We are a group of friends who have known each other since high school—both males and females. We look out for one another, attend each other’s special days, and celebrate together. Along the line, I noticed that one of them was attracted to me. Let’s just call him Obi. Before we graduated from school, I kinda noticed that he stared at me sometimes and got nervous around me. After school, we all reconnected and tried our best to be there for each other. Obi and I had a mutual attraction, which one day led to something physical. We went from being friends to touching each other. Ever since then, things started changing. It became so hard to maintain the friendship—obsession, addictive s€x, monitoring, and possessiveness took over everything. I noticed he found it hard to let go of me. Mind you, we both had our own partners, whom we had been dating for a long time. Our other friends kinda suspected that something was going on between me and Obi because Obi sometimes couldn’t pretend for once whenever we were all in public.
Every time I tried to stop what we were doing so we could go back to being just friends, he would get upset, we would argue, and we would stop talking for months. Somehow, he would always come back, beg me, and we would continue again. We did this back-and-forth thing for five years until one day, we had a huge fallout. I decided to remove and block him from every social media platform. I avoided every gathering I knew he would be present at, and for a year, we didn’t talk or see each other. During that year of separation, we both got engaged and married our partners. I heard about his wedding but didn’t reach out to congratulate him or attend. He did the same during mine. After a year, I got a call from an unknown number, and when I picked up, I heard, “Hello, it’s Obi. I just wanted to check up on you. It’s been long.” I responded, and we talked smoothly as friends. He told me he missed me, but I didn’t respond. We talked about what caused our fight, and he apologized.
I told him I was married, and he told me he was too. He then asked if we could be just friends again. I told him I didn’t have an answer to that yet. So, my question is: Should I take him back as a friend? Do you guys think he won’t ever try to make a move again, or should I still cut off all connections with him? Please, I need your advice on what to do.