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

I love my DS more than all of them!

Partner and parents equally, my DCs more than anyone else.

You can’t possibly know that. My ex-husband didn’t die, but that relationship taught me that relationships are not for me, so I am single. It’s been 13 years and have zero interest in meeting anyone, I have a full life and no time or inclination to date.

Yes.

DD
DH/DP (DH died three years ago but I will always love him)
Cousin (best friend, more like a sister)
Brother
Parents
Cousin's kids

I do find this an odd question. It's a completely different kind of love. I wouldn't want to try and quantify my love for any of them.

This.

I think it is the Greeks who have 17 different words to use in different sentences where English would use the word 'love' (Happy for someone to correct me on the detail, but you get the gist).

In English we use the same word for

• love for our parents or other close family members
• romantic love - both the throes of passion and the absolute respect and dependency of a long term relationship
• love of a friend
• love for chocolate (insert cake or whatever you crave)
• "I 'love' that colour on you"
• love for a pet
• things like "I love feeling the sun on my back / wind in my hair"

The love you have for your parents is one feeling. The love you have for your partner is a different feeling. You can't quantify one being 'more' or 'less' than the other.

The love for my old dog was deep because it was so uncomplicated.

Absolutely, though it is also just a very different kind of love. If anything happened to my parents I'd be devastated, but I'd cope. If it was my husband I'd really struggle to come back from that. However, I'd chuck him off a bridge if it was to save my children - they are really the only people I have unconditional and everlasting love for.

@MerryTraveller I do love my niece.
But yes I agree re the dog

Dogs should have an entire separate, adjacent column. The love for dogs is incomparable - I feel as though I love the dog as much as my immediate nuclear family, but in reality know it would get left behind in the event of a global catastrophe when my children would not.
(I would also put the dog much higher up the list than my niece...)

Agree with that.

Yes absolutely

I do find this an odd question. It's a completely different kind of love. I wouldn't want to try and quantify my love for any of them.

the thing is you can’t really compare as some people don’t have good parents, some people don’t have a good partner and that’s going to skew your answers. Personally I think they are just different. I would say that love between parents and a child in a healthy relationship is unconditional in a way that no other love is. But love with a partner is much more about companionship and connection. Personally I think love grows, it’s unnecessary to ‘love someone best’ just like love for the first born doesn’t decrease with subsequent children

I love DH most in the world.

@PoliteTurtle you don't know, sweetheart, you're in your twenties. The length of your whole life, (the time you have taken to form this fervent conviction), could happen all over again...and you'd only be in your fifties. How do you know how you will change? It's risky to be so rigid.

Love him now, be optimistic, be all in for the future, but be humble about time and change. They are far more powerful than any human - that's my philosophy.

I would say equally, but I have a great relationship with my parents and also its a different kind of love. I also love my DC, I'd say more than anything but actually probably the same, and again it's a different kind of love. I think naturally with DC it's different as they have to be your first priority in life and they rely on you

I definitely do. He is the only human I trust 100%.

My mum loves me but she's unpredictable and difficult. I can't trust my dad as far as I could throw him, sadly. He does care about me, but he cares about himself first always.

Both my parents have passed away but I do love my DH more than I loved them. I was very close to my mum and she used to be the person who gave me comfort if I was ill, upset etc, but that changed to my DH.
He knows me better than anyone else ever has, I’m the most comfortable around him and he is my rock.

I agree it’s a completely different kind of love. I find it hard to measure ‘how much you love someone’ as it can ebb and flow in intensity. I was devastated when I lost my parents but I know it would hit me a lot harder if I lost my DH.

I understand the love between spouses can be less permanent though and things can change. But that doesn’t affect the strength of it while it lasts.

She said dh because she could always have more dcs! 🙈

Not the same thing but I always remember an audience member on Oprah years ago. When asked if her dh and child were drowning which would she save? She said she because she could always have more dcs 😳 Oprah's eyes were on stalks as far as I can remember. I don't remember what the show was about now? I hated that woman.

i love my partner, my children and my parents but all 3 are different kinds of love.

Love the post that said their cat is their emotional centre 😄

For me it’s the case that both are emotional centres. I don’t love DP more than my parents. I’m especially close to my DM and it’s a relationship that can’t be broken. I love DP very much but I’m not naive to the fact that could change, and we could even end up separating.

Then you have children and the love for them supersedes all else.

I don't mean to sound mercenary but my parents are my past and my husband is my present and my future.

I think it is best and natural if a certain amount of distance and independence grows between adult children and parents so that when the parents pass away (if this happens in the natural order of things) then the child is able to cope and go on.

I hope to have a good relationship with my children when they are grown but I truly hope they have their own independent lives and families and that losing me or their father, while sad, is nothing that they can't cope with.

My DH.
I love my parents, and my mum especially has been a great mum. But my DH really knows me and understands me and our love feels really deep. Even if we split I would still love him.