What would you call your exes wife??

[Lifeadminatwork]

New wife? Second wife? Wife is just fine thanks!

Im not insecure/needy/need to get out more, just wish the poison that comes out of exes mouth could be channelled elsewhere for a while.

Straw that broke my back!

I’d use her name.

I like butterface

You don't like what she refers to you as, yet you call her 'the ex'.

What a horrible thread.

If something is second it’s assumed it’s lesser! I am not a lesser wife to the wife she was.

So, if I refer to my middle child as my second child, they are lesser?

You are his wife but you are his second wife. As you will never be his first wife, I'm not sure what the issue is. I'm not trying to sound goady, I just don't understand

My kid's DF recently married a woman who used to insult and belittle by DC (make comments about her size, her siblings, etc) I found out one evening when my child had come back crying. (For context, she used to send me fb messages on a dud account, saying that my ex had said I was shit in bed (ooo-kay) and that I would never find another man because I was beautiful but not stunning . I had dumped him when we were engaged. She was so fixated on my looks, to the point it was creepy. Mostly, I didn't bite).

Anyway...

When I found out about her insulting my child, my ex had to see his child at a different location.

I had no clue they had married as the last time my DC had seen him, he had bizarrely messaged me to tell me that he would be putting his child first and would never marry a woman who didn't like his child.

Yeah, he did just that . It's my child that has suffered, I'm a grown woman and was only slightly miffed when she kept fixating on how I looked but to insult an innocent child and have her dad turning a blind eye to her behaviour, is heartbreaking.

So, she gets called by her first name, if my child ever talks about her..or if anyone does.

Clay face, witch on steroids and many others.

Never stepmom- she will never deserve that title

The theme seems to be that if people get along with exes and their current partners, there’s no issue with the use of “step” but there is an issue if the relationship is poor. As a pp pointed out though, it’s a factual not emotive/honorary title.

My son is a teenager and simply refers to my and my ex’s partners by name. My partner has never had kids, not interested in being called “dad” but does help me parent my son, as does ex’s partner. If anyone ever refers to my son as “your lad/your son” to my partner and vice versus, none of us correct them and I expect my ex does the same. If boundaries are set then it’s nothing to get wound up about.

I call mine his dog. It's fitting, in the circumstances. LOVE Butterface though.

I call my ex husband’s wife Maggie. She is lovely and we go shopping together. She and the ex had a weekend with my husband and me some years ago. Sadly my ex husband died so she is now his widow.

Tuxon it's not factual if the Mother is living. It was always meant to be a term for the new wife of a widower who had children.

The Old English form comes from steopcild (“stepchild”), which meant “orphan”. ... Before 800, stepfather/stepmother meant “one who becomes a father/mother to an orphan”, and stepson/stepdaughter meant “an orphan who becomes a son/daughter by the remarriage of a parent”

@AjaxsLipstick tbh I think denying the ex's partner the term of stepparent can equally be about trying to erase the importance of this person in their kids' lives. I sympathise, I really do, but I have done a lot for my stepkids (including looking after my stepson for weeks while he recovered from a major operation), and they mean a lot to me. Their mum will always be their mum and I know exactly what
My "place" is - but yes, I HAVE helped raise these children.

I don't think step mum applies if the kids are over a certain age really.

My stepsons refer to me as their stepmum and they are older. We are all meeting up for lunch today, including my husband's ex wife. I'm looking forward to it!

By her name.

Glow Well you don't have to sympathise with me, I'm coming at this from an impartial place as I don't have an ex and DH doesn't have any other children.

I do see the positive impact that a child's parent's partner can have in their life of course I do. Plenty of my friends have exes and therefore have to co-parent with their exes partners....but they're not a Step Parent in the traditional sense.

It was always a term meant for a "replacement" not for an added bonus....which of course, many new partners and spouses are to their partner's children.

I didn't mean to refer to you when I wrote I sympathised - it was very much a comment about the situation in general and how a parent might feel about an ex's partner and their relationship with their kids. I was a step-mum for a long time before I became a parent myself and it has made that abstract concept much more concrete. I'm grateful that despite some difficult periods from time to time, we have all managed to work towards making sure the children were ok and the relationship between our two families a good one.

My ex-husband has remarried. I don't think his wife likes me much - which is fine, she doesn't know me and she only has his version of me to judge me on.

From my point of view, I refer to her as his wife, she is our son's step-mum and I am grateful for everything she does for my boy while he is staying with her. I suspect in another life, we'd get on famously - the limited interactions I've had with her, she seems pretty sound.

I mean, I pity her. My ex is a habitual liar and never, ever satisfied - always unhappy, up to his eyeballs in debt to buy things to try and fill the gaping sadness in his soul. But. She seems nice. She's his wife.

Call her the future ex Mrs X....

No seriously, I would just use her name. Is that too simple?

By her first name - that’s it