A persistent ex-wife, and custody manipulations

[HarmonyHope]

My boyfriend's ex-wife is having much difficulty accepting the finality of their divorce. She keeps saying that "you are still my husband" and invests a lot of energy into keeping track of his free time and finding excuses that he has to come over. Often she'll have the kids call him and make excuses to not have their visits and she tells them awful and untrue things about him for the purpose of both disrupting his relationship with the kids and forcing him to visit the kids at her house to see them at all. (They fight him on going to his house because she will cry and be hysterical if they agree.) When she is not around, they are totally different kids with him. It's so sad that they feel they have to put on a show for her of hating him. I know that she keeps hoping that if he just spends enough time with her and has no time for any life outside of her that he will go back to her - and she has said as much.

 

I am so tired of her manipulations, but I stay out of it as it's really between my bf and his ex-wife. (Afterall, I have my own kids and ex-husband to deal with). I guess I'm beginning to wonder if it gets any better over time. I thought that surely things would have improved by now, 2 years since the split. I am really uncomfortable with the amount of time my bf spends with his ex-wife (who is obviously trying to get him back), and he is trying to spend as much time with his kids as he can because he misses them. I feel like a lot of these problems would subside if he'd limit his contact with his ex-wife and enforce the parts of the custody agreement that he hasn't been getting - the true weekends and overnights that he has not been able to take because of her manipulation and his kowtowing to her.

 

He says he's completely committed to me and trying to move forward, but he admits she makes it hard. But sometimes I just get the feeling that he enjoys playing the part of dutiful husband over there - like pretending they're all still together as a family. He says he can't stand being around his ex-wife, but it seems to me that he could be doing a whole lot more to avoid her if he wanted to (limit their contact to stuff pertaining to the kids for the most part). I just get the feeling there's something I don't know about, or at the very least, like this is a part of our relationship that is simply not negotiable and not all that palatable for me. How can you tell that something is truly not negotiable and you're just deluding yourself by waiting around versus very slow progress?