Hello ladies,

I am currently in an LTR with a wonderful man going on 4 years. I recently received a "How are you?" email from someone I knew several years ago, and I'm not sure how to address it. I'll refer to this person as Mr. Z.

The facts are these: at the time I met Mr. Z, we were both young and I was in an LTR with someone else at the time. It was a bad relationship, but I didn't know better, and Mr. Z became somewhat of a white knight and tried to show me that I deserved better, by saying nice things and listening to me vent. Mr. Z lived on the other side of the country--we initially met on a class trip--so our communication was primarily through Facebook (which I no longer have). I knew Mr. Z had feelings for me, and it was wrong of me to use him as an emotional lean-on. We were never physical. When I broke up with my BF (about a year into my friendship with Mr. Z), Mr. Z tried to immediately swoop in and I told him I needed some time. He took this to mean that we would definitely be together someday soon.

Mr. Z got very clingy and could not respect that I did not want to jump from one LTR to another at the drop of a hat, and things ended very badly, with him telling me to never contact him again. He very deeply hated me for this.

I have respected this. I never have, not once, in any way, tried to contact him. Life moved on, down the road I met my current man and I know he is my forever man.

Today, I see that I have received an out-of-the-blue email from Mr. Z asking how I've been doing and that he had a dream about me. It has been over five years since we've had any contact. However, the email was also sent from his mobile around 3 AM, which leads me to think he could have been under the influence.

This makes me nervous and uncomfortable. I feel truly awful for how I used him, so I am asking for advice on how best to handle it, because my worst fear is having this escalate into something.

Things I have thought up are:
1. Delete and ignore the email.
2. Respond neutrally, take advantage of the opportunity to apologize, but make it clear I'm not interested in friendship or a relationship with him.

Also...I'm not sure if I should tell my SO. The only reason I would tell him is that if it comes up later, or if Mr. Z tries other ways to get in contact with me, I don't want my SO thinking I was holding this a secret. But I also don't want to come off as "Hey, look at this guy who still might like me!" if I'm just overreacting.

Thanks, ladies.

EDIT: Thanks to all for your replies! I am so grateful for this community :)