Guys have smothered grenades to save their buddies, with their bodies, since the damn things have been invented.
OP, I don’t think it’s helpful when trying to understand the human experience or the nature of love to frame things the way you have here. First of all, I think self-love is a different animal than love for other people.
Secondly, what does it mean to love “more”? Does giving up your happiness or well being in a particular circumstance in favor of another’s necessarily equate to more love? There are too many facets to love in my opinion to say for certain that this is the case.
Of course, regardless of how you answer these questions, your girlfriend is wrong about the motivations of people as a whole. There’s a handful of people in my life I’d jump in front of a bullet for, and the only reason for it is that I just couldn’t stand to see them get hurt.
Once your girlfriend squirts out a kid, she’ll change her mind.
Missed edit window for last post, just saw this:
And this really illustrates my point that selflessness and love are not necessarily the same thing. How in the world would making that choice prove anything at all about love?
Not to play one-upmanship but I’d have a hard time making a calculated decision to save myself over practically any child.
I don’t claim to be made of the stuff of heroes because who knows that maybe in a split decision of self preservation I might very well trample a child on my way to safety. But given an option to save my life or a child’s I couldn’t imagine any other choice but to jump in the grave. Is that love or am I just a coward for not wanting to live out my life knowing that I chose myself over a child? In either case I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about what society thought.
I’d go with this. Its one of those sort of thought processes where one can trace everything back to a self-motivation. Even with loving one’s children more, one can say that it’s a not really love as much as it is biological imperative and ensuring the survival of the next generation serves at least as much as one’s own survival. The thing is, as others have pointed out, that’s not an argument that anyone can really win on either side.
I think the argument ultimately fails though because it’s rationalizing an irrational aspect of humanity. Yes, we can talk about the biology behind it, but it’s like analyzing the works of Shakespeare through the probability that computer could randomly generate it rather than for the artistic value in selection process of putting those words in that order; it’s missing the forest for the trees. Sure, no one does anything that is against their motivations, but defining that to be selfish is missing the point because love is as much or more an experiential thing as it is a biological one.
That is, when people are sacrificing themselves for their children, you may be able to trace their motivations back to biological imperative, but that sure as hell isn’t what is going through their minds when they make that choice. So, I don’t think it’s really reasonable to judge their actions in a fully drawn out rational context when the decision isn’t being made in such a way.
So, yeah, it’s definitely possible to love others more than yourself.
Does she have a kid yet? That could very well change her mind.
When I had to have unexpected surgery last year to remove a rupturing ectopic pregnancy, my first thought was, “Oh, god - I hope the kids will be ok.” I was bleeding internally and in a lot of pain and emotional turmoil, but my first thought was about them, then my husband.
Their security - physical and emotional - means the world to me. My son was going through a very tough time (and is only now settling in) and I didn’t want them to be scared. The day I was discharged was my son’s first basketball game. He’d been looking forward to that damn game for weeks and he was so very proud, the first time he’d had a shred of self-esteem in months. It was such a little thing, but very important to him. So I loaded myself up on Percocet, got a huge coffee and held onto the chair I was sitting on for dear life so I could cheer him on.
He was so happy I went, though. Seeing him happy for the first time in such a long time was absolutely worth it.
I think it’s fair to say that I love my kids more than myself. That love is a complicated mix, though - it’s duty/responsibility, the knowledge that this person came from you (if you adopted, they still become part of your psyche), the joy of watching them grow and the feeling that, just for a little while, you’re their world and the pain you feel when they get older and don’t need you (even if that’s as it should be). I don’t always like my kids and doing what they need isn’t always the same as what they want, but I never for a moment would stop loving them.
Yes. Some of us are (or have been) depressed and do not love ourselves. If it were impossible for us to love anyone else more than ourselves, that would mean it would be impossible for someone who does not love him/herself to love other people. I can personally vouch for the fact that we can.
(I’m feeling less depressed now that I’m being treated. I’m not sure I’d say I love myself, but I generally manage to like myself, at least.)
Think of the teenager girl surrendering her child for adoption. She will be harshly judged by those around her, for ‘giving away’ her own flesh and blood. She is buying herself a lifetime of not knowing if that child is happy, healthy, or even still alive! She is agreeing to the pain, for a lifetime, of being apart from her own child. And she does so that her child might have a better life. I’d have to say that young girl loves her child more than her own happiness or herself, wouldn’t you?
Now think of the caregiver, who rearranges their entire life to take in a bedridden loved one. Meals, dr’s, laundry, diapers, meds, all day, every day, for years and years. There were other options, but they chose what they did out of love for another. If you’ve ever done this type of 24/7 caregiving you’d know, it’s not the sort of thing you can have the fortitude for, without love and sacrifice. Being admired or easing guilt will not be enough to go the distance.
So yes I do believe.
I love my husband more than I love myself, and that’s not even in a depressed way. I’ve had pretty good self-esteem these days. I just fucking love him and want to protect him from all harm. I’m pretty confident that I would sacrifice my life for his, if it came to that.
I agree totally.
Even with the grammar?
I’m a pretty tough guy–insults and rocks bounce right off my skull, most of the time, so if someone behaves with hostility towards me, I’m all meh.
But you give my daughter any shit whatsoever, and I’m all over you. I’ll fight to defend her against someone I’d walk away from if they gave me shit, and it doesn’t even have to be over the top. Just give her so much as a dirty look, or patronize her, or laugh at her, and I’ll be in your foolish face.
She’s a better person than I’ll ever be.
She’s a kinder person than I know how to be.
She deserves all sorts of generosity that I don’t feel I deserve.
I definitely love her, and value her, much more than I love myself.
I felt that way about my ex even after he left me, for a long time.
Neither agree nor disagree with the grammar; don’t have the energy to switch to English-teacher mode and pull out my red pencils tonight.
But with the idea? Entirely. We adopted the Firebug, after all, and I can’t imagine the possibility of loving another human being more than this. I just don’t think there’s any room to ramp up the intensity if I had a child of my body; If I loved this kid any more, my heart would burst out of my chest and go into orbit.
And that’s not by way of patting myself on the back; the conscious ‘I’ isn’t responsible for this. I’m in the grip of something that’s really quite beyond my understanding. I can control how I act toward him, but as far as my underlying feelings for him go, something deep and unreachable in my being, far below the level of conscious choice, is calling the shots. Attribute it to God or evolution as you like, but it’s something well beyond my ability to cause or control.
But if I could bottle it and sell it, I’d be a billionaire.
Am I the only one reminded of that Harry Potter quote where a Hogwarts teacher says that the little vial of love potion he holds in his hand is more powerful and more dangerous then any of the other potions and poisons in the classroom?
ahhh I wouldn’t go quite that far 
but I would seriously question that relationship after that conversation. In fact if it were me that would be like an announcement that the relationship had gone as far as it could. IMO a couple is all about caring more for the other person than yourself and it shouldn’t even be close and that should be like saying water is wet. Yikes.
Maybe on some level, protecting our children is a roundabout way of loving ourselves. After all, our genes are being passed on in our children. If that’s what your girlfriend means, then okay, I can concede that that’s a possibility.
However, there are tons of examples of people who sacrifice themselves for strangers. I’d ask your girlfriend to Google **Arland Dean Williams Jr. **as just one example.
IMO, she’s wrong, but her argument is pretty much unfalsifiable - as she posits a motive of selfishness that is invisible to us, and to the person being selfish - so it might exist, or not.
What of the mother surrendering her child for adoption, for the best interest of the child? A world of unending pain for the mother, never to know if her child thrives. I’d have to say that person loved someone more than themselves. Could you surrender your own flesh and blood? Even if it was the only/best choice?
And what of the unpaid caregiver? Putting in years, upturning their own lives, adult diapers, meds, meals, laundry, endlessly repeating. Only to reach an end of heartache and loss on a whole different scale, a life of emptiness to adjust to. Again, I’d have to say that person loves someone more than themselves.
Both these paths are filled with pain and trial for those who choose them. There isn’t any amount of self congratulatory ego boost that will carry you through either of these tasks. It has to come from your heart, and you have to be committed to carry on, whatever the pain to yourself.
And yes, I do know of what I speak.