Hi. I live in Minnesota. My husband's best friend and his wife are threatening to sue me for harassment and place a restraining order against me for some emails that we have been exchanging.
We had issues with this couple starting in the Fall of 2007 during the Friend's birthday. His wife wanted to go out with her girlfriends, so he went out with his guy friends (my husband included). He got drunk and she got angry. Words were exchanged between herself and MY husband. The next day, the Friend tested my Husband telling him to apologize to the wife. My husband refused. We stopped "hanging out" with this couple for some time.
We have mutual friends who "got stuck" in the middle of this mess and they pleaded with us to reconcile so we could all be friends again. I contacted the Friend and his wife via email, explaining our side of the story, trying to reconcile.
*They replied back, but with anger and ALOT of bitterness.
*I wrote back telling them that I did not mean to upset them, thank you for writing back to let me know how you felt and that we will just leave it where they are happy for us and we are happy for them.
*They wrote back apologizing for misunderstanding.
Everything seemed to be fine. Then the Friend contacted my Husband saying he didn’t care about this anymore but that I shouldn't have started this whole mess in the first place.
This emailing back and forth felt like it had become some kind of blame game. I wrote them one last time saying I was done trying to work this out with them, and that this obviously was not working because they refused to address this like adults.
The last email they wrote said, "stop emailing me, how did you get my email in the first place you stalker? I’m going to file a restraining order on you for your harassments. Try me."
This couple has always had many issues within their relationship (control issues, infidelity, emotional and physical abuse, and neglect for their children). This woman, the wife, is known for always threatening to call the police and accuse the Friend of beating her whenever she is angry or unhappy. I do not know if she has actually done it, but she becomes extremely violent and irrational when upset. Many of the other friends believe it is because of some sort of postpartum depression (they have two very young children and is pregnant with a third child).
Would they have a legitimate harassment case against me when they were emailing me back the whole time? I thought we were slowly moving towards some kind of resolution. Instead they write me this last threatening email after I tell them that this is obviously getting us nowhere. We have never, ever threatened to harm them in any way. I feel like a restraining order is her way of controlling when and where we would not being able to "hang out" with our mutual friends or go to church. They have told many of our other friends that they would "kick our asses" and "mad dog" us, if we showed up to the mutual friend's gatherings. Is there a way for me to counter this? Is there some action I could take to protect myself from these false allegations?

