Thoughts on Harvey's family and him forgiving his mom? Would you like to change anything about it?
i have Many thoughts on harvey's messy family backstory. i may end up regretting this post bc it miiiiight be a kind-of spoiler for fic stuff. but whatever.
i think the way canon wrote lily's transformation post-cheating scandal, she was worthy of redemption. bobby clocked him good when they had their tiff in s7 or whenever it was. she did turn her life around and harvey was the one frozen in time holding a grudge. i wasn't mad about the way it all went down. she wasn't a perfect person, but she also wasn't claiming to be one.
however. what would have been MUCH juicier To Me, would have been the following scenario:
nomad older musician gordon knocks up barely-nineteen-year-old starry-eyed painter/groupie lily, and they get married because it's the 70s, so despite serious social progress, there's still Wedlock Shame. lily has harvey, and adores him, but she's always alone with the childcare and half a baby herself. and taking care of babies leaves little time/energy for making art, like she'd dreamed/her absent husband is still doing, and it sucks. gordon isn't a bad person, he's a good dad and a decent husband when he's home-- he really does love lily-- but the fact is, he just isn't home enough and he says he's out there making money to support their family so lily doesn't have to work, but parenting IS a lot of work anyway and she is depressed af.
especially after giving birth to marcus when she's in her mid-to-late twenties, she develops a slowly escalating drinking problem. she could have some undiagnosed bipolar disorder, but more than that she's fucking lonely and has her own traumas/childhood demons. and two kids is more than she thought she could handle, but gordon wanted harvey to have a sibling so bad. and she's still in love with him too, so, she has the baby, but the postpartum depression unravels her, and she is increasingly unable to keep a handle on what is all but single parenthood. when she cheats on gordon with bobby, it's part of that perfect storm of Addiction/Premature Parenthood/Emotional Disregulation.
which means that harvey's damage is really about being the parentified eldest child of an addict.
this framework changes surprisingly little for canon!harvey's abandonment/intimacy issues-- but it adds a lot of layers, in terms of why harvey would have such a hard time forgiving her.
addiction is an illness. but there is still a ton of stigma around it. and the collateral impacts on young children are material and very serious. if harvey's having to clean up after his hungover mom all the time, lie at school about having a competent caregiver, essentially raise marcus himself-- that's gonna leave deep, deep wounds. of course he's going to resent the fuck out of her and unconsciously take that out on every woman he tries to be with. of course he's going to put his father on a pedestal in his mind, since he's more of a concept than a present parental figure anyway.
harvey would, in this situation, be quite justified in his ambivalence towards his mother then turning her life around. bobby understood her pain and unhappiness-- it was why they got together when/how they did-- and marcus was young enough to not fully understand the chaos of his babyhood at the time. but harvey wouldn't be able to handle forgiving her until he had A Lot of therapy first.
and ideally, that therapist would also not start a romantic and sexual relationship with her patient, one-year rule be damned. 💀
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