My best friend is on the verge of divorce, positioned to get royally screwed, and seeking my advice. He is early 40's, married 10 years, self-employed, wealthy, and has 2 very young children,

He was already wealthy and owned his businesses prior to marrying her. She is young and pretty, never had a job, never went to college and comes from a lower middle class evangelical upbringing.

My friend is your typical "nice guy" beta with typical nice guy beta problems. Sex has always been an issue due largely to her mental sexual hangups brought on by her strict religious upbringing compounded by his beta nice guy personality. Starfish once a month is the norm.

Over their marriage, his multiple businesses have kept him at the office or on the road 60+ hrs a week. She has been a stay at home mom raising their two kids. She lives the life most women dream of. They live in a ridiculous house, drive ridiculous cars, and throw ridiculous parties. Her only job to drive around shopping in her $120k suv and post pictures of her perfect kids on facebook. And of course...she is constantly complaining, bitching, and whining to and about her husband. Interestingly enough, despite being beta, my friend lifts a lot. In fact he is absolutely ripped. One of her biggest complaints is that when he does have free time he is always in the gym.

Further compounding the problem, they have a mutual friend - a single heterosexual man - who has a "friendship" with his wife that I feel is way too close. They text each other constantly (texts which she subsequently always deletes), they talk on the phone, they hang out in bars, and she has even "crashed on his couch" on nights when she was too drunk to drive home.

This weekend, he had a "main event" type situation go down. Up until this weekend there has been a progressive increase of disrespect and insubordination from his wife which my friend has allowed. The main event started with dinner on friday night where she started criticizing him publicly in front of their children the waitress about the way in which he orders and eats his food. He had finally had enough and blew up and tell her to shut her fucking mouth and he will eat his food however the fuck he likes. Her response was to give him the silent treatment the rest of the dinner and subsequent night.

The following morning she got up and left with the kids. She texted him that she was taking the kids out of town. From there he didn't hear from her again until that Saturday night when his daughter called him (but not her). I know enough to recognize this as an enormous shit test and advised him to ignore her. However, by 8pm Sunday night he had still not heard from her and their kids have school the next day. That brings me to my first question..

1.) What if a shit test cannot be ignored? She's got his kids. He can't simply ignore her or use other recommended shit test responses. Obviously he needs to know where his kids are, when they're going to be back, and that they're safe.

My advice to him, which admittedly could be completely wrong, was that he had no choice - at that point - but to call her and see where the fuck she was. He called her twice and texted her twice over the course of 30 minutes and she never responded to either. Now it's pushing 9pm on Sunday night. He asked me what I thought he should do. I said text her that if she doesn't respond immediately you're going to assume your kids are in danger and are going to call the cops. He did and that of course yielded a text response of "I'M ALMOST HOME!!!!!!! WHY DON'T YOU GO TO THE GYM?".

I told him that when she gets home he must not allow himself to get drawn into a huge fight with her. I told him after the kids were put to bed to sit her down and start calmly but firmly laying out boundaries starting with the kids and then moving on to this other guy she's been talking to. I told him to tell her that if she goes outside these boundaries you will leave her without hesitation. But that's all I felt comfortable advising him on at this point because I am so new to all of this. I have brought up RP to him but he seems "meh" about it, but of course I am so new to it myself I'm hardly the appropriate person to be pitching it. Plus, RP is a process - a long one - and he needs some immediate help right now. That brings me to my second question...

2.) When new to RP, and you encounter a situation to which you do not know the appropriate RP response....should you simply default to STFU? That's what I've been trying to do but that's not always possible, particularly if it's a situation where you're wife is asking you direct questions in rapid fire succession.

I suspect his wife knows she has him over a barrel and is milking it for all it's worth. He didn't get a prenup so he stands to lose everything to this bitch. This guy has been like a brother to me most of my life and helped me out during some of my most difficult times. I have always wanted to return the favor and now that I have that chance I don't know what to tell him. That brings me to my final question...

3.) How does dread in marriage work when the man clearly has more to lose and that's clearly evident to both parties? If they get divorced, she leaves with millions of dollars, half of everything he owns, and likely his kids. She's still young enough (early-30s) and certainly attractive enough to retain a high SMV - especially if she's newly rich from her divorce. Divorce would mean total and utter destruction for him and hitting the lottery for her. You can't hide that fact. You can't fake that divorce wouldn't hurt you. He can say he'll leave her in a second but he doesn't mean it and she knows it. He's businesses are family businesses he inherited. He's not about to give her everything he, his father, and his grandfather built over decades.

I hope you guys can help me provide him some direction.