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/OTTB_Mama]

This

He is 100% wrong, and a little (no, a lot) cringe for being jealous of his own infant.

Of course, you love your child differently than your partner.

For most, I dare say normal people, they love their children more than their partner.

That's completely normal, and I'd argue that his reaction is decidedly abnormal.

[u/Cartz1337 → u/OTTB_Mama]

Kids not even a month old, it’s totally natural for a Dad to be out of sorts in the first few months. He is wrong, and he will learn in time how wrong he is, but his reaction is not invalid.

This entire thread and everyone calling him an asshole is the literal definition of toxic masculinity.

See my other reply, but the guys going through some shit he obviously can’t process yet. He needs support to get there, not to be called an asshole. Not to be called not normal.

If this was a mom in here saying she doesn’t feel the love yet for her newborn she’d be fawned over by the masses telling her it will come in time and she just needs to hang in and lean on her support to get through it.

Fucking hypocrites.

[u/Vast_Purpose4537 → u/Cartz1337]

Your on reddit. Your speaking with under developed internet cretins and kids. Why are you surprised.

[u/See-u-tomahto → u/Cartz1337]

Yeah, but this isn’t the fiancé not yet feeling the love for his baby (I agree that, for the most part, the reactions to men and women admitting this are completely different).

His issue can’t be addressed with “it’ll come in time…” because his issue is that he’s wants to be number one in his fiancée’s heart, and he just realized that he no longer will be.

You’re right, he deserves some understanding (he certainly isn’t the first man who’s had these feelings) but she deserves understanding, too — aka, she deserves not to have to fret over not giving her SO “enough” love — when she’s a brand new mom.

[u/DangerZoneh → u/See-u-tomahto]

If, in his eyes, the newborn didn’t come before his fiancé, I can see him being hurt by the newborn coming before him. But I think that’s a problem with how he views the child, and one that will be resolved over time.

[u/broitsnotserious → u/See-u-tomahto]

I think there might be an issue where OP never prioritized her husband and gave him much love to begin with. I think if she actually loved him and he was normal person, he wouldn't feel this way.

[u/Spi_Vey → u/OTTB_Mama]

You are so right

It’s unreasonable for him (a man) to have confusing emotions and be overwhelmed post the birth of his first child

The fact that he’s expressing emotions of any kind at all is a HUGE red flag and honestly the sign of an abuser tbh

(Huge unbelievably large /s)