My friend (23f) joined a culty empowerment group and is having sex with the married leader (42m) I'm grossed out and not sure if I (26f) should walk away

I know this might be all over the place but please bear with me, anyway my friend is pretty much in love with a guy who's married and twice her age and I think he's manipulating her and she's in his weird cult group

He's been married for almost as long as she's been alive (21y) and has four children ranging from pre teen to 24, she knows the wife and is friends with her.

So married man is a bit of a 'spiritual' person, although I think he just likes the idea of being spiritual more than actually being spiritual, he's one of those people who are always talking about energies and chakras and moon cycles and stuff, which is fine cause everyone has their own interests but the way he does it really irks me cause he acts as if he's better than everyone else, and tends to talk 'at' you, rather than to you.

So married man decides to rent out a huge space from someone to turn it into a 'platform for empowering creativity' basically he has no clue what he wants to do with the place, just some convoluted idea to give musicians and creatives a platform, which means he just talks about how he wants to empower musicians and artists in very vague ways which are neither profitable, empowering or coherent

My friend works for him and he pays her a dollar or so an hour, she puts in twelve hours daily Monday to Friday and usually weekends cause he guilt trips her into 'being with him' which means more work, work is basically him indoctrinating her with his commandments which are really contradictory and general bullshit you'd find on culty self help sites

Anyway he has four people who always orbit around him, they are all my age and all share his spiritual persona and massive ego and they make me extremely uncomfortable because they treat you like some idiot and try to explain 'life' to you every chance they get, they also don't respect personal boundaries and think they could touch you whenever they please and get pissed if you call them out.

I'm convinced this is a cult group. While I'm deeply worried for her, I'm not sure there's anything I can do to help. Any concerns I express about the group and her involvement with it are dismissed as me not being positive and trusting in him (she legit thinks he knows everything and is powerful/untouchable)

Her company has become unbearable, as most of what she now has to say centres around how brilliant and amazing him and the group are, she thinks the stuff he says (which is cliche regurgitated garbage) is so profound

I feel icky about the whole situation, part of me wants to help her (and I did talk to her about this in great lengths to no avail) And another part of me is really put off by how naive she's being and disgusted that she's so OK having sex with someone else's husband and still being friends with the wife

I need a different perspective to this

Tl;dr- friend joined some weird culty spiritual empowerment group where she's having sex with the leader, I'm not sure if she's worth saving

Submitted August 23, 2019 at 01:52AM by cultfriendthrowaway https://ift.tt/30E36O8