Notification emails.....

Yes, this is a change that I made several years ago, and it resulted in a significant increase in activity. I suppose if people can just read responses in their inbox then they are less likely to bother replying on the forum. Unfortunately, it's not something that can be changed on a member-by-member basis, otherwise it's definitely something I would let members decide for themselves. I'm sorry for the inconvenience in your case, sometimes I have to balance what is good for the community vs. what is convenient for every member.

The best solution would be to have the new posts appear in your email AND let you respond to the posts by replying to the email, similar to how most modern customer support software works. Unfortunately, there aren't currently any good solutions that are compatible with this vBulletin software, but it's something that I expect will happen eventually.