Boyfriend or puppeteer?

Sunday morning, Wife had a bunch of errands to run. I had somewhere else I had to be, so she was going to run them all. And she was telling me all about them.

Then the phone rang, and it was one of the guys that hangs around with Boyfriend 5. In previous posts (here and here), I have just called him Friend. Friend is supposedly a paramedic ... except sometimes he is a park ranger or a fire fighter. Or all of the above, why not? Apparently some years ago he was badly burned in a fire, and is slowly being pieced back together. And apparently he recently had knee surgery.

So he called Wife and started to complain that his knee still hurt and was swelling up. Wife suggested that he go to the ER ... after all, he lives several states away and it wasn't like she could just go and kiss it to make it all better. There ensued a good 10 minutes -- easily -- during which she continued to try to convince him to see a doctor and he continued to play "Yes, but" games with her.

The next thing I knew, she had logged into Wikipedia and was reading him articles on the anatomy of the knee. Also she was describing the diagrams in great detail. Huh?? I let this go on a little while and then asked her what she was doing. She was clearly discomfited, told Friend that she had to go, and hung up.

My first question was what had happened to her determination to run all these errands before 1:00 pm. Oh, right, those ... well I was going to get to those in a minute, but Friend really needed me. You know, he is in a lot of pain.

I asked why he didn't go to the doctor. There was some answer (I forget what) but the gist was that he was using Wife's medical knowledge instead.

I tried to explain that it concerned me that -- as soon as Friend called -- all Wife's resolutions about how to spend her morning flew straight out the window. Can he really tell her what to do? What kind of command does he exercise over her?

Wife admitted that he can be kind of demanding and needy, but then said that it only makes sense given how disabled he is. Ater all, he can't even look up articles on Wikipedia on his own, because they don't come through his screen reader correctly.

"But I thought Boyfriend 5 was the one who was vision-impaired and needed a screen reader."

"He is. I didn't find out till last week that Friend needs one too."

Never mind the implausibility of a blind paramedic, just for the moment. Friend needs a screen reader, just like Boyfriend 5? He also has the same birthday as Boyfriend 5. He also went in for knee surgery th exact same day that Boyfriend 5 went in for the exact same knee surgery. And while Wife has spoken with Friend on the phone -- his voice sounds just like a woman's, but he explained that away by saying it was because of the damage that the fire did to his vocal cords -- she has never heard Boyfriend 5's voice at all. Never heard his accent from the Old Country. Never communicated with him at all except by e-mail or IM.

I asked Wife point-blank, "Are these two really the same guy?" (I didn't add, "Are they really both of them fictional characters created by some woman in the Midwest somewhere?" but I was thinking it.)

She said she didn't know, but she was starting to wonder that very same thing. Maybe.

Of course, this puts Wife in a terrible position, and she has complained about this on the phone to D more than once. On the one hand, she feels really foolish, trapped, and used. If these guys are all fictional, then she has been investing her heart in a lie for a year ... a lie that has made her do things that don't reflect well on her. (Paying his electric bill is only the most overt; but there have been other things too ... he has had her jump through any number of emotional hoops for him.) But on the other hand, breaking off the relationship means admitting that she was wrong about this guy all along and I was right. And the prospect of that is intolerable to Wife. She has this deep fear that I'm going to stand over her gloating "neener neener neener."

But what does that mean? Will she hold on to the relationship forever -- no matter how sick or twisted or demanding or totally incredible it turns -- just to prove me wrong? She might.