How many marriages survive affairs? Particularly repeated infidelity? And what makes the difference?
My friend has been married for a long time. They have young children - oldest is a young teen. She has discovered that her husband has been repeatedly unfaithful. There has been a slow creep of information over weeks/months mostly acquired via emails and texts but she keeps discovering new info. She has gone from knowing about one woman to knowing now of several individual women and he is basically saying it was all a long time ago - one night stand here and there. He promised it was all over. She has now found out he is still seeing (ie. last few weeks) one woman - this was after a huge "row" ( not quite the right word - emotional trauma probably better) in which he swore it was all over and he'd never do it again. He doesn't want to leave and is still swearing it is all over.
I don't have children but can see that having young children would motivate a wife to stay in the marriage to keep the family together. But I was wondering what is it that makes the difference in the cases of marriages that survive? Is she doing something worthwhile in trying to work it out/keep the marriage together? Or will he keep cheating and is she only going to hurt herself and her children more in the long run?
How many marriages survive this kind of thing? Is it always the choice of the woman as to whether to kick out the husband? Does it depend on the personality type?
I mean if you look at say Boris Johnson's wife who is still with him after he had repeated affairs including fathering two children (
www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/boris-johnson-keep-little-boris-4030835 ) how do women cope with this kind of thing? Is it all about the personality of the wife and whether she can cope? Is it inevitable that the marriage is doomed? that even if they stay together and it rumbles along, eventually it will crumble? Or do some actually manage to repair the damage of repeated infidelity?