Who needs friends like this?

When Handsome returned from Sierra Tucson he initially maintained contact with about 10 people he met in the program. As of today, almost a year later, that number has been pared to 3 or 4 guys and the contact is much less frequent than it was six months ago. I predict that a year from now it will be down to one or two contacts, if he’s lucky.

There were and are some good folks in that mix. I’ve met two in person. There was one man, however, that Handsome seemed to put a lot of stock in. I’ll call him the Dude. He was (by his account) a very successful business person with a string of ex wives and a laundry list of homes and companies. The Dude went to ST to address his alcohol abuse and other process addictions. He seemed, post rehab, to be really good at dishing out questionable advice while – from what I could glean – his own life was spiraling out of control again.

Handsome shared his anxiety about the full disclosure with this guy. I think he was actually looking for support. What the Dude said to him was, “Why don’t you just draw her a map to divorce court? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. You’re an idiot if you go through with it.” With those words, the Dude ended any possibility of Handsome doing a disclosure and triggered what would turn into a months-long stand off in our already strained marriage.

Shortly after that conversation the Dude’s life blew up quite spectacularly. He and Handsome haven’t spoken since then, but the damage was already done. The Dude planted the seeds of paranoia that the CSAT and I were teaming up against Handsome, that Handsome’s Doc #2 didn’t know what he was doing, and that I was using Handsome’s guilt to try to gain a strategic advantage in the marriage for an inevitable divorce.

It was all crap, of course. As of today, 8 months later, Handsome sees that. He also sees that the Dude wasn’t someone who he should have listened to on marital or recovery advice. Lesson learned for him. He has thoughts about why he gave this guy so much credence, but in the moment he went all in on the Dude’s advice.

It’s a lesson learned for me too. Handsome is an adult with free will, but he’s also more vulnerable to the influence of other people than almost anyone else I know. He is not a “pleaser” per se but I do see that he forum shops. If Doc #2 or the CSAT tell him something he doesn’t really like he’ll float it past his somatic experiencing therapist to see if she agrees or disagrees. Fortunately, she’s onto him about that so she can and does nip it in the bud.

This forum shopping occurred all the time during the three+ years where he was acting out with affair partners during our marriage. For example, he and I agreed on getting our daughter a cell phone on her birthday. We were in full agreement and started shopping. Days later, he came back with a laundry list of reasons why we shouldn’t get her a phone and how we’d be awful parents if we did. At the time, it was just mentally exhausting. I couldn’t figure out why he kept flip flopping his positions. I didn’t know about the third person in our marriage. I now see the tremendous influence the Flame had on him and, perhaps, how she used that influence to stir the pot in our marriage.

Handsome does recognize a lot of this. It’s challenging for him though to really acknowledge how much influence others have had on him, let alone how harmful some of that influence has been on our marriage. It’s challenging for him to see that he was often given awful advice and that occasionally the people advising him had ulterior motives. Handsome is well liked but has few close friends. With friends like the Dude and the Flame though, who needs enemies?