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

[Selenaso]

Or is it just a different kind of love? (Assuming you have loving relationships with both your partner and your parents, which I recognise that not everybody does). I’m single, and my parents still very much feel like my emotional centre. Obviously I’m sure when you get into a serious relationship that shifts, but I’m curious whether you feel like your partner replaces your parents as the emotional centre/sense of home, or it’s more like you gain multiple centres?

YABU - I love my partner more than I love my parents, he (or she) is my emotional centre now

YANBU - it’s a different kind of love, not greater or less, they are both emotional centres for me

I love DH most in the world.

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 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.

Yes absolutely

Agree with that.

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...)

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

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.

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

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"

and so many more.

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.

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

You think it’s an odd question because you have a partner as well as parents so you already know what that feels like. I don’t, so the question is about trying to understand an experience I haven’t had yet.

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.

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

I love my DS more than all of them!

Maybe it feels different because my dad is dead and my mum is so frail now that tbh I wish it was over for her. I'll be broken when my mum is finally released from life but love now is more about her as she used to be, whereas my love for dp is active and present.

I know in theory that I love ds more than dp but again ds is living his own life as it should be, so loving him is not as salient in my mind.

My parents are now dead but I love DH more than I loved them.
DH I'm sure does love PIL, but the change in them, their demands and unrealistic expectations and opinions they have as they have become older and frailer means he thinks very differently of them than he did years ago. And not in a favourable way.

Well, my parents wouldn't even make it onto the list!
But even in "normal" circumstances, I think it's to be expected that we move on from our parents as we age. So then a partner (& children, if we have them) become the priority.
And for single and partnered adults, I think our close friends also take priority over parents - when we're adults, our relationships do change.

The question is odd. Surely, the love is different - but still strong. I lost my mum six months before my adult son (24) and my grief for him displaced my grief for mum, for many years. Now, I am catching up with grief for my mum. I loved them both intensely, but differently. Both, however, are in my heart and bones. Love is not a pizza, where those that you love are allocated different sized slices. I expect my daughters to love their children with an intensity which eclipses their feelings for me. It does not mean that their love for me is ‘less’, just less intense and coloured by the knowledge that their children are the future and parents will one day be the past. What made you ask such a question?

I think there is a difference in grief for those who have lived a natural life span and those who have not. I know my FIL was affected all his life by the very early death of his mother in her thirties.

I love my DH immensely but when my parents were alive I loved them differently but just as much.

My parents dying were easily the worst things in my life. I didn't realise how much of an anchor they were and just how much I owe them for my stable upbringing (more or less anyway). And, their unconditional love.

Oh, I get you! Yes, that is true. I am looking back on my relationships, and you are looking forwards.

I love them equally but differently.

A different perspective from a widow. I spent nearly 30 years with my DH until he died suddenly. I didn't spend 30 years living with my parents, I didn't go to bed with them every night or wake up with them every morning. I hadn't been on holiday with them since I was a teenager. So the majority of my adult life was shared with DH. All the laughter, tears, house moves, our old dog dying, changes in careers and everything in between. We shared a similar sense of humour, taste in music and political and world views much of which did not align with my parents' outlook due to generational differences. My demeanour was, to some extent, adjusted when I spoke to my mum whereas I could be 100% myself with my husband.

My parents are both dead now and I would dearly love to see and hug them and I have wonderful memories but the person I would want most in all the world to walk through the door would be my DH.

I love my partner and children more than my parents, my dad passed away a few years ago and while I loved him and was broken hearted I know it would be on a different scale if I lost my husband who is an amazing man