Fish-love

Came across this Fish-love term from a post shared by my sister, and I found it to be deeply intriguing:

Rabbi Twerski announced that the trouble with today's marriages is that we only have "fish love" between us and our spouses. What's fish love? Consider this: A man is diving into his fish dinner with great gusto, thoroughly enjoying his heaping portion of succulent fresh fish. Another gentleman is watching from a distance, fascinated by the expressions of great delight coming from the eater. As he passes by, he mentions to the gentleman, "It seems like you are really enjoying that fish dinner." The gentleman replies enthusiastically, "I love fish!" In response, the other man says: "If you love fish so much, why did you allow this fish to be taken from the ocean and killed, just for your consumption?"

Rabbi Twersky goes on to teach: "That man doesn't really love fish. He loves the way the fish makes him feel. He is really loving himself. And so it is with the love in our marriages and families. We declare that we "love" our spouses and our children. And yet, do we love our spouse and children for who they truly are, or only, for how good they make us feel?"

I realised that I may not really learn a thing or two about love, and I have been the always selfish person who just demand things from my partner. I always just care about how he makes me feel, and care quite less on how am I giving to this relationship as he will always be the one telling me that he has no expectation on me and just expects me to love him.

I remember I came across this saying also when I was in high school, which says something like, "Blissfulness comes from when you found someone who you are willing to give out everything.", and not so much about when you found someone who are willing to give you everything.

It totally changes and reminds me what is love should be, and gives me a paradigm shift on this love concept. I will have to love my partner another way. But I guess I am always the insecure one. I am always insecured of giving out too much and invested too much in the end get cheated or heartbroken because I was too much involved in it. I always wanted to protect my own feeling from getting hurt. I guess this is why I never open my heart entirely to love, and never able to feel the joy from loving someone.

I even sometimes quite jealous about someone who could cry over a heartbreak, because that person would have loved someone so deep, which I did not dare to do so - to love someone deeply. I will always let my brain to tell me I should get over this and that there is no true love in this world that we should cling on to. Guess I wasn't courageous enough to even "love".

XOXO,

MH