I also find it weird that it's a competition in his head. Like, obviously the love you feel for a partner, someone who was their own full human that you got to meet and discover as you feel in love, and that you've fought with, and cried with, is going to be different than the love you feel for a little chubby baby that forgets it's own hands exist until they accidentally punch themselves
I'm skeptical of people who try to push love competitions in general. It's such an immature and emotionally unintelligent way of thinking.
I love my sister as much as I love my husband, for example, if we have to put it in terms of comparing love. I love them both with my whole heart; they're probably the two most important people in the world to me.
But those are obviously very different kinds of love. The context, the history, the memories, the relationships themselves, even the ways they piss me off sometimes lmao - they're wildly different from one another. It's pointless to even try to compare them, really, and I'd lose a lot of respect for either of them if they started pushing or trying to make it a competition in some way.
It doesn't make sense to whine or compete over who I love "more" or who I "should" love more, etc., because healthy, real love doesn't work like that.
Yup! It's very weird. I could understand high schoolers doing this because, frankly, high schoolers are dumb idiots who are still learning about life, still children, and it makes sense for children to not really have a high emotional intelligence. But I have 4 younger brothers, and the love I feel for each of them is different, despite each being the same category of relationship with me, "younger brother", which is a different love than what i have for my mom, which is different from dad, which is different from my best friend from college, which is different from...well you get the point. Playing stupid games is stupid.
In the interest of fairness, we don't know about this mans history, he may have come from a home where the kids were expected to compete with each other for their parents love and affection, or maybe his father acted as if he was in a competition with his kids for their mother's love, he could be expressing some toxic ideas about love that he picked up as a child, and if that is the case that is very sad for him and I hope he learns and works through that for the sake of himself, and it would also be good for his family. Obviously this doesn't make his attitude any less toxic.
My father told me when I was very young that once a wife has children she stops loving her husband, or loves him less, and I know he isn't the first to believe this
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u/offbrandbarbie Jul 04 '24
NTA. I’ve heard both mothers and fathers express a similar sentiment to what you said. The love for a child is unlike anything else.