Do you love your husband more or kids more

[mommytobe234]

Just curious to know , plus i am bored. Thanks

Well, I cant live without my DH. I love my Husband, Daughter and Son equally and if that makes me 'weird' then so be it.

Bigdomswife so if your husband left/died what would happen? You'd kill yourself?

Was just reading this and a thought popped into my head, when kids are older and they leave and sometimes maybe visit once a year. How will that work, do children not love their parents unconditionally in return? I don't have children but was just thinking about elderly people I know whose kids never visit and after reading this feel even sadder about their lack of visits. Must be very lonely :( Going to pop in to my elderly neighbours more often!

I didn't mean that in a negative way or anything was just really thinking about my nan and some elderly neighbours

Kids.

Not even close.

Agree with the other posters who say kids as the love is unconditional. Partners can do lots of shitty things that can cause the love to end. There is nothing that my dc c

Could do which would stop me loving them - even though at times I don't like them.

It is interesting to see how some people talk about love for their children being unconditional, and how nothing could possibly ever change that. Then you read the many threads on here about broken down dysfunctional relationships with parents, bitterness, hatred, emotional abuse etc etc. And i expect a lot of those parents felt exactly the same way once.

The truth is it is very easy to feel that way about little children, evolution has done a pretty good job of making us feel overwhelmingly protective of them (partly by making it such bloody hard work raising them).

Adult relationships, all adult relationships (including those between parents and their offspring) are complicated and often messy. I don't think those relationships are unconditional, they just feel that way when you have a little child's face beaming up at you.

All relationships need work and effort if they are to remain good over a lifetime. A little child may make you feel that overwhelming sense of love that almost blocks out everything else, but it is the love between me and DP that forms the backdrop to that relationship, and that relationship continues to grow and strengthen as each year passes.

So ultimately, I love them both enormously and will do all that I can on my part to keep that love going. Hopefully DP (and DS when he is old enough to think about this stuff) will too.

I think that is an extremely good post bluegrass . What you say is probably true and something I may see as my dc get bigger.

Personally, I find it bizarre to not love your spouse more than your children. That's not to say I don't love my kids, I love them far more than my own life. But I married my husband with the idea of being with him forever.

Definitely my children. It feels unconditional. I would die for them.

These threads seem to keep cropping up- I find it very odd that people have to quantify love. They are two different kinds of love- why not just leave it at that? They are not something to compare.

Firstly, I believe that we fall deeply in love with our babies and our young families. But speaking as a mother of older children ? I have come full circle to know that my love for my husband is above and beyond that for my children. But that is because I am seeing them for the individuals that they have grown into and will soon enter the world as. Not as the babies and young ones dependent upon me for life. I love my children dearly and deeply ? but I have returned to the original state of the union with my husband where I have remembered where and why it all began. Between the two of us and our love for each other. The kids will grow and move away ? and the relationship with my husband will be on the forefront of my mind. It ishe that I will pass the days with while my children grow and live their own lives and createtheir own families. I remember as a child asking my mother if she loved me more than my father. I remember feeling jealous of that relationship. But now ? I hope to God she doesn?t feel that way. I hope that her love for my father is astoundingly greater than her love for me. Otherwise ? I couldn?t bear the thought that I have been so incredibly busy with my own family now to have neglected such a love. I am quite sure that tho she adores me and her grandchildren ? the love for my father is the ultimate in her life. Well ? second to her faith? Also ? in saying that our love for our children is greater than for our spouse ? does it not then open the dialogue to ? ?Are our children then supposed to love their parents with a greater love than their spouse?? Of course not. We want our children to be free to love their spouses with their whole hearts. So why would their be an expectation for us to love them more than our spouse? Finally, I believe that men love their children completely- but their wives with a much deeper abandon than we as women could ever understand. Men love their wives with an intensity ? that we often don?t realize. My husband is over 50 ? we?ve raised a 25yo, 17yo, 15yo, 13 yo and 11yo ? he loves his children deeply ? but he is passionate about the day that the two of us will be alone and he will have my undivided attention like in our beginning. When a man chooses his spouse it is with intention of sharing a life side by side with his soulmate. The kids are part of the package. (Well at least that is how my husband has explained it to me?) I hope that my husband and I have communicated our love for each other in such a manner that my children feel compelled to want the same for themselves. Each night I pray for the individuals that they will share their lives and love with ? even though we haven?t met them yet.

I agree proudmamma. You get your DCs for such a short time - you then have decades, hopefully, with DH and the last thing an adult DC wants is a parent who lives through them. Half the problem seen on here with MILs is because they still want to be 'number 1' when clearly they are not.

But you can't list it in order of importance- it is different.

I don't get why we are so strongly discouraged from grading our love for our children (do you love your daughter more than your son is hardly a question encouraged on MN), but that we are continously being asked to grading our affections for partner and children.

As for the acccident scenatio: part of my love for my children is seeing them grow every day closer to adults who with adult feelings of responsibility and adult attitudes of looking after those weaker than themselves. If there was a ghastly accident I wouldn't expect dd who is 16 to sit around passively waiting to be rescued, I'd expect her to make an evaluation as to whether she needed rescuing, could rescue herself or was in a state to become one of the rescuers, just like I would do myself. Just because I once pushed her out of my womb, she is not an alien species to me: she is very similar and has similar feelings of love and responsibility. If she saw me or dh seriously injured, she would no doubt try to help because that is what adults do. And I would expect it because I want her, for her own sake, to be a responsible adult, not an eternal child.

I'd imagine this question comes up regularly because, to us parents of young children, the strength of love I have for my dc is still surprising and new, so something to think about.

Before I had dd1 I genuinely couldn't imagine loving anyone more than dp or the dog (yes, I know). Then dd1 came along and my whole capacity to love increased.

It's a totally different kind of love. With DCs I think its easy to mistake protectiveness for love, they need us more than another adult would, so all the talk about who you would save in a fire etc doesn't really demonstrate love, its more about responsibility and age-appropriate assistance. I would help out my youngest as I would expect the others to be able to help themselves more easily, that doesn't mean I love her more.

I crave my DP and I am more likely to bend over backwards to make him happy. If it came down to sharing my last Rolo, I would give it to him but probably not to my DCs (I feel awful admitting that!)

But I accept that nobody could never replace my DCs in my affections, whereas if my relationship with DP ended, I would get over it and hopefully meet someone else who would take up that role.

If I was given a choice to save DS or DH at gun point, DH would be dead. I'd cry but I'd be inconsolable if DS died.

When I was pregnant with DS I asked DH if he was given a choice to choose who'd live out of the two of us, who would he pick and instantaneously, he chose me because "Losing you would destroy me more than losing a child I've never even met even though that's my flesh and blood".. I know now he'd pick our DC2 over me and I'd prefer to die and let my children live cause I've lived enough.

My mum said to me when I was growing up, "If you have to choose between saving your partner or your child save the partner because you can always have more children."

She has been single since my parents got divorced when I was 4yo. I guess her point was that you will love any child you have but finding a partner for life is not guaranteed and thus all the more special. My mum had three children but we weren't a source of comfort or companionship for her and we certainly didn't keep her warm at night.

I think that with young children who depend on you for everything you feel as though you love them more, but that is a mother's instinct. I haven't chosen to love my DD. I just do. I have chosen to be in a relationship with DH and don't automatically love him like you do your own child. I love him for who he actually is and not just because he is biologically related to me. I think a good partner is a gift and couldn't choose between DH or DD in terms of who I love most. I would save DD over DH because DD needs me and I'm responsible for her but that doesn't mean I love her more.

I thought this silly thread had died a death. I can only say that you are lucky not to have been in a real emergency-it simply doesn't give you chance of a choice of who to save. (not generally anyway)
I can't see why people need to put things in order, especially when they are entirely different.

My dd of course

I love my children in a different way to DH. I don't think it's something you can compare or measure against to be honest. I feel more protective over the children and would gladly lay my life down for either of them. I don't have that instinct to protect DH in the same way but the love is still there. Just a different type of love I suppose.

Having said that, I actually love my 2 children in very different ways. DS1 will always be my first born, the person who made me a mother. We get on as 'friends', we share the same sense of humour and I find him fascinating. DS2 will always be my baby. He's going to be the last one to call me mummy (DS1 has already moved on to 'Mum' ). DS2 has DH's mannerisms and is very much a Daddy's boy...but I love him for it. He is sensitive and affectionate. I love how much he reminds me of DH and seeing them together just makes me so proud. I don't think you can really measure which one you love more.

" I think that ideally you'd love the DH more, because he'll still be there when your DC are grown ups"

Er not necessarily! Especially in this day and age. Besides kids will always be there when grown ups too!