Just three months after Sam Cooke's tragic death in 1964, Womack married Cooke's widow, Barbara Campbell.
The song is told from the perspective of a man caught in a deep moral dilemma:
He is the "best friend" to a man who trusts him implicitly, even leaving him alone with his wife during business trips.
While Bobby Womack insisted in his memoir that the song was not about a specific event, fans and critics often link it to his controversial relationship with his mentor, :
Though the song's lyrics focus on the anticipation of a betrayal rather than an actual affair, the parallels to Womack's history of "crossing lines" with those close to him have made it one of the most "savage" and infamous tracks in R&B history .
He actually blames his friend's absolute trust for making the temptation so difficult to resist, famously singing, "I think he really trusts me too much". The Real-Life "Scandal" Connection