I had ( and to an occasional extent, still have ) that sort of relationship with my mother. I was an only child and my folks seperated the summer between my second and third grade years. I lived with my mother thereafter up until eighth grade. During that period it wasn’t that bad - my mother was an emotional person and treated me occasionally as being a bit beyond my years ( though I was a pretty self-sufficient latchkey kid from an early age ) in confiding with me, but I wasn’t cast in the role of “the adult”, she was still pretty together and it wasn’t usually that intrusive.
However during the summer I was spending with my father ( and my step-mother and step-brothers ) between seventh and eighth grade, my mother’s sometimes tempestuous relationship with her live-in boyfriend of the past couple of years imploded ( nice enough fellow, Swedish, used to take me fishing a lot, but he was one of those weird health-nut alcoholics - granola, jogging, and orange juice every morning, Grenadier cigars and Jim Bean every night, more than occasionally to the point of passing out ) and she had a nervous breakdown and I quite suddenly found myself living with my father ( I was registered in eighth grade on the third day of the new school year ).
Thereafter it was pretty bad for awhile. Long-distance phone calls with her sobbing and hysterical and me acting as the calm, rational adult at age 13, that sort of thing. Visiting every summer generally entailed at least one or two dramatic/traumatic emotional scenes. It didn’t help that her next ( last ) long-term relationship was even more unstable, on-and-off for years, finally resulting in a brief marriage that ended in total disaster ( and essentially a second breakdown on the part of my mother ). In my mid-to-late-teens I worried enough ( about her, but also other things ) that I used to get stomach aches and fret that I would get an ulcer - which made me worry and get stomach aches :p. But she eventually did settle down a bit and as an actual adult I’ve learned how to be occasionally supportive while still keeping a healthy distance. I also in my early twenties learned how to not be an incessant worrier, which ended the stomach aches ;).
I suppose the largest impact on me is to this day I intensely dislike histrionics. I’m a “bottle it all up” sort, myself - healthy or not it was probably inevitable given my family history :). But I will say to their credit, my folks almost never used me as a pawn in any conflict between themselves. My mother always regretted the seperation and was fond of my father, my father was usually at least correct towards my mother and their respective families adored the other spouses. So there was never really any intra- or interfamilial animosity, though like all kids I found the divorce tough at first.
- Tamerlane
