As per most reddit posts, this one has years of backstory but I'll do my damndest to keep under the character limit. My parents are both 35, I'm 18 (female, graduating with honors from HS in a little over a month). They obviously had me as teenagers, decided to stay together to very mixed results over the years. My dad decided he wasn't letting being a young parent ruin his aspirations so he struggled with full time work and getting all the way to his phd and his been a professor of anthropology for about 5 years now. My mom has been a very mixed bag and at times has been the most amazing mom on the planet, other times she gets morbidly obese, miserable, angry and hates the world (me included). She was especially nasty to my dad during these time periods. 

Last year about this time, my dad met and started hooking up with a grad student about 10 years younger than he is. This coincided with my mom being admitted to a mental institution for severe depression among other things (the affair didn't cause this, my dad just "took advantage" of her being away). When my mom got out, her meds were ok and she went into a pretty long period where she seemed like she was going to be ok. My dad broke it off with the grad student and tried to stay committed to my mom (I wasn't aware of any of this while it was going on, my dad told me everything about right after the divorce was announced). I guess my mom snooped on his phone, found the girls Instagram page (doesn't help that she's an actual IG model as well as a super smart grad student) and shit absolutely hit the fan. Nasty, nasty divorce has ensued ever since. 

I know my dad fucked up, my dad knows he fucked up and he has essentially offered everything possible to my mom to get her to just sign the papers. My mom is of course really messed up and she seems to want to just torture my dad. For example she begged him to come over and talk to her to try to "work it out" then she had the sheriffs deputies waiting for him because she claimed he threated to kill her. She videoed my dad in handcuffs (though he wasn't arrested) and sent it to my dad's department head. That was the worst but the list of minor ways she's harassed and tried to ruin my dad could go on for pages. 


My dad has explicitly told me to be respectful to my mom and to try to go easy on her. My mom on the other hand has demanded that I take her side and has given me handwritten nasty letters I'm supposed to deliver to him, she'll tell me "tell your father that he ruined all three of our lives when you see him" and stuff like that. 

With that, it's so easy to see why my dad cheated and why he's so eager to be done with her even if it costs him everything he's ever worked for. I can't help but take his side. 

Am I the asshole for this?