>>213850526 (OP)On the surface, it was great. Raised by both parents in a short series of enjoyable college towns (moving as a kid kind of sucked, but it only happened twice before I graduated high school, and I managed to stay in touch, or get back in touch, with all the friends who mattered). Spent most summers and some holidays with my father’s parents and other relatives in Switzerland, his birthplace.
It was a pretty comfortable, solidly middle-class, reasonably low-stress upbringing.
What I didn’t realize until I was close to adulthood was that while my father was a fairly good dad, obviously well-intentioned often aggravating, and loving if somewhat distant, he was a shit husband, who cheated a LOT and neglected my mother. They finally split up right after I left for college, which helped, and my dad kicked the bucket a few years later. My mother has lingering resentments and anxieties from which she will probably never recover.
On the plus side, when I moved to Switzerland as an adult, I got to know my half-sister, my dad’s secret child from a decades-long affair. She’s pretty cool.