Dealing with baby mama drama as a wife is very different from dealing with baby mama drama as a girlfriend. As a wife you should be a permanent fixture, so you deserve the respect of that position. 

But, don’t let that idea of respect get to your head, okay?  There’s a lot of other facets going on that you’re goin to have to deal with as a wife of a man who has a child with another woman or women.

Remember the whole point of dealing with baby mama drama is to have peace and health. If you’re caught up in ‘she has to respect me’, then you’re losing point of the big picture. You’re becoming obnoxious, and then everybody loses.

So the first thing you need to remember is that you are in the middle of a relationship triangle when you have a husband and a baby mama in your life. 

Psychologically, triangles are not healthy in relationships. But there’s nothing you can do about it in this scenario. I don’t necessarily think that every single triangle is unhealthy, but most are.

What you have to recognize is that you’re dealing with an already dysfunctional relationship. Accept it, don’t fight it. It’s just the reality. Many issues we have in life are that we don’t want to accept what is. 

Your job is to make this triangle the healthiest triangle as possible. Ultimately your job is to get yourself out of the triangle.

But first; what is a triangle? Triangling behavior is when you have three people who are communicating between each other. So when there’s a lot of ‘make sure you tell her…’ and ‘you need to let her know this’ we’re talking about a triangle. It means you are not communicating directly with a person. 

When we have baby mama drama going on there’s a lot of ‘tell her…’ ‘she should know…’ that kind of stuff. It’s not healthy. So we want to reduce that as much as possible. But also recognize it’s a reality that there are three of you guys in this dynamic. 

 A healthy relationship is you speaking directly to that person. Now I know you’re thinking, ‘the whole problem is I can’t speak to this woman, that’s why I’m even reading your blog post’. I get that. 

Sometimes the healthiest and only way to deal in a relationship is through a triangle. It’s not the best, but we have to work with what we have. So let’s talk about working with what we have. 

1. Get out of the triangle

Get yourself out of that triangle as fast as possible and try to have a direct relationship with this woman. You are both grown and at least one of you has brought a whole other human into this world. So if only one of you acts like an adult, you can make this work. Preferably you should be the one acting like an adult, because you are reading this blog post. She’s not. 

This is assuming that she doesn’t feel that you have wronged her.

I know relationships get started in all kinds of ways. Things get complicated, some things overlap. You might have overlapped that relationship, or maybe you didn’t. But the reality is, if she feels that you have wronged her: the best way that you can start having this healthier relationship is to acknowledge whatever it is. If you did it: acknowledge it. Tell her ‘I’m sorry’ ‘I’ve learned’ ‘I get why you’re mad at me, but I want to have a good relationship with you now’. 

If you don’t feel you’ve wronged her, you can still go to her and say ‘I get that you feel like I wronged you’ ‘I’m sorry that there’s been this deal between us’ ‘I want to make this work in a healthy way’ ‘I would like to move on’ or ‘I’d like to apologize for any way that I’ve hurt you’. That’s you being the bigger woman. 

I know nobody wants to be the bigger woman. But if you wronged her, if she feels you wronged her, address it! Sometimes people just want to be heard, sometimes people just want to be validated and acknowledged. My goal always is to help people communicate better, not about trying to figure out who’s right or who’s wrong. That doesn’t matter. Part of it is letting the ego go. So if you’ve gone to her you’ve owned what’s yours, you will earn her respect. And it will make it a lot easier to communicate with her. 

I’m not telling you you’re wrong, I’m just saying: own anything that’s yours. 

2. Empathize

Next, I’m gonna ask you to empathize with her. I know you’re probably feeling like I’m on her side. I’m not.  This is about helping you, which will help your husband, which will help your relationship, which will go back to helping you. So the best thing you can do for yourself in the relationship is to empathize with this woman. How do you do that?

This woman loved your husband. I know you don’t wanna hear that, but this woman loved your husband and maybe he loved her. She had dreams, she had goals, she had desires, she might have thought this man was gonna be hers forever.

And I can tell you, even if it was a one-night stand, this woman had dreams. So I’m asking you to put yourself in her shoes, because that’s what empathizing means.

I know if it were you, you’d do it differently. That’s why you have to put yourself in her shoes as herself- not you.

I don’t know her background. I don’t know her issues. I don’t know what’s happened with her, but I can tell you she’s damaged. 

 No, I’m not saying that all baby mamas are damaged. I’m saying that baby mamas who cause issues are damaged. Because hurt people, hurt people. 

She’s hurting and she’s damaged, and now she has children. And she gets to watch you live her fantasy. When you can begin to see her as the hurting damaged woman that she is, hopefully you can start to release some of your anger. It doesn’t make her behavior okay. We’re not excusing it.We’re understanding it, so that you can get to a point where you can have a relationship with her in some way. Or at least release some of the tension. 

3. Accept Jealousy

Accept the reality of jealous feelings. Yes, I said it: you’re jealous,  she’s jealous, the kids are jealous. There’s  jealousy going all around. You’ve got to accept the reality of jealousy. Any time you hear yourself saying ‘I’m not jealous’, it’s because you’re jealous. 

And that’s okay. It’s  just part of the human experience. It’s a very complicated triangle going on. Accept the jealous feelings, acknowledge the jealous feelings and you’ll find that they reduce.

4. Don’t Make Him Choose

Don’t make him choose. He already chose you! Sometimes our insecurities can get the best of us, and we get into this place of ‘it’s her or it’s me’ or ‘it’s them or it’s me’. No no no!

He already chose you. Walk in the knowledge that you are purposefully his wife. Pregnancies happen. Sometimes there aren’t intenitional. He purposely chose to share his life with you. 

His past is something that he can’t change. He’s in control of his present and his future, and you’re it. Remind yourself of that, so when an issue comes up, especially if there’s a lot of anger involved, don’t play the ‘choose me or her’ card. Everybody loses in that one.

You’ve gotta have a healthy respect for your husband’s desire to be a father, even if it means he’s going to give a little more than you feel comfortable with. 

Respect it and support him in his parenting.  You should also be honest with him if you think she’s playing him. Tell him if you think she’s taking advantage of him, but that’s different than telling him he has to choose. 

5. Don’t be second class

Don’t be second-class either! Unfortunately, I see so many women who tie themselves up in a pretzel trying to accommodate their husband, trying to accommodate the baby’s mom, trying to make everybody happy except themselves.

You chose this position, but he chose this position too. And you deserve to be honored as his wife. 

Your husband may give in to everything that his baby mama requests, but the things you request, he pushes back on. That can hurt so much!

What’s likely going on is that he trusts you but he’s scared of losing his children.  He doesn’t trust his ex, so he doesn’t engage in a back and forth with her.

It can feel like you’re the third wheel. It can even feel like he cares about her more than he cares about you, but that’s not necessarily the case. 

But still, don’t be second-class! You teach your husband how to treat you. You need to make sure you have healthy boundaries. Figure out what is acceptable and not acceptable for you. Tell him, “I want to support you in being a father that you need to be for your child, but we also need to respect our marriage in this process’. 

These conversations are hard, but worth it.

I want you to know that I support you on this journey. This is not easy. This is hard, tough work that is completely worth it and you are doing it. 

Reach out if you need more support.

You’ve got this!