To love husband more than our kids

[Singlemom82]

I had a discussion with someone last night about my husband and kids, I said I loved my husband more than my kids and I was made to feel like the worst mother ever.

My kids are hard work, the oldest one especially, he’s not the easiest child to be around. Sadly some days I just don’t enjoy being around him, he’s getting better as he’s getting older but there have been times when I’ve been a nervous wreck with his behaviour, the teachers struggle with him and so do my parents. I always enjoy being around my husband and he’s my soul mate gentle and kind.

Am I so awful for feeling like this? For the record my kids are loved, I’d die for them, they are well looked after and we do lots of nice things together as a family, they have lots of nice things.

@CareOfPunts
I disagree with you
Again

I would feel many things towards a child of mine that did something incomprehensible and evil. However I do not believe it would stop me loving them it would just torture me and leave me eternally conflicted with shame but those feelings that as a mother I could never relinquish completely for any of my children.

It’s not as cut and dried as you would have us be

Sadly some days I just don’t enjoy being around him, he’s getting better as he’s getting older but there have been times when I’ve been a nervous wreck with his behaviour

Well this proves you love him more than your dh because, as a pp said, if your dhs behaviour made you a nervous wreck, you'd probably consider ending the relationship.

Oooh...I so bet you're not, though.

Children and husband seem happy though. Maybe we’re all just secure enough in our feelings for each other that we don’t need to turn it into a childish competition or use OTT language about how we love each other sooooooo much to try and convince ourselves though

A loved psychopath will always be a psychopath (probably drawn to commerce or law or medicine etc) An abused psychopath, unloved and uncared for in childhood, is likely to harm and abuse others

Any basis for this or did you just make it up?

This is true, my Dd is learning about it in her Psychology A-level.

It’s not as cut and dried as you would have us be

You’re the one who seems to see it as cut and dried with the assumption that you’d love them no matter what they did. Most of us thankfully won’t ever know what it’s like to be the mum of Aaron Campbell or Alexander Pacteau but i wonder if they felt the same about their kid once upon a time.

But a loved psychopath can still commit horrific crimes. That’s literally the point in the two cases I’ve referred to.

I love my cat more than my husband, so I can't comment but my DC are very challenging due to disabilities and sometimes very hard to deal with.
So I do understand that part.
You love your DC in a different way.
Don't beat yourself up.

Yes, if you genuinely loved your dh more than your kids you would be a crap mother by my definition of what love means. If you found your dh's company more entertaining and less demanding than that of your kids - not abnormal or unreasonable. Loving your dh more than your kids implies if they were all drowning, you would save your dh first, because you would be more devastated if he died than if they did; or if your dh didn't like your kids and said either they go or he goes, you would find some way to get rid of your kids... and if, actually, your dh saying he wanted your kids gone would make you feel you love him less, then that's good evidence you don't love him more than them anyway, you just find him more reasonable and undemanding, as you would hope from another adult...

I utterly disagree with you. I have been in a position to be so ill that death would have been a blessing. I only wished to continue to live for my dd, not me nor my dh. Life is still so hard that I do wonder how I’d feel if she weren’t there.

formerbabe

I love my DC more than my DH...I'd throw him under a bus for them!

However if you said I could either go for dinner with just him tonight or my DC, I'd choose the former! great post

different kind of love and different at each stage of the child.the need to prtect changes.and the relationship between your husband does.
i really dont think you can ever compare them.

I find these discussions really interesting as they make me realise what a freak I am! I‘d personally hate to love my partner that much. I find it really uncomfortable and it fucks with my mental health. I’m much better with someone if I just enjoy their company but my life and happiness does not depend on them at all.

I love my kids way way more than my husband and he loves them way more than me. I’d hate to think he loved me that much, it would feel like far too much responsibility for someone else’s feelings.

So I wonder how many men would dave their DCs over their wife. Lets imagine its a straight choice in childbirth mum or baby?

Or what about parents who have more than one child. Should 3 children suffer and lose a parent or should 2 children suffer and lose a sibling. Which would be worse for the kids.
I dont know the answers to these but just saying things arent always black and white

My first thought was the reason your son is such "hard work" is that his mother met a new man whom she loved more than him. That's the stuff of children's nightmares. Then this post confirmed it:

Your eldest is 4, you've been with your husband 5 years? What the hell? And also I read that your husband has children with two other women. So he has children from 3 different women and you have children from 2 men and you love your husband more than your children. It sounds so chaotic I bet your kids have bad behaviour because they feel so insecure.

I'm amazed by the number of people who have brought their kids into this sort of set-up yet seem bewildered that they have behavioural problems.

Save their children not dave.

I want to spend my life with my life partner, not my kids. Now some of my kids are adults I understand this better. Before I would have said I love my kids more but now I know it's different.

I can go a day without thinking about my adult kids, I don't go more than a few hours without thinking about my partner.

You feel how you feel, there’s no law or gold standard about it.

It can be bloody hard work. You don’t have to be a saint to be a mother, and it sounds like you are getting a lot of stuff right.
Besides, you care enough to worry about it, which speaks volumes.

And anyway this whole quantifying v thing is really odd.
It’s like saying What would you rather give up, breathing or eating?

Don’t you just love them all in very different ways? I mean, you choose to be with your husband rather than another man and you love him for the reasons that make you choose him. You didn’t ‘choose’ your children over other children and you can’t leave them for other children even if they have traits that drive you insane, but the love is unconditional. There’s no need to feel you have to put them in a hierarchy of who is loved more because that will just make you feel guilty!

I think what you mean is that you enjoy being with your DH more than with your DCs at the moment.

I went through a phase like this when mine were younger. But it is a phase and you'll all come out the other side

@CareOfPunts you are intellectualising something that is for me something that transcends all logic and reason

You were the one that made such an emphatic statement about no longer loving a child that did something dreadful and no fundamentally disagree.

Do you have children?
I only ask because I see what you are getting at and in fact might have been something I thought before I had children.