Yes and no. Obviously when they were married he had some extent to her behavior. He tried to offset it by being a really good dad and he went to bat for me a lot. Ex, one time I had a little wine crate I filled with my "treasures" (you know, a five year old's junk rocks, bendy straws, drawings, etc lol) and my mom was cleaning and dumped everything out of it but left the crate (which in retrospect was an obvious spite move) under my bed where I kept it. I went to my dad in tears because I couldn't find my treasures so he asked my mom and she went on a tirade about how we never appreciated her and never helped her clean etc etc (Not true because my dad and I did almost all of the housework). I remember very clearly him calmly explaining that my treasures were important to me and that's all we were looking for. She made a huge show of pulling out the garbage can and shoving it in my face while screaming "DOES THIS LOOK IMPORTANT TO YOU?" My dad snapped at her that it doesn't matter if it was important to her because it was important to me and told her from then on he would clean my room and that she couldn't throw any of my stuff out before running it by me.

There's a lot of incidences like that. It's crazy because I barely remember good times like when we picked up my first dog, but I remember moments like that clear as day. But it was always dad and I as a kid. He was and is my best friend; he took care of me, listened to me, and tried to make my childhood the best he could despite the circumstances.

When they divorced he only knew what I told him because of course my mom was a hardworking, struggling singly mother who did it all on her own (eye roll). I got to a point where I just made it through my weekends with her. I hardly remember my time at her houses because I just sort of shut down and kept to myself to "get to the other side", you know?