I had similar thing happen to me... my H's 'mate' told me that we should separate. I got really angry with him that he was meddling in our R without knowing BOTH sides of the story.
It's really difficult to stay calm when it's talk/ chat and not emails where you can have the time to cool off. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but to judge and challenge you is another matter altogether, I think if I were you I would've told him the same... or even worse, I would've slipped and said 'there is more to it. you don't know the whole story'.
Can I guess that this person was quite young and without much experience with long term R?
Perhaps I shouldn't generalize, but I've felt that people with successful long M or R tend to have wider views on M/R. They know that there is two sides to the story and all sorts of sh!t happens in the long run. Heck after all this M crisis and DBing I'll be really careful to stay away from a biased opinion now, unless R has serious issues like abuse. Before I was different. I used to have more of somewhat black& white opinions on R.
This 'mate' of yours doesn't know the whole story. One day when he's M for a while or in a very long term R, he will find out the complexity of it all and will learn not to judge.
The issue with your W didn't happen over night. It's been building up for several years. I don't know if a single trip over there to be back with her will have sorted it out. You might go there in time but you'd need to choose the timing wisely and no one knows it better than you do.
