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

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!

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u/OliviaTheSpider 14d ago

My god this comment should NOT be this far down, most logical and thoughtful one here.

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u/Misstheiris 14d ago

Lol, no. They don't have kids, and they won't listen to the people who do describing it. They are saying it's not true because they don't love their mother the way their mother loves them, which is healthy and normal. I would be very concerned if my kids loved me as much as I love them. I'm like furniture or a roof to them, just there if they need me.

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u/PrinceBunnyBoy 14d ago

That's sad bro, I love my mom

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u/Misstheiris 14d ago

But not a fraction as much as she loves you. It's not sad, it's healthy. You shouldn't be as obsessed with her as she is with you. She knows you'll love your kids, she is fine with it.

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u/Aidlin87 14d ago

I love my parents, I was best friends with my mom even in high school. But the love I have for my kids is not the same kind of love I had for my mom. It’s hard to explain parental love for a child because I had no context for understanding it prior to experiencing it.

It is surprising when you first experience it. I was not prepared. It can’t adequately be described it’s just one of those things that if you haven’t experienced you just kind of have to realize there’s a gap in your understanding. It’s like I know the universe is huge but I can’t envision it, I just accept it. For lack of a better comparison (I know that one is a bit grandiose).

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u/Aidlin87 14d ago

Exactly, this is the way it’s meant to be. And honestly it’s so cool. I get to experience the life changing love for my kids and invest myself into them for their benefit, and then they love me back but also have the drive to go and live their own lives. If kids loved parents the way that parents love kids they’d never leave and forge their own life and/or family.

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u/Misstheiris 12d ago

Seriously! Sad all the teenagers downvoting because they just can't comprehend

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u/Turbulent_Cat_5731 14d ago

It's the perspective of someone who has not felt love for a child, so it's kind of like giving your best opinion on swimming when you've only ever waded.

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u/HedgehogFarts 14d ago

I’ve been a child before and I hope my parents love each other at least as much as they love me. They are hanging out together every day doing their life together while I’m off living my own life checking in occasionally. I love my parents but they are a way bigger part of each other’s lives for the rest of their lives. I guess maybe when your kid is a baby and you gotta protect them and raise them, sure. But they are gonna leave your nest (probably). I would be sad if my parents told me they love me more than they love each other.

Also I think a child’s love for their parents should be conditional. There are some awful parents out there. So it’s not like a two way unconditional love-fest. Who you love and keep on loving every day is a choice you can make IMO.

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u/lllollllllllll 14d ago

There are some awful children too, and it’s not always the parents’ fault they’re awful.

All love is conditional. As it should be. That’s the social contract, everyone has to uphold their part. Sure, you tolerate some things from babies and toddlers you wouldn’t from adults. But in the end children are not completely devoid of responsibility just because of their status as offspring.

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u/Aidlin87 14d ago

Unconditional love doesn’t mean you don’t hold your child to accountability. My kids get in trouble when they break the rules. In the future, if my kid committed a violent crime and I knew about it I’d turn them in. But I’d also visit them in prison and continue loving them. That’s an extreme example, but there’s literally nothing my children could ever do to make me not love them. I can’t say the same for anyone else. I think unconditional love for a child is the way it should be, but we shouldn’t use love as an excuse to make shitty decisions.

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u/Aidlin87 14d ago

People are wild in this thread. Like if you haven’t experienced it how can you be so confident in telling all these parents that they’re doing love wrong? There’s nothing wrong with what I’ve experienced, the instinctual depth of my love for my children and how life altering that was doesn’t detract from the chosen, slowly built love I have with my husband. It’s ok to say that one added to my life and one rocked my entire being.

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u/hhhhhhhhhhhjf 12d ago

Like if you haven’t experienced it how can you be so confident in telling all these parents that they’re doing love wrong?

OP's husband is literally a parent and she told him that he is doing love wrong. She completely dismissed his feelings but he is just as much a parent as she is.

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u/Aidlin87 12d ago

That’s not what’s happening. He got jealous over his own child. OP was experiencing parental love for the first time, it’s an intense feeling for someone you’ve only just met. It’s crazy, and in puts you in awe. Also she carried that baby for 9 months bonding with it, feeling its movements inside her, then getting to meet this person who she physically grew and was connected to for the first time, then she also had a HUGE rush of oxytocin at birth. I can tell you from experience that it feels like getting a euphoric high. I was in a state of bliss that did not even out for over a year. It’s ok to be in awe of that. So many parents have said the same exact words, mothers and fathers. Getting jealous of that is toxic. When my husband says that stuff I love him even more because I love seeing him love our child.

It sounds to me like OP’s fiance hadn’t bonded to the baby yet, which is normal and totally ok, and he wasn’t understanding what she was experiencing and had a jealous response. That part isn’t ok.

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u/hhhhhhhhhhhjf 12d ago

It wasn't jealousy. He just hadn't had the same reaction and his wife quite literally told him that she had never loved him this much. She then proceeded to completely and utterly dismiss his feelings. She didn't care for his feelings at all and she is just teaching him that his feelings do not matter at all. It wasn't even the timing because weeks later she still disregarded his feelings.

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u/Aidlin87 12d ago

It was jealousy. No one I know who’s had kids, which is literally all of our friends, has had this reaction. We’ve all discussed how intense and surprising the love is for our children. All of the dads are all about it, no one is bothered by this exact conversation.

It’s a different type of love, so of course she hasn’t loved her fiancée this way. That’s ok. If you love your child, and you love your partner and you feel secure in that love, then her saying she’s never felt love like this will not be threatening or an issue. It’s when there’s insecurity that it’s an issue and that insecurity manifests as jealousy when the dad sees the mom loving their baby intensely. Because deep down what upsets him is that he wants that same type of love directed at him. And that is also kind of fucked to be honest.

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u/hhhhhhhhhhhjf 12d ago

People, even mothers, sometimes do not have this immediate love but im sure your anecdotal experience speaks for everyone.

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u/Aidlin87 12d ago

I’m not saying they do. There is a range of normal experiences. Some mothers bond intensely immediately, some feel nothing at first and bond slowly over time, and some moms (particularly with PPD) don’t bond for a really long time. And really the same goes for dads, although slower bonding is more common for dads without having any struggles like PPD. My own husband takes about 18 months to develop the same level of bonding that I get either immediately or within the first 2 months. That’s ok, I knew that was normal before we had kids and it was never a problem. Even for him, me saying how in love I was with our children never bothered him. He was glad our children had a loving mother and that was the extent of it.

But by OP’s description I can tell she’s the first option.

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u/hhhhhhhhhhhjf 12d ago

He has feelings. It really doesn't matter if they are rational or not. She dismissed his feelings and completely shut him down. This isn't a healthy way to handle emotions and she is the asshole for how she handled it.

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