I never thought I’d put something like this on the internet but i have nowhere else to turn.

There is no one I can talk to without starting a chain reaction.

My best friend and I met about 20 years ago now, through work. We have remained very close through this time, like brothers and even became business partners in 2013, and all has gone well. Everyone warned us it would end badly to be friends and even become business partners but it's been fine. No major issues, small arguments were dealt with, no hard feelings.

As if that wasn’t enough, the opportunity came up for us to live closer. Our families are very intertwined. My wife is best friends with his wife, our kids played together, we had holidays together. Really one family, basically.

So we were happy to move and have lived just a street over for about 1 year and a half now. You can see their house from our backyard.

It’s been great...until last week

The weather has finally started being okay here so we were having a cookout, at my house. At one point, we needed to bring more food outside and my friend’s wife (we’ll call her “Mary” from here on) went inside to help me. We were alone in the kitchen for maybe five minutes before she VERY obviously started hitting on me.

Brushing her hand down my back, talking about how good I looked, etc. This has never happened before, not even a “maybe” so I was immediately shocked but thought she was just being friendly so I tried to play it off.

That didn’t last for long, however, because then she cornered me by the fridge/wall and groped me, with her hand you know where.

I jumped back, almost knocked the damn fridge over, and asked her wtf she was doing. She was getting visibly upset at this point and said she had been attracted to me for years and thought I felt the same way.

I told her no, I don’t see her like that. I can honest to God say I don’t, if she perceived anything as flirting I never intended it like that EVER. I love my own wife dearly, I don’t want to be with anybody else. I love my friend, I Wouldn’t hurt him like that.

I said as to Mary and told her not to ever touch me like that again, and then I left.

The rest of the day was very tense and I haven’t felt right ever since. I never said anything to anyone, although I thought almost immediately I should tell my friend.

She blatantly tried to cheat him, hell, by some people’s standards she already did when she grabbed me.

It’s actually making me sick. I don’t know what to do. I have avoided both her and my friend, my wife senses something is wrong but I can’t tell her. I don’t want to ruin everything.

They are like my family, we have the business, we just moved here to be closer.

I feel like if I tell anyone, nothing will be the same.

My wife will certainly not appreciate this.

It will probably ruin my best friend’s marriage.

But shouldn’t he know?

Will he blame me?

Is he actually better off not knowing?

This is so out of left field from Mary that I’m actually concerned, what if she has grown a tumor or something?