I know that sounds awful of me but I genuinely think now that she's being ridiculous for hanging on in her terrible relationship.
She found out last year her dp had an affair lasting for about 2 years. She was completely devastated and we spent hours talking. He told her that the affair had meant nothing to him, it was just sex, just an escape from life's mundanity etc. He bent over backwards to convince her how sorry he was, how much he loved her and their dc, how he would never do it again and how he would never have anything more to do with the ow.
About six weeks later she caught him with a second phone about to ring the same woman again. He swore it was the first time he'd spoken to ow since my friend discovered the phone (yeah, right), and just wanted to check she was ok as had heard rumours that she was struggling.
For most of last year, her dp tried hard to convince her of his regret, he took her on weekends away, they went on holiday, tried to do more as a couple etc.
At the beginning of this year, she happened to see a text on his phone from the ow. Her dp claimed it was a one off and had just been about some legal issues the ow was having (her dp is a solicitor).
In April this year she found a couple more texts - again her dp talked his way out of it.
In May, she - yes you've guessed it - found yet more texts. On that occasion, her dp had been drinking and fell asleep before deleting the texts between him and the ow. At this point, my friend got hold of an itemised phone bill which showed hours of phone conversations between her dp and the ow, and thousands of texts.
They have done nothing in the last 18 months but argue, on about 6 occasions she's told him to leave but either she's backed down or he's talked her round.
They are both unhappy, she doesn't trust him at all, and I cannot see how they can continue like this for the rest of their lives. I've spent hours and hours listening to her, trying to give her my opinion, dragged her away for a couple of weekends to give her some space away from him, I've tried everything I can think of including telling her that I think she's wrong to stick with him, including saying nothing at all, including asking her to confide in other friends to see what their opinions are (they all think she should get rid of him too).
I cannot think of what else to do or how else to help her, and I'm embarrassed to say that I'm starting to lose patience with her. I just cannot get my head around how she thinks this will work out. It's a horrible situation where she checks his phone constantly, rings him numerous times a day, has a tracker app on his phone, is permanently angry or upset, has lost loads of weight etc. What do I do? I hate seeing her like this and seeing her wasting her life on this piece of garbage :(.