I recently received an email from a wife who was crazy about her husband’s ex-lover. The husband insisted that he was now committed to the wife and the marriage and that they were working very hard to save the marriage. However, the mistress seemed unwilling to let her husband go. She would drive by the house, keep calling her wife and husband and hang up, send emails and messages on her Facebook accounts.

They wanted to get rid of this woman once and for all, but she didn’t seem to be getting the message. The wife wanted my advice on how to get her lover to back off so she could get her life back and get to work saving her marriage. She just wanted to be left alone. I tell you what I told him in the next article.

Telling the lover very clearly to back off and then not answering her again: It is not always the case, but sometimes the mistress puts up with it because the husband has not been very clear. Of course, he will tell the wife that he has been very direct. But, the mistress might see things a little differently. She can take little pearls of what her husband says and turn them around so they say exactly what she wants him to say.

In this case, it is best to make sure that the husband is very clear in a last message. I often advise that the wife listen to the phone call, which should be very brief. Basically, I felt that the husband should answer the next time the lover called and tell him that she should not contact, follow, drive, or try to commit to him or her wife. If the lover tried to interrupt, the husband was only to reply that if she continued, they would have to take legal action and that this would be the last time the two would communicate. The husband was then to hang up and not commit to her no matter what.

Once the message has been delivered, refuse to commit to the lover: Sometimes this firm message will not be enough to make the lover back down. She will often try to test this to see if the husband really meant what she said. But here’s the thing, the more you interact with her and the more she makes you angry and frustrated, the more she thinks she has won. Her whole goal is to get you and her husband to focus on her and not each other. Don’t let her do this.

Block their number and their text messages on your phone. Block your email. Tell her provider that she is spam. Ignore her completely if you can. Pretend she doesn’t exist. Every time you talk back and engage her, she just makes this process take a lot longer than it should. Eventually, she will get the message that you have moved on and have left her no place in your life. Usually, she will eventually turn her attention elsewhere, since she no longer gets the reward she feeds off of.

Leave the necessary actions to the professionals: Never fight with the mistress. Never let him get you into an altercation. I’ve had readers who have had no choice but to send the mistress a certified letter and tell her that if she continues, they will get a restraining order. (You want this in writing so you have a paper record that she has done nothing wrong and has tried to address this.)

Whatever you do, don’t lower yourself to their level. Don’t let her win. If she just doesn’t stop, she may need to get the authorities involved. That is her job. Let them do it. But, the more you allow her to continue like this, the more she feeds into the process. Her biggest fear is that the two of you will move on together and there will no longer be a place for her in her life. Her “no backing off” is her attempt to go back inside.

But you have control over how you react to it. Often the best course of action is to make her (and her husband’s) position clear and then back out of the game knowing that eventually she will get the message. If she doesn’t, leave it to the professionals. Don’t try to deal with it yourself. The less you allow him into your life, the better off you will be.