Well I went home feeling empowered to set the boundry last night. I made a list of exactly what I'd need from my husband in order to trust him:
1. He cuts off all non-work contact with her. 2. He never rides in the car with her. 3. He discloses all clients that they work on together. 4. No social events with her there. 5. No meals with her. 6. I get his work password/access to his work calendar. 7. If he talks to her on messenger for a work purpose (the usual mode of communication at his job), he leaves the message open all day so that I can see it when he returns. 8. She does not come to our house or anywhere near our house (believe it order not this technicality became an issue because he claims that when she previously dropped off food for him, he was not going against my wishes because she didn't come inside).
So, I went home and told him: A. I love him and our family so I am prepared to fight for our marriage and family. B. He needs to cut if off with her (including complete transparency - hence the above list). C. That I was prepared to take a more active approach in the form of kicking him out THAT NIGHT and enlisting the support of our friends/family if he wouldn't do the right things and cut it off.
He did try his usual tricks of turning it around, calling me crazy, but (being a teacher) I just used the parrot-technique. I constantly repeated "I see that this might feel like extreme behavior to you, but I am working on improving our marriage and this is what needs to happen. If you don't like it, you may leave." Our stickiest point was the work email - he didn't want to budge - but I just kept parroting "If you don't want to give me your work password, that's fine. But then there will be no transparency so you will have to leave."
The odd thing was, by the end of the night, I had all of his passwords and his full agreement, and he seemed in a good mood. It's almost like he was happy I took a tough stand for our marriage. I still don't have this figured out, and of course I'm going to monitor like crazy.
My one reservation with this approach is that he is only accountable to me - if he is really agreeable to everything and willing to work things out, then great. But I am prepared to EXPOSE everything if I find even one backslide from my list.
Good deal. I would strongly advise you to have at least ONE method of intel in place that he does NOT know about.
