I have to disagree with Lou. Don't reply at all. When you reply to someone and tell them not to contact you, you're giving out a contradictory message.
Besides, telling him you're "working on your M" is telling him that things are not 100% okay, and THAT is absolutely none of his business. If you reply, you are opening Pandora's Box. If that's what you want... just be aware of it... be conscious.
You don't owe this man anything except your prayers and good wishes, which you can transmit through God.
It would also be a good time for a new email address and to lose the old one. Even if it is some trouble to do so.
Remove the vector, reduce the temptation.
-NOPkins-
I will ferret out an affair at any opportunity.
-An affair is the embodiment of entitlement, fueled by resentment and lack of respect. -An infidel will remain unreachable so long as their sense of entitlement exceeds their ability to reason.
I'm proud of you for posting here before writing back to him, BUT you know very well that you cannot reply to him IN ANY WAY, or you reopen that door.
If you want your marriage to work, if you truly want the relationship in a marriage you've stated you want you must close the door FIRMLY on that past R, complete NC. By saying BE WELL, and then turning around and saying "we shouldn't stay in contact" you are sending contradictory messages to him....you are contacting him to say lets not contact each other.
His simple statement is feeling you out for a response, just don't go there. No response is best, block his e-mail addy.
I would do BOTH. I would tell him that you wish him well, and that you'll pray for his safety, but then I'd also say that you're deleting this e-mail address and that this will be the last time he'll hear from you, because you're working on your M and don't need the distraction right now.
With my ISP, I can go to their website and block email at that source so it never gets into my Outlook Express inbox. I'm not sure if you can do that if you use any type of webmail.
My thoughts behind the “don’t contact me and be well” was from the POV that if he was given a reason that his messages were not wanted and were interfering with LFL current direction, the guy would respect the M and move on.
Be well sort of meant to me like telling the guy to get some happiness of his own and not to be thinking of LFL. It the guy had his own love life, he would have something to do rather than contacting LFL.
When someone tells me their interests, that clearly state they have a new direction and I see that I am not part of any future they have, I don't want to be where I am not an asset of some sort.
I dated one girl and the R was cool, not very romantic . One day she told me her plans for life. She always wanted to go to a small College in Vermont. I wasn’t into education at the time because I needed the money just to live so I worked a lot.
The simple statement of hers, “this is where I am going and this is what I want and that is why dating you isn’t going any place………….” from her, put everything in line. Had she just decided to ignore the explanation, it would have been more difficult for me to give up on the R.
With a prior girlfriend, I did the no explanation thing. I am sorry I didn’t tell her I was concerned about the Catholic Church’s (her religion) position on birth control and NFP that caused me to limit my involvement with her. To this day I feel I took the chicken way out of the R.
With an X lover-boy, maybe my method doesn't work.
Lou, for an ongoing R that you want to end, the explanation usually works. "We need to stop seeing each other for x,y, and z reasons."
This is NOT that situation. This is a guy contacting her out of the blue after a long period of no contact. When she broke off with him before, she likely made the above speech. THAT should have ended it in his mind. Maybe he's checking to see if her marriage did continue or to see if she's single. Since she's NOT single, the lack of response will tell him that.
If she were single, then replying to him and telling him so would be totally appropriate.
Just to pitch in my two cents, and this is just an idea, what if LFL asked her H to reply to the guy and tell him to buzz off? I think her H is aware of this person already, so nothing new there, she would be honest, alleviating her guilt, and her H could do something to empower himself by chasing off the OM.
