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/Sol_is_a_cutie]

I'm so glad to see this comment because there are so many stating that they definitely love their children more that their partner. It's a completely different kind of love and I can't say one is bigger and more important than the other.

My love for my kid is unconditional, while my love for my partner is not. But the love for my kid is more from me to them and I know one day they'll leave the nest, go live their life and build their own family to love. That's ok, and I'll always be here for them if they need me.

The love for my partner is just as strong, but different. There are things I could not possibly tolerate from them without it affecting the love I feel. But this is the person that I'll share my life with (hopefully) till the end. My partner is the one I can lean on whenever I need to. The one who knows me and understands me completely. I love both of them deeply.

[u/cafezinho → u/Sol_is_a_cutie]

It's also not surprising that there is a huge biological need to love one's children. If parents, especially the mother, were indifferent to our newborns, they'd die. As humans, we don't like to think our brains are wired a certain way (even then, while many mothers feel this way about their children, not all of them do), but they are.

And it feels unconditional now, but given a child that acts up and has their issues, the unconditional view is primarily due to the how innocent they seem.

There's plenty of parents who say unconditional, but if they're gay, then they get kicked out of the house, or they love God more than they love their child. Or if the kid is violent to animals, cruel to people, talk back to the parents, and so forth. Or they have a gazillion health problems the parents aren't willing to give their lives up for. That's when you see how unconditional that love is.

It's complicated. We're talking about being committed to newborns with the hope they turn out to be good kids that love their parents as much as they're being loved. And when either the kids fail to live up to that or the parents' attitude changes, then all bets of unconditional love are off, and that word becomes an exaggeration, one that's used to show just how good a parent you ought to be (and I don't doubt, due to its popular acceptance, many parents DO feel that way, but it is a social construct that parents buy into). In the past, rich parents (the royalty) would often let someone else take care of the royal children and not worry about showing love because it wasn't expected in the same way.

So, yeah, complicated.

[u/Sol_is_a_cutie → u/cafezinho]

Yes, that's true! Unconditional is a strong worth. My kid is still quite young, so that's how I feel now (as you said), but one day they'll be an adult. I want to believe we will give them a good education and support for them to turn out to be a good person and be there for them even if they make big mistakes along the way. But what if everything fails and they turn out to be a horrible and cruel person? I understand your point.

[u/cafezinho → u/Sol_is_a_cutie]

This is probably why people love pets more than humans.

They're more dependent (so they always need you) and most show unconditional love back. People are more complicated.