Dear Friend,
Recently, I watched a short video excerpt from the late Rabbi Abraham Twerski in which he describes what he calls “fish love.” A young man is asked why he is eating fish for dinner. He says it’s because he loves fish. The rabbi disagrees, asserting that he does not love the fish. If he loved the fish, he would not have taken it from the water, killed it, and boiled it. You don’t really love the fish, he says. You love yourself, and you’ve taken everything from the fish in order to gratify yourself.
So much of what we call “love” in our culture is, if we’re honest, fish love.
We say, “I love my spouse,” or “I love my kids,” or “I love my church,” but underneath it can mean, I love how they make me feel, how they meet my needs, how they keep me from being lonely, how they tell me I’m a good person. When that feeling fades, or their behavior changes, or our needs aren’t met the way they used to be, we feel betrayed—as though love has disappeared. That is because fish love is finally nothing more than a vehicle for our own gratification.
Real love isn’t measured by what we take but what we give. The rabbi quotes a line that has stayed with me like a splinter in the soul: “You don’t give to those you love; you love those to whom you give.” The more of yourself you invest in the well-being of another person, the more your heart is bound up with theirs.
That’s not how our culture talks about love. Our world sells us love as a mutual admiration society with good chemistry and fair terms. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. You meet my emotional and physical needs, I meet yours. The trouble comes when “love” is mainly about how the other person functions for me. My spouse becomes a pain-relief system. My child becomes a source of pride. My friend becomes an emotional support animal. My church becomes a spiritual vending machine dispensing acceptance, kindness, and belonging.
When they stop performing those functions, we don’t just feel disappointed; we feel cheated.
Scripture, of course, has been saying this in another key for a long time. The love that Jesus shows—and the love He commands—is cruciform: shaped like a cross, not like a contract. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13, ESV). That’s not romance-language; that’s sacrifice-language. It is love measured in lost rights, surrendered preferences, and costly faithfulness.
Here is the hard and beautiful truth: sacrificial love is not a feeling you wait to have; it is a choice you make in the fear of God and in the hope of the resurrection. It is the willingness, for Christ’s sake, to say, “I will seek your good even when my own good is not being perfectly served.” It is the courage to ask, “What can I give?” before, “What am I getting?” It is the stubborn resolve to keep treating the other person as someone made in the image of God, even when they are not behaving like it.
That does not mean you become a doormat, or deny abuse, or pretend sin isn’t sin. Sometimes sacrificial love looks like telling the truth that nobody wants to hear. Sometimes it looks like boundaries and consequences. Sometimes it looks like seeing a counselor, involving your church, or removing yourself from danger. Jesus did not confuse love with passivity; He confronted, He rebuked, He overturned tables. Scripture’s picture of love includes discipline, truth-telling, and sober wisdom.
What sacrificial love never does is turn the other person into a thing. It never makes them a fish on a plate: something consumed for my comfort and discarded when I’m done.
Which brings us to your marriage—or to the relationship that came to your mind as you started reading this.
“Why should I keep giving when they’re not?”
“Doesn’t love mean I should feel good? I don’t feel so good.”
“If they really loved me, I wouldn’t have to sacrifice this much.”
Underneath those questions are often deeper wounds: betrayal, neglect, abuse, chronic disappointment, fear that you do not matter. I will never minimize those, and the story you carry might make some people realize their own pain has not cut as deep as it might have.
If you’re in a season where your marriage—or your other primary relationships—feel more like a battlefield than a blessing, I’d invite you to sit quietly with two questions that flow out of the kind rabbi’s little story and the larger story of the gospel.
First: Where, in this relationship, have I slipped into fish love?
This is a blunt question, but a necessary one. Have I mainly loved the way my spouse stabilizes me, or admires me, or takes care of me? Have I loved the way my children make me feel needed, or how my church makes me feel respected? If I imagine those comforts being taken away, does my love collapse, or does it endure because I actually want their good more than I want my own?
Second: What would sacrificial love look like here, today, in one concrete, small act?
Not a grand gesture, not a dramatic vow—just one act: a listening ear offered without planning my reply while you’re still talking; a confession of my own sin that I’ve been avoiding; a prayer for the other’s good spoken out loud; a practical, ordinary kindness done without demanding recognition or reciprocation.
You and I will not love perfectly. Only One has ever done that. “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10, ESV). Before He asks anything of us, God moves toward us in a love that is not fish love. He does not take from us to gratify Himself; He gives Himself for us, and then calls us to walk in His steps.
Paul says it this way: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, ESV). That means He did not wait for us to be worthy, pleasant, or easy to live with. He loved first. He loved at great cost. He loved knowing that we would be slow learners and quick forgetters.
That is the love that stands behind your faltering attempts to love the people closest to you. As it takes root in you, you will find yourself learning, little by little, to love because He first loved you.
I wonder what might happen if, instead of asking only, “How do I fix this relationship?” you began to ask, “Lord, how are You inviting me to learn Your kind of love here?” When you ask that question, you’re no longer alone with your fish love and your fear. You are standing in the classroom of grace, with a Teacher who does not shame you, but patiently forms you.
If you’d like to keep thinking and praying about this with me, here are a few gentle questions you might bring to the Lord:
When I say “I love” this person, am I mostly thinking of what I receive from them, or what I am willing to give for their good?
Where, in my marriage or closest relationships, have I begun to treat the other like a source of comfort or validation rather than a soul to be served in Christ’s name?
Is there a place where genuine love—patient, kind, truthful, enduring—would lead me to set a boundary, tell a hard truth, or seek help, rather than simply absorb more hurt?
(You might sit with 1 John 4:7–10 and 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 as you consider this.)What is one small, specific act of self-giving love I can offer this week—something concrete and doable—that would be an echo of Christ’s love for me, whether or not it is noticed or returned? (Perhaps especially if it is neither noticed nor returned)
Am I willing to ask the Lord not only to change them, but first to show me where fish love lives in my own heart, and to gently teach me a different way?
If one of these questions touches something tender in you, I would be honored to hear from you. You’re welcome to leave a comment on this letter if you’d like your thoughts to be seen by others, or if you prefer something more private, you can send me a direct message through Substack. I read these notes quietly and prayerfully, and I will respond as I am able—not as a therapist or a fixer, but as a fellow pilgrim and pastor who has had to learn, the hard way, that Christ’s love is sufficient when my own love falls all too short.
You don’t have to sort this out alone.
You may feel like your marriage is frayed, or your family is weary, or your heart is bone-tired. The One who laid down His life for His friends does not wait for perfect homes before He walks through the door. He comes into ordinary kitchens and living rooms, into tense conversations and long silences, with a love that has already gone to the cross and already walked out of the tomb.
He has loved you with more than fish love—He has given Himself for you at the cross and given His Spirit to you now. He is able to teach you, day by day, how to love as you have been loved. And as you give yourself away in His name, you may find, in ways you did not expect, that your heart is being bound up with theirs—and with His.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Neal Letteney <><
The Pastor’s Hearth
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Beautifully written, Neal. This is a challenging exhortation for us all. I don't think I can forget this picture of fish love.