Regrets and "I Told You So" Part 2

Ahem... where was I? Oh, Ok!

So Swiss is now an old married guy. He is settling into the new house, having dinner with the in-laws... you know married people stuff. I give him some time to adjust to it all because, hell, it's an adjustment! I don't call etc. I figure he needs his space.

I send him a grad announcement for my BS and he calls me one day to say congrats. The air on the phone was quite charged, tense even. I think he felt unsure about whether I still counted him as friend even though he "punked out". But what could I do as his friend other than be there to support his decision? So I decided then and there to always keep things light.
So our friendship renews, all the while with an undercurrent of something...was it things left unsaid, I dunno, but all I knew now was that all we had left was our friendship so we needed to work on that. Being friends... married man, single woman. Nothing is ever easy though is it?

Skip to year 2001....

By now you would think things have settled down by now. Swiss, at this point is doing the exact same thing as a married guy that a single guy is... clubs, late nights. He is acting like a singe man! I ask one day about this and the reply I got was,"I'm a grown ass man, I do what I wanna do." Ok but what does the wifey say? His story was she didn't seem to mind. Whoa... Red flag! ( I know you're thinking at this point that this is just his male bullshit, but read on) Well the reason she didn't seem to mind was that she was in grad school, tutored etc. She was never home either. Well come to find out, they only really hung out on the weekends. This is not the normal habits of married couples is it?

He began to share details about their marriage and life together. Unsolicited details. I did NOT open up that can of worms! Maybe this was his way of getting it out without fear of what others might say. He could've easily shared these things with the best friend. He mentioned how marriage was not what he thought is was going to be. He never had sex. At this point I reminded him that he wasn't having oodles of sex BEFORE he got married! He stated he knew this but now it was nonexistent. At this point I'm feeling pretty smug ( OK, only a little) and I ask why did he get married if he knew what was it was going to be. His reply "I thought it would be different. I thought I'd having more sex."( With someone who doesn't like having sex all that much?) Amidst feeling smug, he goes on to tell me that he often tells her that she needs to "handle her bsusiness" i.e. have sex with him. I'm totally intrigued at this point. I hesitated and reluctantly asked how often he was having sex as a married guy. I did not want to seem like I was prying into a very personal part of his life. He told me maybe once every 2 weeks.

HOLY SHITBALLS, BATMAN!

At this point I'm feeling WAY SMUG but try not to show it. Instead, I offer some friendly encouragement. I tell him that things will pick up, they're still newlyweds and that he needed to tell her that he wanted more sex. He seemed to think the latter idea would do no good based on her actions prior to getting married. I let him know that he could make it work and I dropped the subject.

Beam to 2003...

I'm over at their house, just passing through on my way to a hair appointment, to stop by and say hey. He's there alone and shows me around the place to see the improvements made since my last visit. I see the big screen tv, the paintings on the wall etc. I listen to the plan he has etc. The house is coming together slowly. I would expect nothing less especially in the bourgeois neighborhood in which he resides. Checking the time and making leaving noises, I make my way to the front entrance to leave and the completely UNEXPECTED happens. As I turn to say goodbye, he calls me by my last name (a long-ime habit) and gives me the quickest but sweetest kiss I've ever had.

Whoa, hey, uh, umm, OK??????

I look at him and say bye while practically running to my car. WTF? What just happened is what I'm thinking to myself. So much for boundaries. What is going on, here? I try to think back on the past couple years... have I done something to make him think this is OK? Am I to blame, was it me? Was my shirt too tight or something? These are all the questions I'm throwing at myself as I drive to my stylist. 5 minutes later, my cell phone rings. It's Swiss on the end asking if he was "out of bounds". Damn right you are! I couldn't talk, I was so shocked by it all. I stammered a lot. The only thing I could manage to get out coherently was " It was just unexpected. I wasn't expecting it." I repeated this a few more times and he wanted to know if we were OK.... I guess ... wait a minute... hold on. He then proceeds to tell me he couldn't help himself, and rings off.

You can't kiss me like that (this is the tirade that's going of in my head)! Things are spinning out of control ( or at least they feel that way). It took me a few days to get over this incident. Prior to this, there had been nothing, nothing to indicate that our relationship was anything other than friends. He seemed to be fine with our reationship; it had slipped into a comfortable familiarity that made me believe that married and single people of the opposite sex could actually be friends.

Eventually time passed and the incident was not forgotten but was forgiven. Swiss and I were friends, surely we could get passed it.

Couldn't we???