Is it normal that my parents fight like this every few months?
For as long as I've been alive, my parents have had huge "we're-getting-divorced" fights every few months. They'll scream at each other for hours on end and my mother will usually loudly declare that "It's over!" and that they're going to separate. Then, literally within a day or two, they're back to "normal". It's confused the hell out of me my entire life. As a kid, I always wondered why the hell they didn't just get divorced already.
It's gotten even worse within the past few years, because apparently my father recently revealed that he sort of had an affair with another woman at some point. I say "sort of" because he apparently never actually slept with this other woman. It wasn't a recent thing, either; it happened decades ago, before I was even born, and he'd kept it from her for all that time. In any case, my mother has gotten furious with him over this. During the last big fight, she spent literally hours screaming at him about what an emotional and psychological failure he was, and how she never should have married him, that kind of stuff. She would storm off to her room as if she were finished yelling, then come back out and yell at him some more. That's a common pattern of hers, to walk away and then come back. Then, just like before, they were back to "normal" after literally two days.
What also bothers me about this whole situation is that I have a lot of problems myself. Occasionally after one of these huge fights, one or both of my parents will come to me afterwards and apologize for being such fucked-up people and for forcing me to grow up in such a bad situation. Then, once they're back to "normal", suddenly none of that is true anymore and they're back to talking to me about how I "choose" to be as fucked up as I am, that I "choose" to "let" things traumatize me, and thinking they had something to do with it is a "cop-out". Then they'll tell me that I'm reading too much into their fights and that I don't understand their relationship or something. Their total lack of consistency is maddening. They can't decide whether or not they hate each other, and they can't decide whether or not my problems had something to do with them being miserable people or if they're my fault for "choosing" to "let" things bother me. I can practically feel the emotional process they go through every time this happens. My mother in particular likes to say "Your brother grew up here too, and he's fine! So what's your fucking problem?"
I guess it ultimately doesn't matter much, because I'll hopefully finally be able to kill myself this year, but I'm still curious for now.