Your parents’ divorce changes the house. It doesn’t change that you’re allowed to love both of them.

What changes is logistics: where things are, which nights are where, how holidays work. What does not change is who they are to you, although it can start to feel as though loving one were a position taken against the other. Nobody is entitled to that trade. Loyalty is not a resource you have to divide, whatever the atmosphere suggests.

You can decline to carry messages, and you can say plainly that you would rather not hear one parent on the subject of the other. Keep the parts of your life that have nothing to do with it. If it gets heavy, one adult outside the family is worth telling.