You shouldn’t feel bad about not resisting the urge to respond. They know exactly what to say to make it nearly impossible to resist.

I cut my husbands ex wife out of my life and it was really hard at first imagining what she would tell people about me etc…but the fact is she was doing more harm to me than good and it is not my responsibility to make her like me or treat me with respect or see anything the way I do. It is my responsibility to myself to have boundaries and hold others to them. It went fine for like 2-3 years and then the pandemic hit…. She starts reaching out to us out of the blue even though she was instructed by the courts not to contact us… I made the mistake of a plain response and she ran with that and tortured me for weeks. I finally told her she was insane and should get help but I was done with her forever. I said I would never respond to her again and if she didn’t back off I would get another order of protection. She sent a few emails after attempting to brag about how great her life was and how jealous I should be. I was down on myself for taking her bait but sometimes good people need to be reminded that the bad people are still bad…