First, this question is going to mean different things to different people, buuuut…
I think some people are in love with the idea of loving their kids more than anything. I think some other people focus on loving their kids more because their relationship to their partner isn’t all that great. I think some other people get this sort of tunnel vision where they only take care of their kids and everything else takes a back-burner/turns to crap.
You need to take care of your kids, and you need to take care of your relationship with your partner. That’s the job. You can’t phone it in in the romance department because you’ve got kids. Your kids are going to move out someday. You don’t want to find yourself living with a stranger when that happens.
Loving someone more makes it sound like there’s a finite amount of love to go around so someone is always going to get shorted. I think that’s silly.
Day to day events that require choices over who gets the most time and attention or who gets pulled from the cliff or saved from drowning should have nothing to do with an amount of love.
It depends on what you mean by love, what you mean by putting first, etc.
If we were in a survival situation, I’d choose to save our children before my wife. But then, she’d want me to do so, just as I’d want her to save them over me. As parents, keeping them safe and alive is our ultimate responsibility.
But that doesn’t apply to every circumstance. Keeping our marriage healthy and vibrant is best for the kids, so it’s not infrequent that I have to put the marriage over the relationship with the kids in a way I wouldn’t value it over, say, my relationship with my baby sister or stepdaughter.
Love’s more of a binary thing- either you love someone, or you don’t, with everything that entails. There’s no notion of “a little” or “a lot” with actual, real love.
What you do about it is different. I think that parents that short-change or otherwise neglect their children with respect to affection or attention in favor of their spouses are failing at parenting.
The very notion that you both love each other and your children pretty much means that you are willing to make sacrifices for all of their well being. So you and your spouse should be sacrificing for each other AND your children when need be. Children aren’t mature enough to do that until pretty late in the parenting game, so they shouldn’t be expected to make sacrifices on your behalf.
I think Lowdown does a good job describing what many Christian marriage counselors tell married people. In Christianity, we believe the two become one in marriage. There should be a special relationship between you and your partner that is unique and stronger than anything else. Don’t necessarily read into it too much. This does not mean that you have to decide which one you feed to the charging bear first. It is just something you need to have in your mind when faced with the daily grind when everything else in the world is demanding your attention (kids, work, spouse, etc).
Many people do let their relationship with the spouse wither as they have kids. It is very easy to do if you have two or three (or more) kids. Kids are needy, loud, and it is easy to focus on them. You divvy up all the craziness and work with your spouse to make sure no one starving or drowning. It is easy to just pass each other in the night. By the time the kids grow up and move out, you look over to your [del]spouse[/del] roommate and wonder who are they?
Your kids will be with you for a season, hopefully your spouse will be with you for much longer.
They’re two entirely separate things. I love my husband and I love my children. However, I chose my husband. I didn’t choose the people my children are, though it was my choice to have children.
The love I feel toward my children is tinged with more obligation than the love I feel for my husband. And the love I feel for my husband is tinged with a little more freedom and passion than I feel for my children. But the flip side of that is that I feel freer to show exasperation with my husband than I would with my kids.
I guess the point is that you can’t make an apples to apples comparison. There’s a world of difference between choosing to be with someone for the rest of your life and choosing to make a life and be responsible for it.
Sometimes, when Birdman is really getting on my nerves, I can imagine leaving him. Maybe he dies in a car accident and I get a nice settlement and Bird Boy and I move into a nice little house with the money. Maybe we divorce and live in houses next door to each other so Bird Boy can wander to and fro whenever. I could send him over to live with Birdman for a week while I go on a trip or something. Bottom line, I could live without Birdman. I could not live without Bird Boy.
Fuck that shit. I’ve actually LOST a child to death. There’s nothing worse. In a lifeboat situation, I’d want my wife to save the kids over me, no question, and I don’t think I’d ever forgive her for saving me over them. For that matter, she’d never forgive me for saving HER over them.
Children are not replaceable. As much as I adore the three I have with my wife, I miss my firstborn son even after 19 years. I don’t obsess over him any more, but I’ll never stop missing him. He was a unique person and cannot be replaced.
About who you put first… another way of looking at it is whether you concentrate on having a strong marriage or whether you sacrifice everything for your children such as working a lot to put them in the best schools and give them lots of gifts and drive them to after school activities and spend your free time looking after them…
Love more? I think that’s kind of a silly question.
Place first in some crazy scenario? Kids in a heartbeat. If for some reason we had to bug out and only my two-seater car were working? I grab the youngest and say ‘meet me in (X place)’.
Normal people don’t love one more than the other but they love each family member differently.
My kids knew never put themselves between me and their Mom though. When ever they tried to get something by pitting one of us against the other they would loose. After all my boys were going to be living with me for around 20 years, where as my wife and would be living together until one of us gone.
First of all I reject the premise because no one is loved less because my infinite love for my son. Sometimes his needs trump everything… my relationships, my own health, once I ev en quit a job because my became ill the first week and I could not do it all. Other times he would become less in my focus because of my partner. Or my parents or brother.
But…
My son. I watched him struggle for life, and barely make it. I chose to leave his father when it became clear my ex husband would make life difficult and dangerous. My new (well almost 8 years) partner knows where he fits. That is not that I love my partner less but it is simply that my son is “primus interpares”.
But by the same extension my son is also first to my partner. My son, and my partner\s offspring are the ones on the life raft, or the ones pulled up from the cliff or whatever happened.
I can understand other viewpoints. Two hundred years ago a smaller child would be burdensome to a woman without a husband. Maybe this says something about my relationship with my partner. But quite simply for me, there is no other choice.
On a very fundamental, practical level, kids come first on a regular basis, every single day. They have so many needs, and they are like little sponges for love and attention and knowledge.
On another very fundamental level, my spouse is the person I have chosen to spend the rest of my life with, share my deepest thoughts and fears with, my body and bed with, and create and grow these crazy little creatures with.
My marriage is stronger for how well we nurture our family together. Our kids are stronger, for how well we nurture our marriage, and our family as a whole, and how we model a healthy relationship.
I love them all to the best of my ability and depths.
When I was growing up, my mother impressed on us that the most important person in her life was my father and the kids came second. More to the point, when I got married, she respected that when I put my wife ahead of her. Had you known her, a very self-centered woman, that would surprise you, but she respected it. I impressed the same fact on my kids.
I don’t know if this is cause and effect, but there have been no divorces in my immediate family. This includes my parents, my brother and sister, me, and my three kids who have been married a total of 51 years (and next month I will have been married 51 years, but their total passed mine Last Dec. 30).
I love my kids and grandkids dearly, but my wife is #1.
