Is it possible to compare parental love and romantic love? Or are they completely different and can’t be compared like nuts and bananas?
Among numerous forms and types of love – parental, romantic, sibling, religious, pedagogical – are there any similarities?
Any love is a superpower.
It is able to reveal people’s talents and passions.
It gives strength and energy, heals, makes us smile, and adds confidence.
Love is controversial: it builds and destroys, it creates and kills.
When you lose love, you lose a part of yourself.
Parental love and romantic love may look like each other in many ways and even seem to be the same at first glance. However, they are different in their essence, expression, and duration.
The physical attraction you have towards your partner is not the only distinction between loving a child and loving a partner.
Let’s discuss the key differences between these two types of love, which are essential to understand in order to have healthy relationships with the world around us.
How Are Parental Love and Romantic Love Different?
– How would you describe parental love, and how would you say it is different from being in love with your partner?
– The answers vary from « Relationship-romantic love is work at times and has strings attached. Parental love is fierce, animalistic and pure» to «Love shared between child and parent is one of caring and nurturing, and the partner love is the same with an extra bonus of physical love – sex».
Here are some characteristics of a romantic love vs a parental love:
Parental love doesn’t require anything in return, always selfless, it starts at the DNA level, it is beyond all the principles and beliefs. Parents love takes care of the children, even if they do wrong, it strives to make children happy at any cost.
Romantic love is an acquired feeling that arises and develops over time. Usually, it is conditional, and the partners can stop loving each other one day because of life circumstances and fall in love with other people after a while. Romantic love is a choice.
How Are Romantic Love and Parental Love The Same?
Despite all the differences between these two types of love, both of them are sincere and intimate, both of them make us happy and alive.
When a child says Bday wishes for mom, the parent’s heart melts. So does a lover’s heart when they hear touching sweet words from their soulmate.
Romantic and parental love are similar in many ways:
- Enriching
- Motivating
- Showing empathy
- Showing appreciation
- Instinctive
- Providing a feeling of security
Moreover, parental love can change romantic love after having a child. Often, partners find themselves more deeply in love with their spouses after they create a new life together – another source of love.
«Having become new parents, we learned to love each other better, and in different ways than we used to do before our child’s birth – in order to keep our relationship afloat.»