Your ex is causing drama and you don’t know how to deal with it. Maybe you’re getting stressed or feeling like you’re being tugged in multiple directions. So, you’re wondering how to handle ex wife drama and you’ve landed on this blog.
To start with, if you don’t have kids with your ex, then the best way to handle the drama is by cutting your ex off as best you can. This may be more difficult if you live in a small town or have mutual friends, but it’s the best way to protect your mental health.
Avoid the places they go to, leave your town, or accept that you’ll be around them without engaging with them. However, if you do have kids, this process becomes more difficult. Check out this list of 11 pieces of advice for how to handle ex wife drama.
This post is all about how to handle ex wife drama.
HOW TO HANDLE EX WIFE DRAMA:
1. Create a parenting schedule if you have kids together
The last thing you want to deal with when you’re dealing with ex wife drama is to bring the kids into it. Hopefully, you can create a drama-free environment for your kids. Part of that is creating a schedule that gives your kids something to depend on.
Admittedly, it’s hard to work with someone who does not put your kids first. However, when you do have kids with your ex wife, a parenting schedule will make your lives much easier. Avoid bringing up custody issues when devising a schedule by keeping your conversations factual.
List the facts of your custody agreement, in a friendly way, and attempt to keep your emotions out of it. The key to working with your ex-wife is de-escalation and avoiding escalation at all costs. So, opt for documents that you can refer to when co-parenting your ex.
This means you need to create a physical schedule that you both agree to based on the terms of your child custody agreement. If things get heated, know that you can fall back on this schedule. You can always refer to legal help if you need to reinforce the terms of your agreement.
A parenting schedule can be as simple as laying out the times when each of you has the kids. Make it clear how you two will give the kids to each other and when this will happen.
Avoid overthinking the schedule because, at the end of the day, it has a clear purpose. That purpose is all that you need to keep in mind when creating it.
2. Get professional help to work through unresolved issues and feelings
It’s unfair to say that you can’t go through the emotions of losing your marriage or dealing with your ex-wife in front of your kids. We’re human and we don’t want to police our feelings all of the time. Not only is this difficult, but it’s a bad habit that we don’t want to create.
Having said that, your kids should not have to deal with you and your ex-wife coping with the emotions of your previous marriage together. Whatever your feelings might be about your former spouse, your kids should not know about them.
Instead, you can seek out professional help from a mental health professional. Let’s be clear that you should not process these emotions with your children. They’re processing their own, likely very different, emotions.
But, you still need to work through them for your sake and the sake of your children. If you have a manipulative ex-wife, it may be hard to work through all of the negative feelings you have about her.
The ex-wife drama is infuriating and constant whenever you have to deal with her. However, you can still choose to get help from someone with expertise in working through painful emotions from your toxic ex. You’re not alone, no matter how much it feels like you are.
So, talk to someone. Normally, we advocate for therapy with the caveat that it’s often inaccessible. However, in your case, you’re going through so much that you need to get external support or you may end up hurting someone you care about (whether that’s you or your kids).
3. Identify any financial issues at the root of the drama
Money plays a role in almost everything in our lives. Whether it limits us or we make ourselves think that it limits us, money can play a major role in mental health. So, maybe you are struggling to maintain strong lines of communication with your former partner.
In that case, it may be worth asking yourself what role money plays in your ex’s life. Maybe they seem like they’re going through a hard time and mistreating you. It’s never okay for someone to mistreat you.
It doesn’t matter if they’re in a good mood with a happy life or experiencing the worst time of their life. Still, it’s helpful to ask yourself what might be causing them to struggle.
Money becomes even more complicated when you start thinking about money in relation to a difficult ex-spouse and your children’s lives. Divorce and breakups are huge financial decisions that cause financial issues to pop up where they didn’t exist.
This also means that money will make it easier to create unhealthy boundaries with your ex. You may be willing to give them money if it benefits the lives of your kids or you may refuse to give them any money so that your kids struggle when they’re with your ex, child support or not.
We haven’t mentioned all of the ways that money can play a role in your life with your ex. But, we hope that we’ve inspired you to think about the ways that money is influencing your relationship with your ex.
4. Set clear boundaries with your ex-wife
Boundaries are the ways we tell other people how they’re allowed to exist in our lives. Typically, we talk about boundaries as ways for people to love us better. However, in this case, boundaries are a form of survival.
Most of the time, boundaries act as a way for you to keep people in your life who you love and want in your life. This is most likely not true for your ex, though. You don’t have a choice to cut your ex out of your life if you have kids. So, you have to find ways to be civil.
While you may not be able to hope for a good relationship with your ex, especially when you deal with lots of drama from them, you can still hope that you both have the best interest of your kids in mind. This is your way of establishing clear boundaries.
The healthiest boundaries require some flexibility that allows for safety and comfort. In this case, this refers to safety and comfort with your children.
So, an example of a boundary might be that you and your ex only exchange text messages or talk on the phone to discuss the children. Most of the time, this will happen when you two are verifying pickup details.
However, in the case that something happens to your child and they need to let you know, then you can include some flexibility there. If they text you that they can’t take the kids today, that’s also okay since it refers to the children and their safety.
However, if your ex then proceeds to gush about their new partner or a date they’re going on, that violates the boundary. On the other hand, if this new relationship is serious enough to introduce to the kids, that does fall within the boundary.
Learn what feels good to you and what types of communication are within your comfort zone. The most important thing about creating a clear boundary is that it makes you feel comfortable and that you can enforce it with action all on your own.
5. Breathe before you say the negative comments out loud
You get heated when you talk to your ex. It makes sense and it’s totally understandable. You know it happens and you can feel it in the moment. Maybe you can even predict it. Even when you can’t predict it and it comes on quickly, you can still feel it happening.
You notice your cheeks get hot, your chest get tight, and every horrible thought you’ve ever had going around and around and around in your head. That’s the moment when you need to take a deep breath.
Breathing has two effects when you’re angry. First, it calms your body down just with the physical act. It won’t solve the problem or immediately make you feel better. However, it’s the start of that process and makes it easier to continue that process.
The second effect is that you pause. It’s amazing how often we want to say all of these hurtful things out loud then we lose our nerve. We’d argue that we don’t really want to say those things and we’ll regret them later anyway.
Even if we won’t regret them, the act of saying hurtful things aloud doesn’t accomplish much. If anything, it will hurt our relationship with our ex further and hurt our kids once it gets to them.
Therefore, there are more reasons to pause and take a breath then there are reasons to say mean things out loud. Your ex may have been abusive, and they may deserve a restraining order right now. The bottom line is that you can’t control their actions, but you can control yours.
6. Avoid name-calling like “psycho ex-wife”
Like many of the items on this blog, this piece of advice has as much to do with your relationship with your ex as it does to do with your well-being. Name-calling comes from pain and angry feelings.
You may be experiencing pain and anger directed at your spouse, whether that’s because they hurt you, you are actively going through your separation from them, or they are making it difficult to co-parent.
This is reasonable and you absolutely need to process that pain and anger. However, name-calling does not help you do that. It may feel good to talk about your “psycho ex” with your best friend or new girlfriend.
They’ll probably get it and agree. Unfortunately, that name-calling keeps you focused on the toxicity of your last relationship and keeps focusing on the anger and pain of that relationship rather than moving forward.
You can’t work through something while still wanting to be angry about it. You have to accept that it happened and work through it, much like you’re grieving the loss of that person or relationship. Plus, that name-calling and negative energy will affect your kids.
Every kid wants their parents to support them emotionally. Try not to take that away by making your kid choose between parents. Respect the fact that your ex is your kid’s parent and that’s enough reason to withhold the negativity and trash-talking whether they’re around you or not.
7. Be objective about your own behaviors
Reflect on your behavior and develop a self-awareness about how you’ve contributed to the drama between you and your ex. It’s entirely possible that you have not contributed to the drama at all.
Maybe your ex has been the sole source of struggle in your family’s life and you have to cope with that. However, this is pretty unlikely, especially because, if nothing else, we’re human and humans can be provoked.
You’re dealing with a lot of emotions while having to support your children through the transition of their parents splitting up. The best thing and biggest gift you can give to your kids doing the self-work that you need to do to avoid roping them into your emotional journey.
It’s important to normalize emotions for them and let them know that you’re struggling without making it their job to help you feel better. Part of this is asking yourself how you treat your ex right now and if that’s the best way to do it.
If you’re going to critique your ex for every wrong move they make, be sure that you’re willing to do the same thing for yourself. Remember that this is different than having low self-esteem.
Low self-esteem makes you believe that your poor behaviors come from your lack of worth rather than your reaction to a lot of painful emotions happening all at once. Be kind to yourself while also being real with yourself.
It’s possible to analyze your behavior from an outside perspective without being mean to yourself. As long as you own up and take accountability for your behavior, then you can improve and do better in the future.
8. Consider limiting your contact with them on social media
It can be difficult to limit your contact with your ex on social media because you’re connected by your kids. Your connection makes you want to know what they’re posting and what they’re doing with the kids.
However, you may not want to see all of the other stuff that goes on with their social media profiles. Maybe they post messages that are veiled threats towards you. Or maybe they spread lies about you to the people in their circles.
Other people, who have opinions that differ from your ex, might even post on their wall about your relationship whether they actually know what happened or not. There are very few benefits to you friending or following your ex on social media.
The few benefits there are probably aren’t the healthiest benefits anyway. Like if you want to follow your ex to know when they have new people in their life and what types of healthy relationships they’re building, then it’s best if you stay away from their pages.
Plus, the less you see your ex, whether that’s in person or online, the less you are likely to get triggered by them. Not only will this make your life easier and happier, but you’re going to make it easier to co-parent by having fewer interactions with your ex that turn out negative.
You’re probably already well aware of how your drama with your ex-wife impacts your children, which is why you’re searching for a way to handle ex wife drama. However, it’s worth repeating.
The more effort you put into getting along with your ex long enough to transfer your kids between parents, the happier your kids will be. They would probably prefer their parents to stay together.
But, if they can’t get that, then they definitely don’t want to be around you two when you’re arguing and hateful to each other all of the time.
9. Avoid labeling anyone in this dynamic as the “bad guy”
We have already addressed name-calling. However, labeling is a different form of conflict. Both name-calling and labeling increase the amount of anger and pain you experience in this drama with your ex.
However, labeling the other person as the “bad guy” absolves you of any fault by default. You may not believe this. If you do believe this, you may want to refer to #7 again and reflect on your behavior. Regardless, labels don’t benefit you in this situation.
They make it easier to divide you and your ex into an “us vs. them” situation, which ultimately hurts your kids. There is no scenario in which separating yourself from your ex and creating “teams,” for lack of a better term,” is helpful.
Labeling in any form really just makes it easier for you to claim moral superiority to your ex, when that’s likely not true and, even if it is, it only hurts the people you care most about.
Right now, you need to focus less on being right and more on the most important things in the situation: your kids. They matter more than the conflict or drama your ex creates.
The best way to deal with that drama is by focusing on them and letting them drive every action you take even if your ex doesn’t seem to do that on their end. No matter what your ex does, you have to do your best.
Remember that your kids internalize the labels they hear. It hurts them even more than any pain your ex puts them through simply because their parents are teaming up against each other.
10. Remember you don’t always have to answer their phone calls
While we discussed phone calls a little already when talking about boundaries, it’s okay to accept that you’re going through a grieving process. You’re grieving the person your ex used to be or your grieving your relationship.
You’re allowed to take a break from them every now and then when you realize that a phone call with them is the last thing you need. Clearly, you need to maintain good enough communication so that you can take care of your kids appropriately.
But, you deserve a few “get out of jail free” cards when you need them. It’s not okay to cut off communication randomly and without explanation. You can’t avoid calls and texts from your partner when they want to pick up their kids from your house.
Luckily, you can text them to say you can’t talk when they don’t pick up the kids until tomorrow and there’s time to talk later. Your ex plays a big role in your life as much as it sucks. That doesn’t mean they have all the power.
Remember that boundaries are incredibly powerful and that you can do a little bit of self-care by not answering their call when it seems like it’s just not a good time to answer. Be responsible with this power, but recognize that the power is yours.
It’s also a good idea to establish this with them and let them know you won’t always answer the phone when they call because you’re not together and you don’t always have the energy to talk to them unless it’s urgent.
11. Take the high road for the benefit of you and your new life
Go high when they go low. Go high when they go high. Just always go high because life is too difficult when you go low. Co-parenting is difficult enough without having to worry about dealing with low blows and painful maneuvers.
Your partner may not deserve any respect or kindness, but you deserve the path of least resistance. You deserve the chance to create a new life without your ex in the way. The best way to do that is to avoid letting petty drama get in the way of your new wife, husband, or life.
It takes more energy than it should to be cruel and mean. It saps your life force and makes it harder to get through the day. The fact is that your ex is your ex for a reason and you should keep that reason in mind.
Whether they ended it or you did, your romantic relationship with them is over and that’s the way it should stay. So, since you’re not romantically involved with them anymore, you have no reason to get stuck in their drama.
Foster a healthy enough relationship with them to co-parent your kids and leave it at that. You don’t have to be best friends with them or find ways to make their life worse.
Instead, focus on making your life as beautiful as possible with kids that you love, even if you don’t love their other parent anymore.
