FIRST PERSON -- A Cult of Two

A reporter sifts through the ashes of what she once believed was an ideal relationship

Nanette Asimov, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer

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As I waded through life in the months that followed my boyfriend's stunning announcement, I came to see that I had indeed been intimidated, even used, by the man I had loved so much. His explanation kept ringing in my ears: "There's imbalance in our relationship. You don't know enough about science and technology."

He was right. Our relationship did have imbalance -- but not because I lacked expertise in physics, astronomy or his field, artificial intelligence. It was because he had set the rules that we lived by: when and how often we'd see each other, whether we would marry and have children, with whom we would socialize and what we would do. He called it our "agreement," and I had agreed.

It wasn't hard to do. No one else I knew had an "agreement" with her boyfriend, and I liked it. People who kept agreements were trustworthy and honest, and my boyfriend never broke his word. From the time we met, when I was 23 and he was 28, he made the agreement sound like the jackpot. He said that most other people, especially men, had "rackets" going on: They cheated on their wives or habitually lied. But he believed in"personal responsibility" for us and for the world.

He believed that nations, schools, businesses and even people facing terrorists or totalitarianism underestimated their ability to help themselves. Thus he kept a rifle in case of robbers or Nazis. People also bore some responsibility for their illnesses, he said, so he ate no meat, took fistfuls of vitamins and exercised vigorously. Things were "extraordinary" or "increasingly clear." The word "upset" was a noun, as in "please don't have one." Arguments were diffused by "acknowledging" my points, although I should not "make him wrong." He never said, "I think" or "I feel that . . ." He said, "There's a sense in which . . ."

Personal responsibility kept him working at least 60 to 80 hours a week. When we met, he'd been a researcher with the environmentalist Barry Commoner in New York, but he soon joined a computer firm in Silicon Valley. I moved, too, having been hired at The San Francisco Chronicle.

Within nine years he became company president and had high-level government security clearance. I had a principal beat on the paper, and we were no longer kids. He said marriage was possible but that he would love me more if I were patient and could "think long-term."

So I was patient. I loved my work but lived for the weekends. We saw his favorite movies and ate at his favorite restaurants. We exercised together and planned the new house he was designing for himself. And he told me he loved me every day.

I never looked beyond his smooth words, happy childhood and summa cum laude credentials to ask myself what kind of person could design such a lopsided and self-serving "agreement." Only when it was severed and the sugar- coated explanations melted away did I begin to really see. That nagging feeling of cultishness provided the first clue.

My boyfriend had taken Werner Erhard's "est training" shortly before we met but had sworn me to secrecy because, he said, people misunderstood est. He had also quietly participated in the most recent version of est, called "the Forum."

My boyfriend had scoffed when it was published in 1993, saying, "Someone's always taking a potshot at Werner Erhard." Erhard, it turned out, had est participants operating on strict "agreements" -- they were not even allowed to use the bathroom except at designated times. His trainers barked at people to drop their "rackets" and take "personal responsibility" for their lives. They swore at people and belittled them, only to build them up in a crescendo of loving approval toward the end of the four-day training.

The Pressman book and other articles revealed that Erhard ridiculed people for saying "I think" or "I feel." Erhard used "upset" as a noun and "acknowledged" what others said. He called people "machines," as my boyfriend did. He described them as "merely tubes," as my boyfriend did ("in one end and out the other"). To Erhard, things were"extraordinary" and "increasingly clear," and he became angry if anyone "made him wrong." Trainers were ordered to "re- create Werner" as they worked. No innovation, deviation or dissention was permitted. Lifetime loyalty oaths were signed.

It was with astonishment that I began to peel back the curtain that had once concealed Oz. But instead of finding a good man behind bad wizardry, I discovered a narcissistic empire that employed sophisticated mind-control techniques designed to further the needs of the leader. My boyfriend had been the leader in our relationship, and it was apparentnow who his teacher had been.

Former employees have accused Erhard of beating and humiliating his wife in their presence. When she divorced him, she agreed never to tell her story. But Erhard's womanizing was no secret; nor were the accusations of two of his daughters, who accused him of raping and molesting them. He denied their charges. All the while, Erhard led seminars he called "Celebrating Your Relationships."

I might have appreciated the irony in all of this had it not appeared that my boyfriend learned his own relationship skills from this man -- and turned them on me. Unlike hundreds of thousands of est "graduates," my boyfriend did not worship Erhard. He emulated him. He never beat me or humiliated me, but like Erhard he knew how to take control.

Perhaps there was no better example than on the last day of our relationship when he complained for the first time about my lack of science credentials. A decade earlier, science writing had been my major in graduate school. The Los Angeles Times had run a piece I'd written on the inability of sophisticated robots to tie a shoelace, and I had been thrilled. My boyfriend had been furious. I had ventured onto his turf, and he told me never to write about science again.

Nor was I to write about our relationship, he said -- then or ever.