Had an affair. Hard cut after son wad born. Will he come back?

Advice request
I’m looking for honest perspective on whether this kind of abrupt cutoff usually signals final emotional closure, or if it’s more often a coping strategy that can still leave room for future contact. I also need advice on how to stop mentally “waiting” for a possible return that may never happen, especially while still having to function in the same workplace environment.

TL;DR
I had an affair with a married coworker. His wife had a baby, and he suddenly ended everything with a strict no-contact “hard cut.” I’m struggling to understand if this means he’s truly done or if he could come back later, and I need advice on how to stop holding onto that possibility and start moving on

Burner account for privacy

I know I’m probably going to get destroyed for the affair part of this, and I understand why. I’m not posting because I need anyone to tell me that having an affair was okay. It wasn’t. I’m posting because I’m struggling to understand how something that felt so real could end so abruptly, and I need perspective from people who aren’t emotionally involved.
I 32F had an affair with a married man 32 M I work with. I am also married. To make it even worse, his wife was pregnant during our relationship.

We didn’t start this intending for it to become what it became. What started as an attraction turned into a very intense emotional and physical relationship. We talked constantly. He told me he loved me. He called me his person. We talked about what an actual life together could look like, not just sneaking around and having sex. A home, traveling together, Europe, finances, children, all of it.

There were moments where I genuinely believed he was going to leave his marriage.

His marriage was already struggling, at least according to him. At one point there were divorce papers involved. He spent about a month staying in an Airbnb away from his wife. But she was pregnant with their first child, and he couldn’t bring himself to sign the papers and fully walk away.

The closer they got to the birth, the more conflicted he became.

He carries a tremendous amount of guilt about cheating on his wife while she was pregnant. He also has his own history with his father and abandonment, and becoming the kind of father who would never abandon his son became extremely important to him. He talked a lot about wanting to be a “man of honor and integrity,” being a man of his word, and being someone his son could look up to.
At the same time, he continued telling me that he loved me.

That contradiction is probably the part that has messed with my head the most. I don’t think he was some calculated guy running around looking for an affair. I think he genuinely fell in love with me and then couldn’t reconcile that with the man/father he believed he needed to be.

Then his son was born.

Seeing his baby seemed to change everything almost instantly.

He told me, “I won’t abandon my son” and “I need to be with him every single day.” He said that after seeing his son and the reality of everything his wife was going through, he needed to take care of his family and the mother of his child. He felt like she deserved kindness from him after everything he had done.

And then he ended us.
Not gradually. Not “let’s talk less.” Not “I need some space.”

He called it a “hard cut.”
He basically told me that he couldn’t move forward with his family while keeping me in his life and that we needed to completely cut contact so he could move on.

And he followed through.
He blocked me. There wasn’t some long period where we kept checking in with each other. I didn’t even really get the opportunity to process the ending with him. It felt like I went from being someone he told “I love you” and imagined an entire future with to someone who suddenly wasn’t allowed to exist in his life.

The additional complication is that we work together.
Our jobs were actually part of how we became so close in the first place, and while our work structure has changed and we aren’t in exactly the same situation professionally anymore, we are still at the same company. So unlike a normal breakup where you can assume you’ll never see the person again, there is always the possibility that our professional lives cross again.

I’m trying to respect the hard cut. I’m not contacting him through other numbers or accounts or trying to force him to talk to me.

But I’m having an incredibly hard time accepting that this is really how our story ends.

Part of me understands exactly why he did it. He just became a father. He held his son and suddenly everything became real. I can understand why his priorities completely shifted and why he would feel like the only way to give his family a legitimate chance was to remove me entirely.

The other part of me keeps thinking: People don’t just stop loving someone overnight.

I keep wondering what happens when the newborn haze wears off. When life settles down. When the guilt isn’t quite as acute. When he and his wife aren’t operating in survival mode with a brand-new baby. When he’s back at work and life starts feeling normal again.

Does he eventually think about me?
Does he regret the hard cut?
Does he ever reach back out?

And maybe the question I don’t want to ask myself is whether I’m using that possibility to avoid grieving something that is actually over.

I miss him terribly. I’m angry with him. I’m hurt by how abruptly he shut me out. I also understand why he believes he had to do it. Somehow all of those things are true at once.

I’m not asking whether we were morally right. We weren’t. I’m also not asking whether I should interfere with his family right now. I won’t.

I’m asking people who have actually lived through something similar, especially men who became fathers while involved with someone else:
Can a man genuinely love another woman and still completely cut her out because he decides being a father and keeping his family together has to come first?

Does a “hard cut” like this usually mean he has emotionally chosen his marriage and is truly done, or can it mean he knows the feelings are strong enough that no contact is the only way he can stay committed to his decision?

And for anyone who was the other person: Did they ever come back around months or years later?
More importantly, how did you stop waiting for them