Yeah, this is a bit awkward...

To catch everyone up, at the beginning of the year, I joined match.com. At that time they had this pitch where if you joined and didn't find anyone you loved within 6 months, you could get six months free. All you had to do was keep your profile active and email five unique users each month. Four out of the six months, I tallied up my email count solely by replying to people that emailed me - saying "Thanks, but I'm not interested." That happened for two reasons: 1) either I was dating someone else at the time - not serious enough to remove my subscription, but serious enough that I wanted to see where it went, and 2) it was easier. :)

So mid-June-ish I fulfilled my 6 month agreement...I received 6 months free and, to my knowledge, I don't have to email anyone each month. So I haven't been on since mid-June, but people trolling the interwebs can find me and send me an email or a wink.

This morning I woke up to see that a guy emailed me. Since you can read the email via your regular mail (you don't have to go onto the site), I was surprised to read this:

Hi I'm {his name}. I was just looking at your pictures and found you have my
dog! hahah not really, but we have identical looking Danes. My guy is {his
dog's name} and he is about 2 yrs old. He looks just like yours. Crazy

Here's the thing. I know this guy. I've met this guy and his dog. I'VE BEEN TO HIS HOUSE.

Now, granted - it was around 2 years ago and I was there for a Great Dane event, but there were only about 15 people at his house. Alright, to cut him a bit of slack, I do look a little different than what I did then. And, I think I actually spent more time loving on his dog (who was a cute and clumsy puppy then) than what any other houseguest should've.

My dilemma is this:

I feel bad when I don't email people back. The messages that I've gotten that say something like "how r u 2nite. wanna chat?" don't necessarily deserve a response...but if people go through the effort of composing an email to someone I kind of figure they should get an email back. And I've met this guy, so I feel like I *should* email him back. BUT if I go to the site to email him back, it will say that I've been active recently...which means that my profile will get placed earlier in someone's search results. And that means that I'm going to start getting emails again from guys.

I don't particularly want this because honestly, I'm dating all the guys I can handle right now. I don't really want to add someone else to the mix.

So...do I owe him an email or not? And if I should email him, how do I say "I've already met you" without making him feel stupid?