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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm the mom and I agree with your DH. So does the brilliant writer Ayelet Waldman. [/quote]

Yes, she points out the difference is that she loves her kids (and she has a bunch, like 4?), but she is IN love with her spouse.  I think this is healthy and best for a marriage and the kids.

[/quote]

No, she pointed out that she could more easily cope with the death of one of her children than that of her husband.  I can't relate to that at all, and I'm a very, very empathic person.  No one gets over the loss of a child.  [/quote]

Saying it like that minimizes how horrible it is to lose a spouse. I’m a woman and honestly I don’t know. Losing my husband would not feel as wrenching and like losing a limb. But it would leave me so alone in a way losing a child would not. I had typed out, “of course you’re right losing my child would be worse than losing my husband” and yet as I typed it I thought about losing him and wasn’t sure.

I again do not know what is gained by parsing out these differences though. Losing people is agonizing. I watched my mother lose a spouse and then a child, and it was not really that different. And it certainly didn’t seem helpful to try to figure out which was more agonizing. It didn’t feel good for me to think about what was more agonizing. I wonder if people like you have really experienced loss, to try to quantify it in some way that is “right” or “wrong” or “more” or “less” just seems divorced from the actual experience of this type of loss.

It will give you no comfort, if your spouse dies, to think that at least it wasn’t your child.[/quote]

There's actually research on grief and loss, macabre as it is to some.  And it's the death of a child that people never, never get over.  Some people are destroyed by the death of a spouse or parent, yes, but more people are able to (eventually) recover and move on in a way that's not possible when you lose a child.

The only reason I pointed it out vis a vis Ayelet Waldman is that people think she was wrongly attacked for saying she loved her spouse more than her kids, when it was more the death thing that most people found bizarre.  I mean, look at the PP who was casually said she'd have another kid if one died ("we can always have more kids!"  Really?  Always?).  That's... not how most people think about losing their kids.[/quote]

I feel like this research is important in the context of say, therapists figuring out how to work with people who have lost children. And yes, like...losing a child is like losing a limb. It will change you foundationally. But I am not sure, 'ability to recover' is the only measure of intensity and worth. Is a teenage love 'less' love than a 30 year marriage? In some ways yes, but in many ways no. It is just different. And what do you gain by ranking them? They are all experiences that we accumulate with love and relationships and loss.

I think that anyone who thinks they could replace a child who died by having another is either insane or a psychopath, but I also know people who have lost babies and who HAVE gone on to have more children and restart their lives. Of course not replacing the child that they lost, but their life goes on. I would also think anyone who thinks they can replace a dead spouse by simply remarrying sounds pretty insane and emotionless.

More than anything though, I genuinely don't understand why it matters. If you aren't in the small subset of people who think losing a husband or child is something that can be swept into the history of your life. And you aren't in the small subset of people who have to help a parent through the loss of a child (which is something you generally go through WITH your spouse). Then genuinely, why does it matter how someone privately views the people they love the most in the darkest hypothetical depths of their heart? Why would it be upsetting to know your husband can't imagine losing you? [/quote]

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