No love on the email front

No love on the email front

I can send email through my preffered address, and recieve email as long as I send it to recipiant first. But I can not recieve email directly without it being a reply to a past email I have sent.
When I try to configure the email account in settings I get a responce saying that the email ID has already been configured. When I remove the account in CPanel and return to account details, the email ID is still there.
Please help......This is soooooo frustrating.