Maci Bookout Says Filing Restraining Order Against Ryan Edwards Was ‘Hard’ But ‘Necessary’

Maci Bookout is opening up about the tough decision to file a restraining order against her ex Ryan Edwards.

To Us Weekly, the Teen Mom OG star said she and husband Taylor McKinney had no choice but to seek legal protection against the father of her oldest child, Bentley, after getting a threatening phone call from him.

“It was hard, like, as far is the decision goes, but at the same time it was necessary,” the 27-year-old mother-of-three said. “Especially after considering everything that, you know, has gone on and happened and everything, like, leading up to that point. It was kind of our only option.”

Edwards has openly struggled with substance abuse over the years, being arrested twice in the last year for allegedly violating the terms of his probation for a former heroin possession charge.

In May, Bookout and McKinney filed for a restraining order after court documents obtained by Radar said he “showed up [to Bentley’s baseball game] under the influence of heroin and got in my face, yelling and threatening to hurt me.” McKinney alleged that Edwards threatened to “put a bullet” in his head in addition.

No one wants something like that to happen, but Bookout is keeping an optimistic view of the incident.

“It’s an unfortunate situation, but sometimes I think things like that have to happen for things to change or get better,” Bookout said. “You’ve got to hit the lows to get back up.”

Fans of the MTV series have seen a little of how the drama will play out, when McKinney phones his wife to tell her about the threatening phone call in the season 8 trailer.

And while Bookout couldn’t speak to how the drama will play out, as Edwards and his wife Mackenzie Standifer quit the show in July, she could tease what of her family fans will see in the upcoming season.

“It’s definitely a lot of Bentley, who is now moving into more like the young man age instead of just kid-child, you know?” she said. “A lot of things happening with [our company] TTM and we are also looking for houses and hoping to move, yeah, so there’s a lot going on.”

Bookout admitted that she and her husband have “stopped worrying about Ryan and his situation.”

“I mean it’s not like we don’t care, but we can’t live our lives constantly thinking about, worrying or questioning a grown man,” she said. “I mean, it’s not what we want our lives to be and so we know what we know and it’s up to the other side to know what they want to know.”

Teen Mom OG season 8 premieres Monday, Oct. 1, at 9 p.m. ET on MTV.

Photo credit: MTV