Dear Tits and Sass,

Last February, I met Phil off a sugar dating site. He was extremely effusive in quasi-personal affection towards me during our first meeting, to the point that I realized he was an attachment risk and considered not seeing him again. (He’d had a recent and extremely nasty divorce.) But I agreed to a monthly arrangement of x dollars/month for indefinite weekly meetings and saw him three times total. In addition to sex, he wanted an intellectual relationship.

Between our meetings, Phil frequently wrote me vaguely romantic emails, with very familiar addresses and conclusions (things like “dear love,” etc.). I am married and he knew that. Eventually he was sending me such intense emails that I concluded he actually thought he had fallen for me. The last piece of evidence for me that things had gone too far was when I went over to his house and found a picture of myself on his mantel: He had learned my real name from a careless mistake I made, found my Facebook, and got the picture from there.

I didn’t return his calls or emails for awhile. He sent me several distraught emails and I finally emailed him, apologized for being uncommunicative, and told him that I couldn’t see him anymore because I was concerned he was getting too attached. I was pretty blunt, but toed the line between being a person breaking up with a lover (as was appropriate to the stupid sugar game we were playing) and an escort cutting off a client (I, for example, referred to myself explicitly as an escort/sex worker in the email). I told him my role in his life should be therapeutic and motivational, not romantic, and that I did not think that was possible, basically.

He sent me a recent email proposing we keep seeing each other, just less frequently, and I did tell him I’d respond to it (oops—maybe shoulda held my cards), and I am hoping there is something I can do to let him go. I also am nervous because I (a) don’t want to acquire a stalker or something, and (b) he has my real name, which means that he could conceivable out me if he felt sufficiently jilted. Don’t know if he’d do that or not. (My husband knows about all of this.) What should I do?

Sincerely,

Unhappily Loved One