-group.

I'd start a women's group, tbh.

Yes he’s slimy and Helen is a selfish idiot but it’s none of your business. As for the group loving him, it says a lot about who they are.

Honestly, what category said. I think this is a "you can be right or you can be happy" moment, and just letting the group go and starting another one is the path of least pointless aggro and most energy available for actual writing and not drama.

The men may love him because they want to be like him. The women because apparently being bedded by him is some kind of prestige thing. Yuk.

I also think you should leave them to it.

Do you know anything about his fil or mil? Perhaps they could be informed through local gossip? That way you’d not be targeted.

This is no longer the group you set up.
It’s a toxic mess and is already fucking with your mental and emotional health.

Look at it this way, Steve Jobs was ousted from Apple, the company he co-founded.

His response? Pixar!

Perhaps could you tell his fil? No idea how it would be received of course.

Yep, duck out and go for a womens only group and leave the sleaze bags to it.

His FiL is actually the mayor of their small town. Steve's hope is that he will then go on to become the mayor himself as a result.
I think this is also affecting me over and above the concept of cheating. I think I'm seeing it as one big metaphor for male entitlement. Like, I'm a dick, I'll cheat on my wife, covertly take control of a group I didn't set up, live for free off my cuckolded wife's family and become mayor.