Dear Charlie:

I agree with your friend, that you should have shared the Instagram information with him, absolutely! You helped your friend protect himself from a person continuing to try to hurt him.

You wrote: “I don’t ever want to advocate completely cutting someone off.” I do. I do advocate completely cutting people who are trying to hurt you out of your life, no matter if it is a parent, a sibling, anyone.

Cutting off abusive people is a good thing and should be done. Your friend stated he feels better having done so, good for him! The thing is he may feel guilty again because of the (wrong) social convention that it is wrong to cut off family members.

I hope you will be there to remind your friend how good he felt last night when he sent her the message that he “cannot do this anymore and that he will not be responding to any emails or calls in the future”- and that he should stick to this policy regardless of future unjustified guilty feelings.

Thank you for your appreciation and suggestion that I write a book… I appreciate it. Post anytime.

anita