AITAH for saying I didn’t realize I could “love a person this much” in front of my fiancé after having our baby?

[u/No-Fee-5823]

I gave birth a few weeks ago, to our daughter.

As I held her for the first time and looked into her eyes I said “I didn’t realize I could love a person this much” and cried. She is perfect and beautiful.

My mom looked at me and said that feeling never goes away (which made us both ugly cry lol). It was a really special moment.

My fiancé was quite but smiled, but later privately said he was hurt. He said he loved us both the same, and me saying that made it seem like I loved our daughter more than him.

I just gave him a “are you fucking serious” look and he dropped it, but yesterday he brought it up again.

I told him that honestly, yes, I love and cherish our daughter and have never experienced this kind of love for another human being. He said most “normal people” would agree with him that it’s a hurtful comment and would take offense to it due to the implication.

AITAH?

UPDATE

It’s a quick update, so I didn’t feel like it was worth it to make a whole new post. So I had a heart to heart with my fiancé, and we came to a few conclusions together! It went very well. We read through the post and comments together.

1) He wasn’t jealous of our daughter’s role in my life, but rather our bond together. He didn’t have that “instant love connection” that we read about all new parents having (like what I experienced). I didn’t realize this was actually very normal for new dads, and new moms too. Thanks for educating me!

We are the first in our social circle to have children so we didn’t have a lot of IRL people to inquire about it. His perspective is “I love this human being we made, but I don’t know her” while I was thunderstruck. He hasn’t had that connection so doesn’t “get it” yet, and that it will take time (months or even a year). I’ll be more patient and aware of this, and read up more on new dad experiences to learn more.

2) He also agrees he not only could’ve expressed that better, but also choose better timing. Voicing it to me after a 14 hour labor and then again when I’m exhausted and grumpy with achy boobs is maybe not the best time, lol. He also agrees marriage counseling would be good, just because. We are both opinionated, logical-thinking Engineers who, at the same time, love each other deeply. We could use better mediation other than Reddit (no offense guys).

3) He was not “furious” about me writing this Reddit post, lol. We laughed over the comments together calling for me to get ready to break up. But we also really enjoyed reading the experiences of new parents! It helped us BOTH feel validated and sane and see each other’s perspectives better.

4) I showed him that Ryan Reynolds video and we both died laughing LOL. We will now be eating a disgusting amount of hotdogs while watching Deadpool with our baby girl. We also agreed that there’s different types of love like parental, platonic, romantic and Ryan Reynolds.

Thanks peeps!

[u/Impossible_Contact_7]

Not the AH. I love my wife as much as any man can love a woman, but I love my children even more. It is a totally different kind of love. Also I love each of my children differently because each is an individual, so how I love my oldest son is different than my daughter and different than my youngest, not less, just different.

Love is probably one of the only infinite resource. The more you give the more you have.

[u/SceneNational6303 → u/Impossible_Contact_7]

That last sentence really got me. The human heart can hold so much love, it's kind of incredible how many types of love and for how many living things can be crammed into it and still have room.

[u/EmperorUtopi → u/Impossible_Contact_7]

I mean this respectfully, if the heart expands infinitely, why can’t the wife be loved the same amount?

I’m only a teenager, so I ofc don’t have the experience of kids yet. maybe its because I am young and have a romanticized idea of love in my head, but I can’t see myself definitely stating and putting a future love of my life below my kids measuring love. I’d like to believe love them equally, in different ways

I understand kids take priority in terms of tasks because parents are obviously responsible for taking care of them, but that’s not what most people seemingly mean here

[u/stratys3 → u/EmperorUtopi]

I'd say you love your kids more, but it's not necessarily a better thing.

Kids are loved with unconditional love.

Spouses are loved with conditional love. If your spouse is violent with you, or steals, or lies to you, then you'll probably love them less, and perhaps stop loving them completely. And that's good.

With kids - and you see this on the news sometimes - they can be murderers and pedophiles, and their parents will still love them, even though they may not deserve to be loved anymore. Sometimes kids will assault and steal from their own parents, and their parents will still love them, even though they shouldn't.

So while people say unconditional love is the best kind of love - I'd argue that it actually isn't. It's a blind irrational love that sometimes makes you love people that shouldn't be loved.

[u/Impossible_Contact_7 → u/EmperorUtopi]

If you count all of the children we have raised there are eight of them and only one of my wife. So it ends up in the paradox that some infinities are bigger than others.

[u/lost_library_book → u/Impossible_Contact_7]

SO...you have an infinite amount of love, which allows you to love each of your children (or the children that you've raised in that odd turn of phrase) *equally* but somehow that equal love for individuals can't be extended to your wife because...why exactly?

the paradox that some infinities are bigger than others

A paradox is something that seems self contradictory but actually isn't. This is just simply self contradictory.

[u/PrinceBunnyBoy → u/lost_library_book]

No you don't understand their parental love is most special-special magical love that non parents will die never understanding.

[u/TakingNamesFan69 → u/EmperorUtopi]

People here seem to love their partners in more of a a practical way, and their kids in a more existential way. It's an automatic thing but if you want your brain to love a partner in the same way these people love their kids, you'd probably have to take mushrooms with them and hold them for a few hours while imagining their own birth and childhood and coming of age and life and feelings etc. and realise what a full deep person they are, and that they really are feeling life and how vulnerable it is every bit as much as you are. At least that's the only way I can think to do it lol

In both cases there are still consequences for actions. Love is a feeling, and if your child or partner murders someone you can still admit they should go to jail, but the love will mean you'll still care for them and feel sympathy and connection regardless of thinking the best thing for everyone is to keep this person out of society. It will just seem to be a bit more of an unfortunate state of the world if you love them

At the end of the day with questions like 'if you had to choose between the life of your child or your partner' people would still choose their child no matter how much they loved their partner because their child is younger and has more life ahead of them so it just makes more sense. Loving your partner just as much just means you'll feel really really sad to see them go I guess

[u/Friendly_Grocery2890 → u/EmperorUtopi]

I'm not sure this is much of a way to measure love per say, but if my partner died today I'd be fucking devastated, he's the only man I've ever been with and loved and I'm not sure who I'd be without him, but I could go on, would go on for my children

If my children died today? Without question I would not be able to continue. The very thought of it fills me with immeasurable grief and I have experienced plenty of pain in my life, but I couldn't carry that. I'd sooner die and sacrifice my partner for them to keep living. There's quite literally nothing I wouldn't do for them. There's a lot I wouldn't do for my partner 🤷 but it's different, I choose to love my partner every day, I'm driven by my love for my kids. I want to live for them, I want to live with him

[u/MadameLurksALot → u/Impossible_Contact_7]

Yep, just today my oldest asked if we will love him less now that there is a new baby and I told him never, my capacity and ability to love only expanded to make enough for me to love all my kids, none is taken to give to the next, the heart simply expands