Just for review, here was my original list of boundaries.


1. Complete NC, and if contact occurs he must tell me. He thinks this will be easy, but when he gets up I will point him to Dr. H's articles on here so he can be prepared for the reality of temptation when it happens.

2. Honesty - total and complete. I told WH that if there was anything he wasn't ready to talk about yet, to just say that and we would come back to it later, but he has wanted to talk about everything so far.

3. Open-book policy - it was pretty close already, with me having complete access to his bank account and all emails, but there were several privacy fences up; one around his cell phone (or so he thought), and one around his IM. He knows I will be watching those closely.

4. Accountability for time - he offered to take me with him everywhere, and failing that to check in with me often and let me know what he's doing. In addition, he no longer cares if I access him on the GPS.



[And he had already taken care of #5, the marriage counseling.]


For the sake of comparison, here is the new, improved list of boundaries that were to govern recovery #2, if there was to be a recovery #2.

Quote:

What It Will Take

· Another letter to Gargamel, explaining that you will not communicate with her again—ever. No loopholes. No contact for the rest of your life. Period.
· In this letter you will also let her know that she has until the end of July to find alternate employment. I agreed to let her work for us on a temporary basis, and that time has long since passed. [We shortened this time period to last only until the end of the payroll she was currently in.]
· Become completely honest. Our marriage will not survive further deception. This not only includes not lying to me, but means not giving me a false perception of something, as you tried to do with the phone calls. No lies, no evasion, no covering, just the full and complete truth.
· Commit to weekly marriage counseling with me, whether by phone or in person. After all this trauma, we need every possible advantage in order to recover our marriage.
· Keep in close touch the way you have been. I am willing to do the same to reassure you.
· Resign from [the job where the A began]. Your phone calls began again just after you started to work there for the first time since breaking up with her.
· Every possible precaution must be taken to erase her from our lives and make contact with her so difficult that you would have to make great efforts and great deception to even make it possible. This includes, but is not limited to:
o Trade cell phones using the phones from you, [and several other employees], and do not give her the new number.
o Give me your current cell phone (instead of [the one I have now]).
o Block her number from your phone.
o Get caller-ID-blocking blocked so there are no blocked numbers on the phone bill.
o Block all of her email addresses from all of your email addresses.
o Delete her from every possible contact list you have.
o Get rid of anything she has given you, cards, memorabilia, anything at all. (The tools will be paid for, and belong to the company anyway.)
o If you have to schedule her for the short time she remains with our company, institute employee numbers instead of names. [By now the sound of her name is so unpleasant for both of us that we refer to her as A Certain Person so we don't have to name her directly.]
o She will not hold any position in the company except [the one she now holds], and that only through July 31 at the latest. [He had previously been trying to get me to give her more assignments, such as scheduling all the employees. I will try to remember to say more about that later.]
o I will continue to deal with all money issues relating to repaying her loans to you. I will let you know once the money is all paid off, but other than that don’t bring it up. You can believe that I will pay it off as fast as humanly possible.
o Do not mention her in the context of the present. She has no more part in our lives. That means you don’t ask how she is doing, if I have mailed her check, or anything current. It is as if she is now dead, and has no place among the living. (The only time her name will ever come up is in dealing with something affair-related.)
o Tell me immediately if there is ever contact of any kind. If you are honest about this, we will simply find a way to prevent it from happening again through more precautions.

If this agreement is broken, at that point the only way I would even think of continuing to be married to you is if we move out of state, far from this area. (Carson City is not nearly far enough, Westby might be.) And, to be very blunt, depending on the level of dishonesty, especially in the face of all these precautions, I might very well decide to end things at that point.
You need to have some glimmer of how badly this recent episode has hurt me, in spite of how calm I have been in talking to you about it. After I compiled the list of phone calls showing just how many times you had called her, and had her call you right back, and exactly how long you talked each time, I walked quietly into the bathroom. For a little while I thought I might just throw up, but instead broke into hysterical, wordless sobbing. I have no idea how long I cried, but it was a long while.
I will not let this continue. There will be no accidents or second chances. There will be no excuses, and no reasons for any type of contact, at any time, ever. No matter how much trouble it might be to put these things into place, it is little enough to prevent the kind of agony I have suffered, and am still suffering now. I will not risk being hurt like this again. I love you enough that I am willing to try one more time, and I hope and pray you will decide to take that chance.



Whatever else you might think about it, there is no arguing that the second list is far more comprehensive than the first. I also made it very clear that if thought of further precautions, they would be added to the list at that time.

Please take this very much to heart: you can never have too many precautions.

Well, maybe you could, but you'd have to try really hard. Don't neglect this little stuff. The Bible says it is the little foxes that spoil the grapes. Because of how repentant AJ had been at the beginning, I underestimated the hold the A still had on him, and just didn't think all that was necessary.

It is far better to do it right from the start.