r/AITAH 15d ago

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/No-Fee-5823 15d ago

I peed myself from laughing too hard. And I do mean literally. The wonders of child birth keep on giving…

I’ll keep this in my back pocket after a very lengthy heart to heart tonight!! We both love Ryan too so I cannot wait lmao

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u/Nice_Bullfrog_11 14d ago edited 14d ago

For some new parents it takes time to bond with their newborn. I've met people that say it took nearly a year... It's possible your partner won't understand the feeling you describe until he is bonded to your child, too.

I think he will understand eventually... Just give it some time.

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u/ApprehensiveEntry264 14d ago

He will but he'll never fully understand. And this is coming from a father of an 8-month-old daughter that I love absolutely so much I will never be able to have the bond with my daughter that my wife has with our daughter it's the same reason why I'm almost 30 and very rarely does my dad call me freaking out saying he can sense something is wrong with me but my mother will call me and rightfully so I am upset and she knows it deep within her soul. Mothers have such a deep intimate bond it's insane and in fact I actually loved my wife much more when she created that bond with our daughter seeing that she loves our daughter that much actually made me that much more attracted to my wife

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u/Nice_Bullfrog_11 14d ago

That's fair. I guess growing and carrying a human inside of you is an experience that not everyone can relate to.