Crisis Point for a Lifelong Friendship

I have a friend. I remember quite clearly twisting around in my seat with the rest of the first grade to stare at him and his glasses at the back of the classroom. It was his first day at a new school. I don't remember introductions, or slowly becoming friends. We just were. His mother was our Cub Scout Den Mother. His father was our little league coach. His house was always stocked with home-made cookies and cakes and all manner of sugary delights. I may have spent more of my childhood in his house and yard than in my own. We were inseparable from 6 to 15, BFF's, though of course we'd never heard that term at the time.

After junior high, I followed Big Brother's example and transferred out of the high school that Phil Donahue once referred to as "Ken and Barbie High" to go to the rival high school a little further away. We weren't the kids whose parents bought them Mercedes and Mustangs for their 16th birthday. BFF wasn't either, but he chose to keep on at Ken and Barbie High.

Without seeing each other daily, the distance between us grew. Our activities and our circles of friends diverged, but we still remained friends. After high school, he spent a semester in the dorms of a college some 200 miles away. When he came back, I moved to Boston. We wrote letters to each other, in those days before email and instant messaging, and we played a long distance game of chess, one move per letter, over the course of years. He came to visit, and so did I.

We moved to Austin because Big Brother and his family had settled here, my parents and oldest sibling were only 200 miles away, and because I intended to go to grad school at the University of Texas. A bonus incentive was that BFF had settled here, too. With my return to Texas, our friendship was renewed. But now, it may be ending.

Since my return to Texas eight years ago, BFF has demonstrated a tendency toward evangelism. Not of the fundamentalist Christian variety, but evangelism nonetheless. He discovered The Tao of Health, Sex, and Longevity by Daniel Reid, and it became his bible. He felt healthier than he'd ever felt before. He no longer had problems with allergies or acne. He had found The Way that was right for him, and he immersed himself in it completely. He also gave copies of the book to many of the people that he knew, including me. The tenets of the book dominated his conversation for a long time.

He also became an environmental activist. Again, he gave away copies of books that were important to him, like The End of Oil by Paul Roberts. Daily, he forwarded emails from the various green listservs to which he belonged. He pointed out the dietary and environmental failings of his friends and lovers. He preached with the fervor of a born-again sinner.

It was important to him, and he was important to me, so I went along. I tried his diet for six months, and felt no different. I fasted twice a year for a few years, and I got a little bit more out of that, but not enough to make it a permanent aspect of my life. I debated politics with him, in person and in email, until I could no longer stomach the same arguments going around and around and around. As I've mentioned before, he helped curb my rampant conservatism, to a degree. But I finally had to tell him how weary I've grown of his relentess efforts to change me into the friend he wishes I was.

And now, he's discovered Landmark Forums. After a lull in our friendship, he called me out of the blue to apologize for not being a very good friend to me and to ask me to support him by attending a graduation ceremony for a class that he had taken called Landmark Forum. I was touched that he reached out like that, and I told him I'd be there. After I hung up, I Googled it. I was concerned by what I found. It struck me, rightly or wrongly, as a cynical combination of cult and corporation, manipulating their clients' emotional response to the carefully developed and presented content in order to convert them to recruiters to grow ever-larger the corporate bottom line. Is it an actual cult? I don't know. Is Scientology a cult? I don't know. Do the histories and ideologies of Landmark and Scientology intersect here and there? I think so.

The language BFF used in that phone call was repeated in the pages I found: he had been "running a racket" on me, creating "vicious circles;" he wanted to "be present" with me, and "create the possibility" of a better relationship. I read that the phone call he made to me and the invitation to the "graduation" were indeed part of the Forum, and that part of their purpose was to have current Forum attendees working on their friends and families to increase enrollment in future Forums. I found it disturbing. I called him back to tell him that, while I would attend his graduation, I'd appreciate it if he did not give Landmark my contact information and let me make the decision myself how much involvement I wanted to have with them. He agreed, though he felt I had their motives all wrong. I considered parking a few blocks away and walking, so they couldn't hunt me down through my license plate.

The graduation itself was less a celebration of what the attendees had accomplished through the class and more an hours-long marketing session for the rest of us. I managed not to fill out the contact information cards that were repeatedly offered, and they were much less pushy about it than I anticipated. Near the end, the attendees were instructed to invite the rest of us to sign up. I told BFF I was skeptical and wanted to do some independent reading on it. He seemed disappointed, but understanding. I told him that it seemed to me that what the Forum promised to teach me over a weekend were in fact the years-long lessons that make up a life, the kinds of lessons that define each of us as people. I told him I didn't believe there were any shortcuts to be had. Truthfully, I had no intention of ever signing up, and I hoped his passion for it would fade over time. I didn't want to hurt his feelings, though, and I didn't want to drive an even larger wedge between us.

I thought my hopes were being realized when he refrained from evangelizing for Landmark on the several occasions we got together for lunch since then. He barely mentioned it, only referring obliquely to his intention to take additional Forums in the future. Saturday, he called me while Mrs. Rodius and I were driving to meet some friends for dinner. He said he didn't want to distract me while I was driving and asked me to call him back when I got home. We took too long, though, and he called again as we were headed home. I couldn't for the life of me guess what was so urgent. Mrs. Rodius guessed that he was calling to tell us his ex-girlfriend was pregnant.

He was not. He was calling because he'd just taken another Forum and was again all fired up to enroll me. He told me Landmark had more power to positively affect the future of the earth and humanity than did his previously-beloved environmentalism. He wanted me to join him, because the two of us together, with Landmark behind us, could be such powerful agents for change. He told me that he knows me so well that he knows this was just the kind of thing I was looking for to make my life better. He wanted to get me into a Forum right away, before the baby comes, because he knows I won't have time for awhile after that.

I told him I don't have time now. I told him I can't spend the money. He said it's not about the money, and he'd pay for me to go. I told him I'm not looking for a change, because my life is exactly where I want it to be, and I'm happier now than I've ever been before. I told him again that I know this is important to him, and that he is important to me, but no matter what he said to me, the answer now would be no, because with the impending birth, I have no room in my life for the Forum.

But I do not want to lose him as a friend. I do not want him to become isolated from anyone in his life who is not a fellow proponent of Landmark. So I told him that if it was still important to him in six months, we could discuss it again. I did not promise to sign up, but I didn't make it clear that I won't be. I did not tell him that if he knew me so well, he would know this is exactly the kind of thing I would never want to be a part of. I did not tell him that it is about the money; it's not about whether or not I pay to attend the one Forum, it's about convincing me to be a recruiter, just as he has become. It's about convincing me to start a lifelong involvement with many more and more expensive Forums down the road. He would say that I'm "creating" that reality myself.

So now I am very sad. How do I keep my friend without signing up for a program that is utter anathema to me? Do I sign up in six months and let him pay for it (because I'm certainly not dropping hundreds of dollars on this thing after cutting our income significantly), just to keep him from feeling like I rejected it, and therefore him, without even giving it a try? What would you do?