And it’s true. I do love my child more than he could possibly love me. In fact I love him more than anyone I have ever loved before and in a completely different way. It’s an emotion and a feeling so strong that the word “love” doesn’t really do it justice.
Yet every time I tell him that I love him more than anyone else on earth he always asks, without fail, “what about daddy?”
Maybe he’s been chatting with the Urban/Kidman children. Country music star Keith Urban (who we have been, “rediscovering” since he appeared on The Voice) recently spoke to the Australian Women’s Weekly about the love he has for his wife Nicole Kidman and their kids.
“We’re very, very tight as a family unit and the children are our life, but I know the order of my love. It’s my wife and then my daughters. I just think it’s really important for the kids.”
“There are too many parents who start to lose the plot a little and start to give all their love to the kids, and then the partner starts to go without. And then everybody loses. As a kid, all I needed to know was that my parents were solid. Kids shouldn’t feel like they are being favoured. It’s a dangerous place.”
And I so get it from the children’s perspective. I know that my own child needs to know how much I love his father. It makes him feel safe. Maybe I understand this even more having dealt with the divorce of my own parents at age 10.
There was no doubt my parents no longer loved each other when I was a child, but all I really wanted was that they both love me. Selfish? Maybe. Immature? Probably. Their loving me was going to keep me safe when they no longer had each other.
Keith Urban is not the first person to publicly declare his love for his partner over his love for his children. Ayelet Waldman caused a public outcry in 2005 when she wrote an essay for The New York Times. Talking about the birth of her daughter she wrote:
She looked like a newborn baby, red and scrawny, blotchy faced and mewling. I don’t remember what I said to my husband. Actually I remember very little of my Percocet- and Vicodin-fogged first few days of motherhood except for someone calling and squealing, “Aren’t you just completely in love?” And of course I was. Just not with my baby.
I do love her. But I’m not in love with her. Nor with her two brothers or sister. Yes, I have four children. Four children with whom I spend a good part of every day: bathing them, combing their hair, sitting with them while they do their homework, holding them while they weep their tragic tears. But I’m not in love with any of them. I am in love with my husband.
It is his face that inspires in me paroxysms of infatuated devotion. If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother. I love my husband more than I love my children.
It was something seldom said. Something that seemed almost taboo. Imagine saying that you love your partner more than you love your child? Even if it’s true. And why do we as a society find that so hard to hear?
Extra: It's Not You, Here's Why Clothes Don't Fit Properly
The Quicky
Top Comments
I love my children way more than I love my husband and I feel no guilt over this. My mother in law dissolved my respect for him prior to my twins birth which blew me away. She still holds the apron strings. I wish we were in love instead of just staying together for the children but he is an awesome loving kind dad and I would never leave him as it would break all of our hearts. Our children come first and their happiness is both of our priorities. We do not argue in front of them or interfere with each others decisions. It would be gold if one day we could find help and time to fall in love again. Divorce is selfish and not an option. I do however long for companionship, laughter and love from a partner instead of just from my children but, I would never trust another man with my children and am prepared to continue as I do with my loveless marriage.
When I was last to leave the house and my home town for university, my mother sobbed and sobbed for weeks, asking me if she could come with me as she didnt want to be left with my father. I resented her so much for the guilt I carried for 'abondoning' her and it made me realise just how unhappy they were, mainly b/c the kids distracted them from each other.
In the end, they spent another 25 years 'alone' miserable and feeling 'neglected' by their children. I wished they either were in love to be happy to spend time together and were each others priorities or had separated to have found happiness somewhere with someone, anyone, and not relied on their children to meet that insatiable need.
Now as a parent, I try to focus on my partner first, not at the expense of our gorgoeous children, but for us as a couple, a parenting team, and as a family. And my kids love it when we're happy and affectionate so partner-love certainly feeds down to all for the good of all.