Sex Can Change Everything

Remember Red, my former friends with benefits, who randomly decided to come back into my life a couple of months ago? Well, I am happy to report that it didn’t end up being what I was afraid of – a guy who just wanted to cheat on his wife. But, the more we talk, the more I am realizing that our friendship has forever changed.  

Remember Red, my former friends with benefits, who randomly decided to come back into my life a couple of months ago? Well, I am happy to report that it didn’t end up being what I was afraid of – a guy who just wanted to cheat on his wife. But, the more we talk, the more I am realizing that our friendship has forever changed.  

We’ve had a lot of conversations and we both agreed that we genuinely want to be friends. We also agreed that it’s nice being in each other’s lives again and we don’t want to do anything stupid to compromise that.

However, there is just one little piece of all of this that kind of worries me. Actually, let’s be honest here – it’s a pretty big piece and it worries me a whole lot. His wife has no idea that we are friends again.

And, trust me, I am well aware of how wrong and dirty that sounds. But, honestly, we aren’t doing anything wrong. That is, we are just friends again. I mean, there isn’t anything physical or sexual going on between us. We aren’t plotting to sleep together or run away together. It’s just friends.

But, even though our friendship is harmless now, Red’s wife knows about our past. She knows who I am and what happened between us. So while part of me thinks what’s the big deal the other part of me knows it’s obviously a little hard to say “hey honey, remember that chick that I used to hook up with all the time? Well, I Googled her, emailed her, and now we’ve decided to become friends again. Cool?” And as much as I want to believe in understanding and acceptance, I am sane enough to know that no person in their right mind is going to be OK with that.

So now I wonder. Is it truly possible to be friends with someone when your friendship is a secret? I mean the thought that we could be in the same city but not be able to meet for drinks or dinner. The thought that we could pass each other on the street and could possibly pretend to be strangers. All of that is a little heartbreaking to me and I don’t think that’s what friendships are about. I promised myself after Mr. BST that I wouldn’t have relationships in secret. 

And, there’s an even bigger thought. If he can’t tell his wife that we’re friends, that makes what we are doing wrong. After all, omission is betrayal. I don’t believe that husbands and wives have to tell each other every minute detail, but I do believe this detail is a little too big to leave out.

So, even though we genuinely want to be friends again, there is this huge thing hanging over all that and frankly, it sucks because I really missed having him in my life. And I never thought that we’d end up like this. Actually I never really thought about how we would end up at all.

I’m not going to say that I regret anything that I did with Red. I don’t. I don’t really even believe in regrets. But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a tiny part of me that wonders what it would be like if we had never started hooking up in the first place.

Sex can really change a relationship. I am not going to sit here and say that sex always ruins relationships. I know friends who have had sex and they have come out on the other side as even better friends. So I know it doesn’t always happen. It’s just it did for me.

And I don’t think we will make it to the other side.