My pleasure, from what I've read of your sitch it sounds like W reacted very poorly to motherhood. The view on her you've presented us here is that the experience, to her, made her feel trapped. She didn't like the weight gain, the responsibility, and perhaps most importantly the lack of freedom.
It would seem that once she started to feel increasingly trapped by that scenario, she equated it with "you trapping her" so she conflated her desire to get out of the situation with a desire to get away from you, because to her they became one and the same.
Obviously a better model would have been to have her share her feelings with you and to view you as an ally in helping her navigate things, but she didn't do that, and that's on her.
The fact that you've additionally shared that she keeps traveling and going away for fun weekends would further reinforce that she really is not enjoying being responsible for a baby and feels she has more adventuring to do.
In this context, if another man came along and enabled her feelings of escape, that might be understandable, but it would totally be a symptom rather than a cause. It would seem she was going to feel all of these things with or without OM.
In many if not most of the OM scenarios here, W is entertaining thoughts of leaving the marriage for a long time but is largely held back by fear and uncertainty. The stability that comes along with having a relationship partner often serves as the springboard for their ability to finally throw in the towel.
In your W's case, it doesn't sound like this is how things unfolded, instead it seems to have been everything that comes along with being a parent that set her off, so presence of an OM would be more or less coincidental than causal if that makes sense.
Bottom line is that I agree with you, I think W became unglued due to becoming a parent, and you couldn't have predicted that because you didn't have the opportunity to see her reacting to parenthood before you married her.
I'm very sorry things unfolded this way, but please resist the urge to take on too much guilt for what are really her decisions.
Acc
Married 18, Together 20, Now Divorced M: 48, W: 50, D: 18, S: 16, D: 12 Bomb Dropped (EA, D): 7/13/11 Start Reconcile: 8/15/11 Bomb Dropped (EA, D): 5/1/2014 (Divorced) In a New Relationship: 3/2015
