How To Deal With A Psycho Ex-wife?

How to deal with a psycho ex-wife depends on how obsessed and malicious your ex-wife is. If she’s just calling and texting you, you don’t need to ignore her, block her, or get a restraining order against her. That would be mean, unthoughtful, and completely unnecessary as it would cause her more pain, which would then cause her to do more obsessive things.

Things that smother you, anger you, and maybe even force you to get revenge.

You need to treat a psycho ex-wife as someone who’s struggling mentally and needs lots of help accepting the breakup and her new life. You need to understand that she’s a human being just like you and that as wrong as she is for giving you trouble that she has a reason (or thinks she has a reason) for acting that way.

Her reason is emotions as emotions are something she doesn’t have control over at this moment. Perhaps she never did, so the breakup made things many times worse. It enhanced her impulsiveness and made her act in psycho ways that pressure you, hurt you, and bring you down to her level.

Whatever you do, don’t stoop to her level. If you act like her, you’ll both ignore rationality, act on emotions, and make things much more difficult for each other. Instead of understanding each other and calming each other down, you’ll blame each other for being intrusive and uncaring and destroy whatever respect you have left for each other.

This person used to be your wife (someone you were close to and wanted to spend the rest of your life with). It may be possible to be cordial one day. But to get there, someone will have to show care and support first. That someone will have to be you because the person who leaves causes a lot of separation anxiety, fears, anger, and desperation.

He destroys his ex’s self-esteem and by doing so, makes his ex chase. This is how most breakups work. Only amicable breakups don’t create any desire for validation as both parties are emotionally detached. But in your case, that’s not the case. Your ex-wife still has feelings for you or at the very least is attached and finds your opinion of her extremely important.

Now that you broke up with her, your reassurance is more important than ever as you rejected her and showed her you don’t want anything to do with her. You told her she needs to accept the breakup and move on. That’s why you have to remember that your psycho ex-wife is behaving in an erratic or dangerous fashion because she wants to feel important.

If she can’t feel important or thinks you deserve to suffer, she may even take revenge by doing something that harms you emotionally and/or physically. A painful response from you would tell her that she’s not suffering alone and that she can manipulate the way you think and feel.

There is no simple solution to dealing with a psycho ex-wife as every situation is different. Some people call an ex-wife psycho just because she’s calling them obsessively and feels hurt. That’s why we’ll talk about various scenarios and teach you how to handle each case differently.

Your ex-wife calls you dozens of times a day

If your ex-wife keeps calling you, texting you, and won’t leave you alone, she’s doing that because she’s looking for validation. She wants to know that deep inside, you still care about her (at least as a person) and that you’ll respond to her when she reaches out.

You used to respond before, so she expects you to communicate now as well. Only now, she’s in a lot of pain and needs you to ease her anxiety.

Although your job isn’t to baby your ex-wife and be her friend, you should still put her pain, depression, and low self-esteem before your anger, suffocation, and disgust. It won’t be easy to communicate patiently as you’ll feel like running for the hills, but don’t overthink things. You don’t need to be her therapist and support her from start to finish. That could take a year or much longer if she has a mental illness.

You just need to give her enough strength and support until she’s strong enough to get out of denial, pull away, and start no contact. You can do this by 1)telling her when you’ll be free to chat and 2)talking about things she needs answers to (give her closure).

If she insists on getting back together, tell her you agreed to answer any questions she has for you, but that you’re not open to reconciliation. Say that you’ve made your decision and that you’d appreciate her if she didn’t pressure you and guilt-trip you anymore as it’s making you want to be alone even more.

Under no circumstance should you give her breakup excuses such as, “I still love you, we might get back together in the future.” Such words will give her hope and make her take the things you say literally. If you want the best for her and yourself, you have to be honest at all times and let her down gently when she says she wants to get back together with you. That’s how you can kill her hope rather than force her to keep holding on to you for ages.

Of course, how quickly she lets go of hope also depends on what she does and how she is as a person. But you can help her process the breakup quicker by being respectful (not her friend) and repeating that you’re not going back on your word just because she’s brokenhearted.

I’m not saying you need to pick up every call (especially if you’re busy). But you do need to respond and arrange a time when you can speak with her. This will lower her anxiety a lot and decrease her need to communicate so frequently.

Your ex-wife is threatening you

As a person, you needn’t tolerate threats and abuse. Especially not if your ex is threatening your loved ones and trying to hurt them. But before you block your ex and get a restraining order against her, try speaking with her first. Tell her that you understand she’s angry and that you’d be angry too if you were her, and that you’d be happy to listen to her and let her vent if she wants to.

You’d be surprised that even angry and vengeful people tend to cool off when they see that their ex cares about their health and means no harm. Only the most narcissistic people will ignore your kindness and willingness to talk things out.

But such people can’t be reasoned with. They feel so victimized that they respond impulsively the moment they feel hurt. They have an eye for an eye mentality and can’t calm down when someone apologizes and expresses concern. In fact, they tend to kick people when they’re down as doing so gives them a feeling of power and superiority.

If your ex-wife is like that, you obviously won’t be able to discuss anything with her. You won’t be able to express yourself without offending her and bringing a bad reaction out of her. Your ex-wife will probably consider suing you and refuse to settle things outside the court.

The only thing left to do is to ignore her and block her when she has an outburst. Ignoring her will likely make her angrier and more vengeful as ignoring tends to bring the worst out of people, but it doesn’t leave you with any other option.

When someone is out to get you, you need to stop that person from hurting you by any means necessary even if that means getting a restraining order against her.

It will be very difficult to stay away from her if you live in the same house and hear her yell at you day and night. The best advice I can give you is to move out as quickly as possible. Ask your friends and family to crash at their place for a couple of weeks until you’ve found a new place to stay at.

She’s texting your new girlfriend

When an ex-wife texts your new girlfriend, she’s probably becoming a bit psycho (obsessed with ruining your life). She’s texting your new partner to warn her of your behavior and to break up with you. Your ex doesn’t like seeing you happy (especially after dumping her), so she wants to make sure your life doesn’t go the way you want it to go.

Seeing you in pain helps her get even with you and allows her to feel better about drawing the short straw. It’s the only thing that gives her some control over the unwanted situation.

So if your psycho ex-wife is trying to ruin your new relationship, talk to your girlfriend rather than your ex-wife. Explain the situation you’re in, and she should understand that your ex feels rejected, replaced, and threatened and that she’s trying to make your life worse rather than improving hers.

If your girlfriend is understanding, you don’t have to worry about your malicious ex-wife. Your girlfriend will take your side, ask your wife not to contact her, or just block her right away. She shouldn’t take your ex-wife seriously because your relationship is between you and her.

What your ex says and does shouldn’t matter. Not unless you hid something important from your girlfriend. Something like kids or marriage. In that case, you have some explaining to do. And you might not get away with it.

She’s not letting you see your children

Ex-wives sometimes feel so angry that they do psycho things such as preventing their exes from seeing their children. They do this by refusing to take their exes’ calls, ignoring them, or telling them they’ll never see their kids again. If your ex is doing that, talking to your ex likely won’t make any difference.

It will give your ex more power and control as your ex will see that you really want to see your kids. In that case, you should consider filing a complaint with the court. Your ex will probably back off once she sees you’re taking the lawful route.

A psycho ex-girlfriend could also fake pregnancy or something bad and unpredictable happening to her. She could lie to scare you and force you to prepare for things that don’t need any preparation. She could get a kick out of deceiving you and wasting your time.

She’s spreading rumors about you

This kind of toxic behavior shows that your psycho ex-wise has no more respect for you. She thinks you’re responsible for the breakup and that the people you associate with should not like you. She doesn’t like you, so she thinks they shouldn’t either.

If others ditched you, it would make her ecstatic as she’d destroy the social aspect of your life and have the last laugh. Make sure not to engage in battle with her or you could find yourself in an exhausting war with her.

The best thing you can do is ignore her provocations and explain to your friends and family that she’s trying to ruin your reputation. Tell them only once, and sooner than later, she’ll run out of steam and stop trying to bring you down.

She’s threatening suicide

A psycho ex-wife may also threaten suicide. By threatening self-harm, she would seek your attention and try to trick you into caring about her. An ex like that isn’t being dramatic. She’s being manipulative as she’s guilt-tripping you and forcing you to care about her.

The worst thing about it is that you won’t immediately know if she means what she says or if she’s actually depressed and thinking about hurting herself. You’ll need some time to figure her out.

If you’re not sure whether your ex-wife is pretending to self-harm, talk to her and see how she feels. If she doesn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, get her the help she needs. You need to help as much as you can.

But if you’re 100% certain she’s threatening suicide just to get you to care about her, then tell her you both need some time to yourselves and that you’ll avoid talking to her unless she urgently needs help. Just don’t forget to mention that if she lies about something like that again that you’ll have no choice but to ignore her or block her.

I hope you’ve learned how to deal with a psycho ex-wife. We’ve talked about the most common issues people deal with after the breakup.

But if your situation is different and you want our help, reach out to us here. We’ll try to find a healthy solution.

Zan

My name is Zan and I’m the founder of Magnet of Success. I enjoy writing realistic relationship and breakup articles and helping readers heal and grow. With more than 5 years of experience in the self-improvement, relationship, and breakup sphere, my goal is to provide advice that fosters positivity and success and avoids preventable mistakes and pain. Buy me a coffee, learn more about me, or get in touch today.