Hi …. Up front: this is a long one! I have been trying to register on this site for a week or so and I know this may have someplace in another thread but I am not sure where. I have spent hours and hours and hours reading the threads here – thank you to all the contributors. Your words are so helpful. Here goes:

I have been in a relationship with a wonderful man for the past three years - an intelligent, articulate man with a wealth of life experience, a very quick, independent and critical mind and great generosity in both spirit and actions.

Three weeks ago he did the Advanced Course. Somewhere in the dim past I recall him telling me about the Landmark Forum and how it was harmless and I should do it and we should do it together – but it must have been in passing as I completely forgot about it and the name didn’t lodge in my brain… until now.

He flew back to his hometown to do this course. He emailed me telling me he would be busy and unavailable as there were long days. But on the Saturday he called me in a ‘break’ he did not sound happy. Said he thought the leader spread bullshit at times. I emailed him and voiced my concern. At this stage I had not done any reading or research on Landmark – nothing.

On Sunday he calls me again just before they started – he sounded nervous (I have never heard him like this). He said he was going to have his say about his concerns and that he had thought it through carefully the previous night. I was very worried – I emailed him enquiring how it went.

That evening I receive a call from him – in another break – he is in great spirits. I asked him about how it went… he tells me he went in there and through an incendiary into the room… he said he was up at the microphone for 50 minutes or so and that the leader was very nasty and abused him but that he wasn’t so nice back… he told me she eventually told him he was “uncoachable” (first time I had heard that word) and then… to my surprise (and concern) he starts saying that it was wonderful and that he realised something – he realised that the thing he was caught up on (i.e. the bullshit she was speaking in the previous presentations stuff e.g. everybody who signed some American constitution were hunted down and killed, and stuff about Martin Luther King etc) – he said it didn’t matter if she wasn’t presenting the facts but that she was trying to do ‘something’. It didn’t matter that she was bullshitting!!!! It was at this moment that I actually felt sick to my stomach. I was hearing this man (a former lawyer – who argues the‘facts’) do a complete 180 on his own reasoning. He spoke illogical, circular bullshit down the phone to me to negate his own logical reasoning. It was bizarre to me… (I have not slept well since then).

At that moment he then said he felt so empowered and it has changed his life – it was wonderful!!! He asked me (and I felt that there was someone standing listening) if he could fly me over (5 hours across the country) on Tuesday so I could attend his “Graduation” and he would have me back in my city by Wednesday. I said no (given I have 4 children and am on my own). He accepted that… but then he asked if I was free on a certain weekend coming up and he would like to fly over and we can attend the Landmark Forum together in my city. (at this stage I had red flags battering me into caution from all angles). I said I didn’t think I could do that because of the children – he then offered to come over and mind them while I did the course....so…. I told him to send some material about the course and I would consider it. Later he suggested that his daughter mind my children and we do the course together.

I felt very resentful of what had happened. A few days later he called and asked if I had thought about the course – I again asked for some reading material. He sent me a couple of brochures filled with nothing. Well it was words that covered a lot of page space but said nothing, promised nothing but attempted to make it appear like something!

I wrote back to him saying that based on the conversations he had had with me and based on the material he had sent me, I was not moved to do the course. I told him that it was easy to say his life is changed but he needed to show me – so show me in 6 months that his life has changed and I’ll consider it. He accepted that by email (I said a lot of other stuff including my concerns over his Euphoric telephone conversation).

Since then I have not slept well at all, I wake in the early hours concerned, I have a dread feeling. I have been spending hours reading your site and all my battering red flags seem justified. I feel like this is the beginning of the end of our relationship.

He spoke with me on the weekend and I asked him a lot of (I think) difficult questions (that is, it required him to use some reasoning to give an answer). In the end he politely said it was too difficult to explain and he didn’t feel confident that he was ‘qualified’ [sic] to answer and I wouldn’t understand because I haven’t experienced it. I HATED THIS!. He drew the ‘us and them’ line.

That is where I am at – I know that he is trying to ‘enrol’ me he has indicated that he has more “enrolling to do” with me before he can get me there (to a LF). I worry what this enrolling entails. He has just done the first Saturday of the SELP (straight from the AC into SELP).

I apologise for the length of this but I have had no-one to talk to and I have searched. I would like to know what to expect as he tries to enrol me. Help here please.

I have a bit of a plan:
1. I am going to ask him if I can write about this (a few titles pop to mind “The man who’s brain stopped”, “Spectating – a technological guide to watching your relationship fail”, “ Landmark – providing the black sheep with foresight: blinding the fold sheep and taking away their canes”). For me… black humour.
2. I shall ask him if I can speak with the people he invited to his graduation.
3. I am going to ask him to ‘commit’ or ‘promise’ to read a particularly long thread on this site where “nettie” details step by step, the Landmark programming.

I have such an immense sadness now, I know I am going to watch the distance grow between us.. because I know I am ‘uncoachable’.

If you know of anyone/place I can approach to talk about this (in Australia) I would be very grateful. Thanks