Difference between parental love and love

I promise not to bring up Josef in this thread.

 

The relationships we have with parents can go along way to create overall assumptions about interacting with other people. It's good you have a positive impression and quite natural that it sets a tone for your interactions with others. The difference with parental love and other love is that it is primarily formative in our lives while other love is more reactive to those formative impressions. They are an echo.

I remember sitting in the car at the bustop in 8th grade feeling the well rehearsed butterflies in my stomach on yet another morning. My mother looked over at me and said, "I can't get over how grown up you seem". I felt a little better and more in control. I've always felt responsibility and like it's my place to handle the difficulty. I always felt respected by my mother, and that affects my interactions with other people.

 

Barely talk to my dad now, but as a kid I worshipped him.. Now that you mention it, I tend to worship my boyfriends as well. I don't really understand the correlation, though.. Probably cuz your father is your first relationship with a man you subconsciously emulate aspects of it with other men.

 

in the broadest sense, we receive, give, and share parental love with our guardians from birth and feels for the most part like, if not resembles, unconditional love. in its most beautiful sense, it is a common joy likened to the virtue of friendship where both parent and child derive gratitude in the simple happiness of knowing that the other exists. it usually is loving without perceiving the other as someone to fulfill what oneself lacks, therefore it is not based on suffering/longing that so often influences passion.
romantic love has not been a given presence in our lives and thus seems to stem from our own choice to focus our love on someone we are interested in, though it is probably more complicated than that. perhaps it is a transference love of all the good qualities we've come to understand, then aspire to in a select someone. it begins rather conditionally, unlike parental love (many people have their romantic preferences, yet they love their parents regardless of their own preferences).
also, perhaps you place a high value on the protective quality in the father-daughter love. feeling protected, guided, and supported this way is a very good feeling and reciprocating those qualities in your own way also strengthens the bond. so there actually may be a difference in how you feel between interacting with your dad and other males, just that you're focusing on the same strengths evident in both?

 

I was mostly raised by my grandmother. She was not the type to openly express love and I think I've had that difficulty over the years. Recently I've learned to be more expressive in how I am feeling and while I doubt I'll ever be the lovey dovey type, I definitely want to be able to be openly expressive with whoever I love.

 

I actually find it a little sad when the signals cross between parental love and partner love. So many wrong things have happened to children in this generation, and I've heard of kids coming on to their teachers at a very young (very inappropriate) age, believing that this was how love should be expressed.

There should be a line between the two. The love we feel from our parents *should* feel comforting, safe, and protecting. The love we feel for a partner should be equal, exciting, sensual...and perhaps a little challenging. I think how we feel for our partners has to in some way feel differently from the love we feel for our parents. Otherwise we will treat our partners as our parents, and not as our equals. And that can just get creepy (thinks of Hugh Heffner and his bunny harem...).

 

Okay, you should have known better, but okay...

Josef Fritzl. He had some progressive ideas on parental relationships.

 

He gave her food and shelter for more than 42 years. For FREE!

That's love.

 

I agree fully with Arbygil, as usual!

I don't believe the lines should be blurred between different loves, but it's also very difficult to put the differences into words. I'll attempt it, but it'll probably be a bit obscure.


The love I have for my parents is completely different from my love for anyone else. The love I have for them is the love I hope my son has/will have for me. I love my parents, because I know that they love me totally, without conditions. They will love me no matter what I do and will love me until the day one of us, unfortunately, passes. I love my parents for their selflessness to give me the best upbringing their love and circumstances could allow. We aren't always easy to love, but our parents' (if they are good ones) love for us has always and will always endure. I have nothing but respect and pride for my parents and I hope to follow in their footsteps. No one will ever earn the same love from me that I hold for my parents - that's out of respect for my parents and b/c no one will ever be as self-sacrificing for me as they have been.


The love I have for my very close friends is a love that happened fairly immediately. When I met my two best friends, I felt something instantly - that they genuine. We think the world of and would do anything for each other, as long as we didn't have to sacrifice our own families. And we respect and understand that stipulation and would never ask that of one another.


The love I have for my husband is on a level all of it's own. He's the other half of me. He doesn't complete me - he makes me a better person by being himself and standing by me. I want nothing but the best for him and I will do whatever it takes to make him happy and for us to spend the rest of our lives together in happiness. He is the guardian of my heart and I of his. Each day we choose to be with each other and forsake all others. That in itself is special. Now that I am a wife and mother, there are only two people I would lay my life down for...my husband and my child.


My love for my son is something so different and special, that even my husband cannot understand it. The love a mother has for her child cannot be understood by anyone other than another momma. It can't be put into words. I would jump in front of a bullet, run into a burning building, anything to save my son without a thought. Any pain, physical or emotional, that my son experiences is also felt by me. If he's happy, I'm happy. If he cries, I cry on the inside...and sometimes the outside. The key to my happiness and satisfaction with life is my husband and son and any future children I may have.

 

Why did you make your post so small? I still read it, and I agree with you and Arbygil is well... There is a big difference in love between the relationships. And the difference is healthy.

It's unfortunate that when a person does not have a fully supportive and accepting relationship with a parent, that they search for these qualities in a mate, and try to please the mate as they would as a child to a parent. Because as was mentioned earlier, it does set an unequal footing between romantic partners. The thing is, once one recognizes this pattern, how does one break from it to have a relationship that is on equal footing?

 

hehe I wanted it to seem less wordy than it is. I say too much.

Fortunately, I cannot speak from experience when it comes to poor parenting, since my parents were mainly wonderful and very accepting - most of my problems stem from inherited mental illness & my peers. I think that maybe you have to find someone that can be more of a parental figure, first. You might be able to find this in your future in-laws, or if you are religious in a priest or clergy person. Maybe even an older friend. I don't know. I think that's quite a difficult situation. This is why I have such a problem with people that treat their kids poorly - they're so innocent and it fucks them up and can ruin their life if you are unsupportive, unaccepting, or whatever to them. Because of my feelings about that, I tend to want to be a mommy to people and give them love and acceptance where they didn't get it from their parents.

 

It is utilitarian in that parents dont reproduce with thier kids. (sometimes)

In each case the love is selfish but in different ways. Parents love thier kids for different reasons that a b/f - g/f would love each other.

 

Yes Pristine Girl, I think you should bring it up in therapy if it is a concern for you.

 

This is an interesting question. I won't define the differences because they have already been clearly defined.

But I will say that I'm not a fan of the recent trend in treating your lover like a child when something goes wrong.

I've seen and read about this several times. It seems like its acceptable to do this.