To ask if you love your partner more than you love your parents?

Why bother thinking about it/comparing? Seems weird

It's complicated. I don't think it's necessarily easy to quantify love in terms of more or less. It is a different kind of love.

I love my parents in a way which feels biological or mandated. It's not an uncomplicated relationship, I have a lot of trauma from a childhood which was emotionally abusive (notwithstanding that I believe my parents loved / love me), but loving them feels like some kind of imperative.

My husband is my home, safety, comfort, security. He's the person I rely on and turn to for advice, support and comfort. I trust him a thousand times more than I trust my parents, I would choose his well-being over theirs in some horrific hypothetical where a choice had to be made.

I'll reopen this old thread: when your parents are unrepentant are white ethnochristofascists supremacists and you didn't even realize it until you were in your twenties because of the control and the isolation and the lying and the emotional and physical abuse (he flung my 110-pound, 14y/o body at walls and furniture—the house had a broken couch for years because he threw me at it so hard I hit the back and it flipped backward over me, and this was one week after he grabbed me by the neck, choked me, and threw me by the neck at the kitchen table) and normalization of violence in the "home" and the disgusting grooming for an adulthood of passing on that disgusting stuff, there's really no reason to love them, because loving that rotting carcass of a situation will only make you sicker. My daughter is 20, has no desire to communicate with them (she is half Mexican and queer—the antithesis to my worthless birthright) and she has actual, real, substantive values.

Is this whole site not others asking for other peoples views?
Oh yes apologies I was up in the wee hours, is that immature too?

I never said my personality won’t change? I simply don’t believe I would want to date again in the event my partner wasn’t there..? What is this 😂

Edit: also, it can’t be too irrational if so many people agree?…🤭

Every relationship is different. Do I love my best friend more than my husband? Do I love my child more than my husband? One child more than another?
You can't answer these questions because each relationship between two individuals is unique. The love i share with each of them is powerful.
I guess what makes children exceptional is that you expect (biologically) to outlive you, so if you lose a child the grief is markedly different to any other relationship.

I love my parents but my DH is my safe space and home in the way they weren’t - they were pretty flaky when I was growing up. Ironically, it is from my DH that I feel the unconditional love you are meant to get from your parents.

If I had to rank them, yes, I love my husband far more.

@HideTheCroissants at least you're honest. Can't relate and my dcs are adults. I love my dc unconditionally. Nothing they could do would change that. Whereas if dh fucked up I'd get rid.
Dcs are fantastic so not much chance of them doing anything terrible.

I love my husband more than anyone else on the planet. Yes - even more than our children. I realise that in MN world that makes me a monster but there you go. He loves me more than he loves the children too. BUT I assure you we do love our children very much - just not more than each other. 🤷‍♀️

I love how other people have the same opinion but I’m immature bc I said my age

LOL. It's because you have a fixed idea and cannot conceive that your personality and you will change as you age and with experience. That is what is immature; your blinkered ridgity and accusing @Immemorialelms of being patronising just for pointing out to you that you are probably wrong. Saying at the age of 26 that you would never date again if your DH left you or died is completely different from saying that aged 70 as a widow or a divorcee.

And while we are about it, starting a thread at 1am fishing for other people's views to support your irrational position just because strangers on the internet have pointed out to you that you are likely to be wrong is obviously the height of maturity!

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/amibeingunreasonable/5009006-would-you-date-again-if-you-were-suddenly-single

No DCs here, I love DH and the dog way way more than anyone else. My dad died when I was young, I get on fine with DB but we are not particularly close, and I've always had a bit of a tricky relationship with my mother.

Okay strangers from the interweb, I’m immature 😂
Is my life story on file or something?.. no I didn’t think so…
I love how other people have the same opinion but I’m immature bc I said my age 🤭 Sure thing…

It's just different. Same with children.

I remember years ago there was a survey about families of who the children loved and poor old dad came below the family dog.

I hate all this 'who do you love more' crap. It's very possible to love multiple people in your life without having to put them in an order, it's a strange way of thinking to me.

Way more. I'd do anything for my DH. My parents whilst not bad parents, were not great parents. I have no idea why they ever had children, they had such a lack of interest in me growing up. I don't feel that close to them, most like extended family.

It sounds awful but the love for either of them is nothing compared to how I feel about DD. I love her the most, more than anyone.

I would say actually I love my brother 2nd most. We are very close.
Then it's my mum.

My dad and partner are further down the list. I have a difficult relationship with dad, always have. He's very short tempered and intolerant. It's hard to be around him.
And me and partner are mostly together for DD, unfortunately.

My mum has recently been diagnosed with cancer and the fear of possibly losing her has made me realise how much I love her and you only get one. Once she's gone that's it. Awful

Yanbu - I love them both very very differently and couldn't be without either for different reasons. They both (and ds/dgp) are pieces of a jigsaw that make up my heart

I'm glad someone else said this. I was beginning to think I was odd. My emotional centre/sense of home lies within.

As for whether I love parents or partner more - well, it's a bit like asking whether apricots are better than bicycles. Totally different things, with different purposes; too different to compare.

Being born into a linguistinc environment that has umpteen words for types of precipitation but only 1 for love makes it difficult to discuss the distinctions of storge, philia and eros - but they are not interchangeable just because we lack individual words.

I don't know how to answer this but...It hurt when I lost each of my parents. When my husband died, it felt as though my life had come to an end.

When you are in a long happy marriage, the love does get deeper. It is different to being married for a shorter length of time.

I’ve known my partner longer than I’ve known my parents. I’ve lived with my partner for longer than I ever lived with my parents.

yes, I absolutely love him more than anyone else except my children.

It’s a weird question to think about, I’ve been with my husband for longer than I was ever with my parents. I remember having a really bad stomach once which hurt, and you know that feeling you get when you’re hurt as a child and you just want your mum? I had that but it was for my husband. Funny really because we’re not lovey dovey and I wasn’t guaranteed huge levels of sympathy! But I did feel better with a hug. It was then I knew everything had shifted.

My mother loved me unconditionally. She did not know me as an adult like my husband knows me. He knows me inside out as we have lived together for decades.

Agree 100%

Yes, absolutely.