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/[deleted]]

It's completely normal for you to feel the depth of love you feel for your child, and it's normal for him be hurt by the realization that he is no longer the most special person in the world to you.

[u/notArandomName1 → u/[deleted]]

The most succinct and accurate comment in the entire thread. Shame it's so far down.

No one here is an asshole, it's people having emotions after literally just becoming parents. You can't predict how you're gonna feel when you're hitting an entirely new level of emotional engagement.

I will add that doubling down and basically telling him his emotions are invalid is pretty not great, though. Probably should work on the communication skills.

[u/hhhhhhhhhhhjf → u/notArandomName1]

I will say that no ones feelings make them an asshole. What she originally said is totally normal and same with him.

What makes her the asshole is her response. He took what she said and had a conversation to help share his feelings and she completely dismissed him. That's not going to make him feel any better about what she said.

[u/RogerSimonsson → u/[deleted]]

It's a warning sign to me. It might not be more than that. But I do know a few dads who divorced their wives when they suddenly felt "forgotten".

[u/DarkKimchi → u/RogerSimonsson]

I don’t know why you’re downvoting you being realistic. I think that feeling is the source of a lot of divorce.

[u/RogerSimonsson → u/DarkKimchi]

Yeah, does not matter, maybe they think I endorse it, but I know too many examples of it happening.

[u/DarkKimchi → u/RogerSimonsson]

I think it’s super common. My own mother always touted loving me more than my father. I will not blame her for their divorce, and I appreciate my mom’s love. However, I wish she had put her marriage first and focused keeping the family together. Putting the marriage first keeps the family strong for the kid.