If one reads without looking for Implications (even though Wilde has scattered them so temptingly over the text) or trying to figure out "the most terrible confession I ever read", what Basil says is that everyone who's become close to Dorian has made awful life-ruining decisions, of fairly diverse kinds.

But it hit me that to a reader now, that's maybe MORE disturbing and interesting than the various possible depravities - "I don't know what you're doing but everyone around you self-destructs while you remain unharmed."

Someone who enables all the worst in others, egging them on, and keeping his own shoes clean is a very very realistic horror story. Also now I can just imagine the advice letter column, and I haven't ever actually read The Picture of Dorian Grey.