He is partly to blame, he went into a marriage and had children with the wrong person, he is as much a failure as she is for the marriage breakdown.
Well done ethel can I now suggest you go and cut and paste that sentence into every thread in Relationships where the wife has just been knocked sideways by her H walking out on her?
You are way too invested in the pile of crap that is the end of a marriage. You know too much and you've been told too much and he - and she - are doing their getting over it on your time. That's my take on it. By all means, go ahead if he means that much to you but bear in mind she is quite possibly a perfectly ordinary woman (just like you) whose marriage ended for reasons that you will never really know. But fuck if I would sit opposite a man while he read texts from his ex wife unless they concerned his children.
Yes. that pretty much sums up all you need to know OP. Your boyfriend needs to grow up a bit and stop dragging you into his undignified personal squabbles that need not involve you at all.
The only "coping strategy" I can suggest is that you don't date a man that is still married and expect things to go all your own way.
It's also helpful to make sure that bloke has a spine and doesn't play one woman against another.
Here Here AF.
OP you asked if this was 'normal' behaviour from an ex wife. Yes, it can be - normal for people in the midst of a recent separation, anyway.
Divorce does funny old things to people. It can temporarily turn an otherwise rational, intelligent, dignified person into a seething mass of bitterness, insecurity, hatred, defensiveness, petty jealousy and one upmanship. I've seen it probably hundreds of times. Few couples are entirely immune and it doesn't always matter whose 'fault' it was to start with. People seem to take leave of their senses a bit and will often BOTH behave in a way that just makes all the horrible shit ten times worse for the children and the others around them.
If you want to be with this man then by all means do. But be his girlfriend, not his divorce lawyer or his marriage guidance counsellor or his shoulder to cry on. STEP AWAY from this silly tit for tat rows with his ex and let them battle it out between them. It's not your business or your problem. The more he seeks to involve you in all this by giving you blow by blow accounts of the latest said/she said squabble, the more I think you are just the transitional relationship to show his ex that he is really over her. He may not even realise it himself yet, but I think that's what's happening here. I would strongly urge you not to even think about trying to get PG for at least another year or two with this guy because even if he loves you I think he has met you too soon. He is clearly not ready to move on emotionally from this marriage. Even if he doesn't want her back she is still monopolising way too much of his headspace and emotional energy because he is letting her.
The thing is, if he was totally over her he'd just ignore all this silly text baiting and he certainly would not be showing it to you. He's wallowing in his own drama and encouraging you to be his doting audience.