Being the only child of a single parent with no extended family nearby gave me some pretty warped views on a lot of things.

One of those things was the concept of love.  Since the only relationship I had growing up was my mom, I came to believe that love was a finite thing.  I.e. If I felt close to others, I would feel less-close to my mom.

Of course, that went out the window the minute I fell in love. My first true love was a girl I met at the end of high school. We were together for a few years until my senior year of college.  I broke up with her for reasons I won't go into here. But while I obviously did not want to be with her anymore, I found that my feelings for her remained quite strong. 

Much of this would be lost to me now except that I kept a journal during all those years. So I most definitely know that during that time, I was convinced that I was damaged goods. That because I still had lingering deep felt feeligns for this woman I'd broken up with, I would never be able to experience a deep love again with someone else.

Which, like before, went out the window when I met the woman who would become my wife.  My feelings for her dwarf any kind of intimacy I had ever felt before.  My wife became my soul mate. The one person who truly understands me.  And all this happened without diminishing or eliminating the feelings I've felt for others in various ways (whether that be romantic love I had for my ex-girlfriend or the love a son and his parent).

Not being the brightest bulb in the cabinet, when my first son was born, I experienced a whole different kind of love. I have no siblings so there's nothing even remotely similar to what I felt towards my new born son. The love a father has for his son.  So the dim bulb part comes into initially objecting to the idea of having a second child.  I was "all loved out".  But my wife, working her wiles on me (She's constantly making me say "These aren't the droids you're looking for"), gave birth to our second son and my love for him is no less than the love of our first son.  But it is a quite different even if it's in teh same category.

I've also felt strong feelings for others that I cannot classify since I've got such piss-poor experience in these matters.  For instance, my feelings for my sister in law are in that "love" range but they are different than what I've felt for others.  If I had siblings I imagine that is probably what it would be.  Who knows, since we can't imagine things we never had.

And I have strong feelings for other people too in various ways. And what I've come to learn, is that love doesn't have some maximum capacity.  Each relationship is different in its own way.  And that relationship doesn't diminish the others you have.