Because the world owes me nothing, and we owe each other the world

DW and I had dinner last night at my mom's house. For a bit of background: my parents split up 7 years ago, when I was in my early twenties. I could say a lot more about that, but just for the sake of brevity, I'll just say that it's still hard when your parents split up when you are already an adult. A lot of people think it's only hard when the children are little, and it probably is harder when you're younger, because there are custody issues and children often don't understand what's going on. Instead, I had to deal with feeling like my entire family life before was a lie, and it took me a very long time before I could even think about 'happy memories' from when I was younger without crying, and I still went through the usual blaming of myself that kids do, even though the rational part of me knew it wasn't my fault. I had a lot of people at the time tell me I was "lucky" that it happened when I was older, and I was often made to feel like I shouldn't be upset about it. But I was upset, and it still really sucks, and it was really hard to get support from people who felt like I had no right to be feeling anything about it.

Anyway, that's not my point! My point is that now, 7 years later, my mom still badmouths my dad in front of me, and it sucks. I know she's still hurt, and I respect her feelings and I think she needs to get support around them, but I'm not the right person for that support! I'm still his daughter, and though it took me a long time to forgive my dad, I have, and we are still close. And I share half my genes with him, so when she talks about how he's an idiot/etc, it hurts me.

And now, with DW and I going through this process of trying to make a person, it's even harder. My parents used to be in love, and somehow over the 30 years they were together, things fell apart and now they can barely stand to be in the same room as each other. It just breaks my heart to think about that ever happening to DW and I. Her parents split up when she was 7 years old. When we got married, we both faced similar fears of divorce, even though we are so much in love. We're so very happy now, and we really want to raise a child together, and obviously you can't live your life thinking about what might happen in 20 years, but it's impossible not to think about what happened with my parents (and hers). I really do think that we have a strong enough relationship to weather whatever life throws at us, and we both are really committed, we communicate properly (the major factor in my parents split was lack of communication) and we do our best to be honest with each other, to respect each other, all of that good stuff that makes a relationship healthy and hopefully long-lasting. But hearing my mom talk about my dad the way she does...the man she used to tell me was the love of her life, the man who saved her from her first marriage, who taught her how to laugh and love again....it's just really hard.

I guess she thinks that because I'm an adult, I can handle it. And I want to be there for her, and when they were going through the split I did my very best to be supportive and listen to her, but I just wish she had someone else in her life she could talk to about this stuff, because it's just too hard for me.

I know the "solution" is to be upfront with my mom and tell her I can't listen to it anymore, but I just can't do that - I really can't. All I can do is listen, grit my teeth, and then discuss the hell out of it later with DW...and now, bitch about it on here!