Fran: I completely agree with you about S14. His father, due to his many problems (alcoholism, infidelity) was not really *there* for much of S14's life. Even now, X isn't really reliable in terms of following through on his commitments to S14 (not fulfilling promises to do things with him, not picking him up on time) In fact, S14 said to me just the other day, "I love Dad, but he's lost his chance with me."
But I am very aware of the dangers of having *too* close a relationship with S14. After all, look what happened to Oedipus and Jocasta.
And S14 does have a normal teenage life -- lots of time spent hanging out with or im-ing friends or playing video games. He's also very independent. For example, last weekend he decided that he wanted to visit one of his friends who's away at boarding school and, after, getting my permission, made all the arrangements to get there and organized a bunch of his friends to come along. All I had to do was drop him off and pick him up at the train station.
And S14 takes his schoolwork very seriously and spends a lot of time doing the vast quantities of homework that his school assigns and preparing for the numerous quizzes and tests.
But, still, I do worry that he is *too* attached to me and that I encourage it too much.
And, oddly enough, X encourages it as well. When X sees that I'm down about something, he says to S14, "go give Mom a big hug" or "tell Mom how much we love her and appreciate her." It's as though he uses S14 to express some of the affection for me that X just can't give me.
It's funny though, it's so much the exact opposite of my relationship with my parents at his age. When I was 14, my mother wasn't speaking to me (cause I have moved out to live with my father) and my father, when he wasn't working, was prone to bizzare fits of irrational rage (mostly directed against my stepbrothers). All I wanted to do was to spend as little time and have as little contact with them as possible.
