I’m a firm believer that home is where everything begins (and ends), and that we desire familiarity more than utility when it comes to our relationships. I wonder if in your case your ex-mother-in-law and ex-wife felt similarly neglectful and whether your relationship with your ex-wife felt like an opportunity to get the kind of love and affection you never got from your ex-mother-in-law. This is definitely how my romantic relationships have played out (just swapping mother-in-law for father, and ex-wife for increasingly abusive partners who forced me to acknowledge that something psychoanalytic was going on).