Yeah, I'm around. Had a busy weekend doing stuff around the house. H had offered our house to a colleague for the week we're on vacation, and I pointed out to him that maybe it wasn't appropriate to leave them with all the broken/unfinished projects around the house (like, 3/4 of bathroom faucet handles broken, etc.) so he embarked on a massive fix-it weekend and I was the Home Repo runner. It's nice to be married to a handy guy
Gabe, you asked about S19 - yes, I think he can't wait to get back to Berkeley, he and S14 have been bickering all summer (mostly due to S14 resenting S19 sharing a room with him again.) S19 got a great paid internship this summer - a local biotech is paying him $10 an hour while they teach him to do cell cultures! He's now spending his summer growing and freezing a library of cell lines. Good basic lab skills for him to acquire, and a real bonus to get paid while doing it.
I think he's anxious to go back to Berkeley, though. Mid-August he goes back. Has a roommate all lined up.
You asked about the effects on the kids - mine were older, teens and preteens. A lot of the damage was hidden at first (although no coincidence I think that S19 got his only C grade ever that semester). My kids never had to deal with H being out of the house, only met OW once when they had no idea anything was going on - but still, they suffered from that shattering of the pedestal they had their dad on. I think it leaves them with a great feeling of insecurity, too - if that "great marriage" their parents seemed to have could suddenly fall apart without warning (so far as they knew) then what else that they trusted in is actually suspect too??? S19 (who was 15 att) had the toughest time, I think, even though he showed it least, because he was in that age of puberty where they start challenging their dad anyway - I think he struggled with the respect issue.
I imagine their issues are somewhat different than a six-year-old's, though. The six year old mostly needs your attention, and to know that he wasn't the cause (cause most kids that age think they caused it somehow).
And, one caveat - I'm sure that a lot of the teen issues my kids have had would have happened anyway - just as products of who they are, or because of inherited genetic tendencies to depression, rather than due to the actual events with my H, which were really quite mild compared to most here.
