I'm obsessed with his ex.

[ManfaJones8]

Not one for AIBU category, because I am (100%).
I can't get past his relationship, with his ex wife.
I'm not sure if it's because, he has experienced so many firsts with her or that he shares 3 children with her (we won't be having children).
We have been together for 3 years, he has been divorced longer.
I don't think he has any residual feelings towards her.
She can be a quite nasty towards me or about me, but that's ok. We don't need to interact. We don't have to be friendly.
The smallest things can set me off, like the fact that they are still "friends" on FB and he has some (very old) photos of them as a family, still on his FB.
If she contacts him about the children and deviates from the topic (fills him in on a bit of news), I will have an issue with it.
I'm obsessive, needy and really embarrassed by my behaviour.
Any advice would be appreciated.

[youvegottenminuteslynn]

@changelie

This was destroying my marriage . I thought about my DH's ex wife constantly, they have kids so she isn't going away anytime soon.
What I've had to do is de-demonise her in my head . I'd never mention her name to my DH , it was alway 'her' so I started slowly mentioning her by name . I'd never go with him to pick kids up incase I saw her so I started doing that , and when I saw her I'd smile . I told Dh I wasn't jealous anymore even though I still was ... and i think it's helped a bit.
Don't get me wrong i still wish she didn't exist but she's not the untouchable goddess I always painted her as in my head .
I wish u well I really do... it's an awful feeling to have that you can't talk about really in real life as nobody seems to understand x

Was his ex horrible to you at some point? Or just happened to be married and have kids with her first?

[MotherOfDragons85]

It’s hard to know whether your partner is playing you off on each other or not. What do you think? Is he manipulative?

Seems like you’re both a bit jealous of each other really, at least that’s how it comes across, and I think it’s ok to be sad about not having all these “firsts” with the man you love, I’m the same sometimes with my partner, he was engaged to his ex and they were going to get married, they broke up though in the end, but he’s made it clear he doesn’t want to get married to me, and in a way I often think about this and feel a bit hurt, like “why did her want her to be his wife and not me?” I do feel lesser than her at times and although I’ve come to terms with the fact I’ll never be married now at 35, it stings that he wanted to have her as his wife but not me. I guess like others have said you need to let yourself mourn these things, and instead focus on what you will have with him. Child free is not a bad thing.

[LockdownLady1]

Google retroactive jealousy - there’s some good books I’ve read on it too. Unfortunately I still suffer from this but my fears were then confirmed when I found naked photos of her on my exes phone. He also talked about her a lot and clearly wasn’t over her so I think subconsciously I knew that and it triggered me. It also hurt because they had a child together and he didn’t want one with me - although I did with him. So yes maybe if you can’t get past it then consider finding someone else that doesn’t make you feel such anxiety

[Sunflower1970]

You need to work on your self esteem. You gave a good man there and your obsessive jealousy is going to ruin a good relationship. I feel very sorry for your partner. If I was him I would end it and find a positive, open minded person who will help him move on with his life

[MrsRosiieP]

No advice, same boat here. DP has 2 kids with her. One thing I’ve done is stopped going with him to pick up the kids at her house. I couldn’t stand the polite smiles and small talk.
I also asked DP to stop talking to her about me. I know she used to ask about my job and that really pissed me off. Where I work is none of her business. DP understood and now he keeps me out of conversations to her.
It’s weird because she’s 4 years older than DP and I really can’t picture them together. When we got together she put her foot down or something and started denying access to the children. We had to go back to court for access orders. DP said it was her just trying to assert her position as ‘mother of the children’ so that I don’t replace her.
We don’t have kids of our own yet but are ttc so it’ll be interesting to see how it changes the dynamics.

[Theonethatgotawayawayaway]

@MrsRosiieP

No advice, same boat here. DP has 2 kids with her. One thing I’ve done is stopped going with him to pick up the kids at her house. I couldn’t stand the polite smiles and small talk.
I also asked DP to stop talking to her about me. I know she used to ask about my job and that really pissed me off. Where I work is none of her business. DP understood and now he keeps me out of conversations to her.
It’s weird because she’s 4 years older than DP and I really can’t picture them together. When we got together she put her foot down or something and started denying access to the children. We had to go back to court for access orders. DP said it was her just trying to assert her position as ‘mother of the children’ so that I don’t replace her.
We don’t have kids of our own yet but are ttc so it’ll be interesting to see how it changes the dynamics.

She was putting her foot down?! Wtf

[ExtraSettings]

I think another name might be "retrospective jealousy" ... I'm not sure. But either way its about someone's "past". Its caused by any number of things...

• your lack of self-confidence and self-worth
• his lack of love or commitment
• just life and feeling a "lack" - lack of experience, whatever.

a mixture?

I had to have therapy for this one ...

I'm afraid it was a "thing" always around me .

With age and experience it has pretty much gone! Its sad I felt so lacking in self-worth when I was younger, in my 20s to 30s.

[samyeagar]

He has no control over what the ex-wife says or feels, and nothing he says or does can change it.

My wife really struggled with a very similar situation for the first several years of our marriage. My ex-wife is diagnosed Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and my current wife has a flash temper who is always quick to engage in pretty much anything. She social media stalked my ex, always asking me questions about her and our relationship, comparing herself to her, even went so far as to cut her out of old photographs at one point. That combination of my wife and ex wife made my life very difficult.

The thing is, I had nearly 20 years of building the skills to deal with my ex-wife. My current wife did not.

Every communication my ex and I had was through text or email because my ex would never keep to the topic of discussion, always tried to derail and deflect. I wanted to have a record of everything she said for when we would inevitably end up back in court. And we did, several times. I also made sure to use as few words as possible with her. Only responded to questions about the kids. Ignored everything else. As many yes and no answers as I could. No flowery language, or filler words or anything. As minimal engagement as required.

It was a lose-lose with my wife...not telling her about communication with my ex, and then talking about plans with the kids always ended with...So you did talk to her? Let me see the conversation. Tell her about talking with my ex-wife, let me see the conversation.

My ex always had passive aggressive, or full on aggressive, or snarky, nasty things to say about my current wife, and I refused to engage my ex with that. Only engaged about the children. Sure, I could have gotten mad at my ex, told her to stop, yell at her, but to what end? It would have been nothing but engagement for the sake of engagement. It would not change my ex'es behaviour, and it would just feed her need to sew discord.

The problem with me not engaging was my current wife saw that as me not standing up for her, and picking my ex over her. I did engage my ex a few times over things she said about my wife, mainly to humour my wife, and when it inevitably did not change my ex'es behaviour, back to square one of dealing with a vicious ex wife, and wife angry that I could not control my ex.

After a while, I stopped validating my wifes feelings of anger towards my ex wife because my wife was the one who unnecessarily and purposely set out to stir those feelings up. I divorced my ex wife to get away from the discord, and I was not going to be remarried to that by proxy.

It was a rough first few years with my wife, and dealing with my ex, and it almost broke us up a few times. At one point, my wife started directly dealing with my ex. That was hell, and in the end, nothing had changed. It was just a load of screaming and yelling and nastiness that changed literally nothing. Just a bunch of time and emotional energy spent on anger for the sake of anger.

Not sure there was ever an aha moment with my wife where things suddenly changed, but gradually, my wife came to see the situation with my ex for what it was rather than what she wanted it to be. I think it slowly sunk in that she couldn't change or control my ex and what she said or felt. That my ex was was never going to have some moment of enlightenment and see the error of her ways, and suddenly change.