My boyfriend [29M], my boyfriend’s (ex) wife [28F], and me [26F]. Need some help with boundaries

TLDR: My boyfriend is acting weird when it comes to his (ex) wife, ever since she and her affair partner broke up. Is it okay for me to ask for boundaries? *How* do I ask for boundaries?

Hi! My situation is weird. I’m going to try to give a outline of the background info before getting into exactly what I’m asking for help with, so I’m sorry if my post reads a little stilted.

About 2 and a half years ago, my boyfriend’s [29M, “Max”] wife [28F, “Mary”] started cheating on him with their coworker [late 20sM, “Trey”]. Max finds out, Mary does not stop her affair, they seperated. They tried to repair their relationship while seperated, Max finds out Mary has still been cheating on him the ENTIRE time with Trey, they officially stop trying to fix things and start to intiate the divorce process.

A few months after they throw in the towel, I meet Max. We start with just hooking up, and he asks me [26F] to be his girlfriend after a few weeks. The chemistry is great, we get along swimmingly, we both support each other in ways we need at the time. He gets Big Feelings first, tells me he loves me first, I meet his and Mary’s 3 y/o daughter (much too early, but it was an accident 🤷‍♂️) and I completely and utterly adore her. Things are going pretty great between us.

Their divorce hasn’t been filed yet, which is explained to me as a combination of money, difficult logistics, procrastination, and waiting for Mary to take whatever the next step is. When we first start talking, he assured me that their divorce would be filed within 2 months.

Mary HATES that Max is seeing someone new. She pretty viciously starts fights over texts with him about it, bounces between aggressive and passive aggressive. I express to Max multiple times that I want to meet her, starting around the 3 or 4 month mark of dating. After a while he brings it up to her and she agrees; we exchange numbers, text a bit, and things go okay there. She keeps putting off meeting up.

At about 5½ months of me and Max dating, Mary and Trey break up. They were together for about 2 years, including the time it was an active affair before Mary and Max ended things. It turns out Trey was wildly abusive to Mary, and was also making her feel weird about my existence and feeding her shit about how weird it would be to meet me, which is why she was being cagey about meeting even after we had texted a bit.

We met for the first time pretty soon after their break up, and we get along super well! We have a lot of shared interests, she’s a cool person, at this point of my writing this post we’ve hung out several times and it’s gone well every time. We play with their daughter together and she seems pretty enthused that her daughter and I get on so well. We both like rocks and fiber arts and keep gifting each other things along those interest lines xD She’s genuinely a person I’d be friends with under normal conditions, and I’m happy it seems like we’re able to be friends even in this weird situation.

As of this post, Max and I have been together for 7 months. Their divorce still hasn’t been filed.

Okay, onto what I need advice with lol

Ever since Mary and Trey broke up, Max has been acting really weird, defensive, and mean at times about Mary/his behavior surrounding her. Some examples:

• Immediately following the breakup, Mary leaned on Max for emotional support about it. Two occasions that I know about he stayed at her place for hours at their kiddo handoffs so she could vent and seek support– when normally they’d just see each other for a few minutes a week at handoffs.

• She asked to go over to his place one day, which was out of the blue and unusual (Max directly told me how weird it was). He agreed, and I learned about it because he sent me a text to the effect of “Hey Mary asked to come over, so I’m moving all your things to my bedroom. If your stuff is in different places when you come over tomorrow, thats why”. He sent that text halfway through already moving my things. Mary and I were already talking at this point (but hadnt met up yet), she obviously knew I existed and spent a lot of time at his place, so this was just… weird. After I had a less-than-enthused response he apologized, stopped moving my stuff, and said she could just deal with it.

• Mary texted me after the above thing happened specifically to say she left his place earlier than she planned to because she thought his behavior was weird and suspicious from what she imagined was my point of view and she didn’t want to be a part of that. I also asked her if the two of them were sleeping together because hiding my shit like that was a really weird red flag, and she assured me they were not.

• Mary and I met for the first time the day following that event and she reassured me again in person that they werent sleeping together, there was essentially no way in hell she’d want to sleep with him, and he gave her some body image and self esteem issues that messed her up so she REALLY didn’t want to sleep with him or get back together with him at all. I believe her 🤷‍♂️ She’s got no reason to lie to me about that and the look of distaste on her face was pretty genuine lol.

• This past weekend, childcare logistics were weird and they had the daughter of a family friend babysitting their kid at Max’s apartment. I offered to come over after work to help out with kiddo, and Max told me that Mary was going over after she got off work so my help wouldnt be needed. I… have been feeling weird about Max’s interactions with Mary since the Hiding My Stuff situation, so I offered again to come over. He got MAD. Immediately went “what are your concerns?” and when I said “i just feel weird”, he went on a bit of a tirade about how it feels like I don’t trust him around her and essentially turned the conversation into how I’m the bad guy for not trusting him and how the whole problem here is me not trusting him.

A couple hours after that incredibly shitty conversation, he apologized profusely. In the way of “i did [x y and z things] and that was wrong of me, this is why it was wrong, and this is why i am sorry” so it did feel like a genuine apology.

I went over to his place a couple days later and we talked about everything. He apologized again, taking full accountability for acting shitty and toxic (his word, not mine), and I told him I was thinking about leaving him so that he could try to reconcile with his ex wife if that’s what he wanted to do because it REALLY seemed like there’s been SOMETHING going on in his head about that. He adamantly denied that being a thing he wants and actually told me he just wishes he could take their daughter and leave so he didn’t have to deal with Mary anymore, but knew he couldn’t do that to [daughter] and cried a bit about it.

After a lot of talking we decided to carry on our relationship, contigent on him getting therapy and actually making headway with the divorce. I really wanna stress that this wasn’t an ultimatum I posed, this was the result of a loooong talk and active collaboration to find a way forward that would make us both happy.

I talked to Mary last night about Max’s behavior. We were hanging out and after she put their daughter to bed I was like “Hey I wanted to ask you about Max?” which essentially just turned into me telling her most of what I said above about how weird he’s been acting since she and Trey broke up. When I mentioned I was thinking about leaving Max so they could reconcile if they wanted to, she looked horrified and said “no.” really firmly before I could even finish my sentence 😅 She thinks maybe he’s just having a difficult time processing that she’s not with her affair partner anymore, and then she brought out their divorce paperwork and asked me to look over it for her and then bring it to Max?? I didn’t look over it because that felt strange and invasive, but I did bring it to Max after I left Mary’s place. She says he’s been dragging his feet on the divorce, he says she’s been dragging her feet on the divorce, they both insist they desperately want to be divorced. I don’t really get what’s up there, but Max has the paperwork now and is going to be doing whatever’s next in the process with it?

I still feel weird as heck about Max’s behavior and whatever is happening in his head, even after the conversation with him about everything. Would it be inappropriate for me to ask for him to put some boundaries in place with his behavior towards her? What should I even ask for? I don’t want to negatively impact their coparenting relationship, but I also don’t know what a healthy coparenting relationship is supposed to look like. When Mary was with Trey he apparently hindered their ability to coparent quite a bit– he didn’t want her talking to or being around Max AT ALL, so Mary and Max pretty much just parented seperately. I don’t want to get in the way of them finally being able to build a good dynamic there.

…

Context that I didn’t know where to put in:

• Mary is already seeing someone new, albeit very casually. She’s excited about him though and keeps talking to me about him; it’s cute and I’m happy for her!

• Sometimes during their seperation, Max got a job elsewhere. He doesn’t work with Mary or Trey anymore, but those two do still work together.

• I am autistic, and Max is also autistic. Communication blunders or not fully understanding social convention can happen sometimes, and that could be contributing to some of this?

• Max put a lot of effort when we started dating into making sure I knew he was a shitty husband, so that I wouldn’t build up an idea of Mary being an awful, evil, cheating b-tch. He apparently neglected her quite a bit during their relationship, was pushy about her having a child when she didn’t really want to, and during their seperation he slept with her best friend repeatedly and destroyed that friendship. He also slept with another one of her friends, who had a boyfriend and a new baby at the time, and destroyed that friendship too. He also would sext with women online while they were together, which she didn’t consider cheating but I personally do. So he was also kind of a major asshole to her during their relationship and isn’t blameless in their divorce. Both Max and Mary have told me these things and their stories about it all match identically.

• When telling me about those things herself, Mary makes sure to stress that he’s grown a lot as a person in the past couple years and isn’t like that anymore. With how forthcoming he was when telling me about his behavior and how he completely owned how he acted without trying to excuse it, i believe that he’s not like that anymore too 🤷‍♂️

• I am aware the honeymoon period is a thing and I am taking that into account with my decision-making.

• I’m pregnant. I got a positive test a couple weeks ago and have an appointment in a few days to confirm it with an ultrasound and see if it’s viable (i have some health issues that make viability questionable off the bat). This complicates things a little, but not that much. I’m completely okay having a kid alone, and have a great support network for it.

• I posted about this in a Facebook group I’m in and got a couple hundred comments essentially telling me that I’m the “other woman” and he wants to get back with Mary. Which doesn’t feel like quite the right read to me for a lot of reasons, one of which being that he’s public about our relationship. I’ve “met” his brother (he lives far away so we’re just social media friends and message sometimes), spoken to his mom, met Mary’s mom (who LOVED me, added me on social media, and immediately made plans to come hang out with me this spring), met several of his friends, we’re “Facebook official”, and he’s posted about me online. He apparently talked a lot about me to his parents when he visited them for christmas, too. I don’t feel like that quite fits the “other woman” narrative, y’know?

Anyway, yeah, if you have any advice about boundaries and what’s acceptable for me to ask in this situation, i desperately need help with that. That’s the *only* thing I’m looking for advice on here. Thank you 🥰