AOL

Recently, after a few glasses of wine, I was in an internet chat room when a guy messaged me. It was fairly tame - but then he sent a disgusting picture of himself. I immediately deleted it and logged off, but he kept emailing me. Now I'm terrified my husband will find out and that it will cause trouble in our happy marriage. I told this guy not to contact me, but he keeps doing so - how can I convince him I don't want to know?

Susan advises

You don't need to convince this guy - you just need to shut him out of your life. So here's how.

Write a one sentence email saying that he is not to contact you again and that if he tries you will report him to the chat room moderators. Then put a bar on your email account to stop him reaching you - or, preferably, change your email address completely. Then don't ever write to him again, even to complain about his behaviour - doing so will only encourage him.

You've learned a valuable lesson here - to be careful of what you do in a chat room. But an equally valuable lesson is that if you do find yourself in an uncomfortable situation, the key is not to keep communicating but to stop communicating. Once you've learned that, it's very easy indeed to put it all behind you.