Dear Emily,

This is about a friend in his 40s who has a decent career and family life. In one out-of-town trip, he was introduced to a good-looking, 20-something woman. They started flirting with each other. This continued after the trip through texts and social media.

Their exchanges were hot and scandalous. When the woman wanted more of his time even when he was with his family, he broke off contact. She blackmailed him by putting their exchanges on social media. When it didn’t work, she threatened she’d commit suicide.

My friend confessed he never had any physical contact with this woman and had only been messaging her for a week. I advised him to tell her his wife already knows about them, and block her so she can’t bother him anymore.

Never in his wildest dreams did he think he’d be blackmailed by a week’s flirtation, or not be forgiven by his wife for his stupidity.

PLAYING WITH FIRE

Traveling alone with no bulletproof protection from a spouse against the onslaught of an attractive stranger has all the promise of an exciting wine-and-roses romantic getaway. Trouble is, wine turns the mind into a zombie, the rose has those sinister thorns, and the romance is as solid as a puff of smoke.

Lessons learned? Say hello at the bar and goodbye (forever) at the gate. Any lingering plans to keep in touch via social media or in person should be thrashed immediately—unless you don’t mind courting disaster.

He is in a pickle because he got himself a cuckoo (with all apologies to the bird)—with a terribly loose screw! If she had already splashed their anomalous non-affair on social media, and even threatened to commit suicide, what has he promised her anyway to make her go berserk?

Goodness, how empty her life must be. Your friend is not God, so he has no say whatsoever whether she lives or dies. If she’s just being extremely imaginative, that’s her call.

Change all the locks in whatever form should this woman have any point of entry in his life. Banish her completely because she is bad news. Remember the movie “Fatal Attraction”? Only a loosely hinged person would expend so much anger and inflict damage on account of a week’s meeting with a total stranger.

Granting all this communication between them involved an explicit, sexually charged interchange of words and ideas, the bottom line is, there was no physical sex act involved. Unless sexual words transmitted through sound and air are now binding and considered physical sex in cyberspace.

Let the sunshine in and restore sanity. Too much idiotic reality TV impairs the gray in the brain.

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