Fixing Your Water - 018 Desire To Love & Be Loved

Water-of-Fire-of-Water: The Desire To Seek A Reciprocal Relationship

Desires that stem from water-of-fire-of-water in the soul, as mentioned in the previous chapter, is the desire of a person for love – to love, and to be loved.

Human nature is that we want to love others, and we also want to be loved in return. This can be channeled towards holiness when it is used to love Hashem, to love the Torah, and to love Eretz Yisrael. It is used for evil when a person desires a forbidden kind of relationship, which stems from the nefesh habehaimis (the baser, animalistic level of the soul).

We all have this deep desire to love and be loved. How it manifests is different with each person, but all people want to love and be loved; there is no person who does not want to be loved.

A child always wants to be loved. When a person grows up, often his desire to be loved becomes hidden inside him. Sometimes it is because a person is not the emotional type, and sometimes it is because the person became hurt by a loved one, which caused him to become hardened; the person will then lose his desire to be loved. Either way, his desire to be loved is still there, it has just become hidden.

It appears that there are some people who do not have any love in their life – that’s how it seems. But these people really do want love; it is just that their desire for love has become very buried deep inside themselves. These people might even be so hardened to the point that they deny their own emotions, and they might even think that the power to love doesn’t exist in them. But the truth is, they really do have the power to love, and it is just very covered over by many layers.

If someone doesn’t feel the need to love and be loved, it must be that his feelings are very covered over, and he needs to learn how to remove the layers covering him. He needs to find some areas in his life where there is love present, because they do exist; and he needs to extend those areas.

However, right now we will not discuss how to do this, because generally, such people are very emotionally hardened, and they need to first work on opening their emotions in the first place[1]. First one has to open his emotions, and then he can reveal love in his life. Usually someone whose emotions are more revealed in his life will also have some revelation of love in his life.

A large amount of people identify with the desire to love and to be loved. For example, we naturally want children, not just because it’s a mitzvah to have children, but because there is a natural desire in our soul to have children so that we can have someone to love. This is a deep nature in every soul. People will spend lots of money to enable themselves to have a child. It is all because there is a very deep need in the soul to have someone whom we can express our love to.

But, people want to love someone who will reciprocate. It is written in Mishlei, “Just as water reflects a face to a face, so does the heart of man reflect one to another.” People are not prepared to only love and have a ‘one-way street’ in their relationships; we want to be loved in return, for all the love we are putting in.

There are others, though, who take the other side of coin, and they only want to be loved, but they do not express a desire to bestow love upon another. This kind of person, even if he is loved by Reuven, will still want Shimon to love him. This kind of nature comes from a lower place in the soul [the nefesh habehaimis].

So there is one kind of person who wants to love and be loved, and this is coming from a healthy place in the soul. This is human nature, and it is healthy, as long as it is used properly. But another kind of person will want to be loved, but he doesn’t wish to have someone whom he can love. This is unhealthy.

Children are immature, and therefore they will want to be loved, but they don’t know how to give love back; yet, even a child will express love to his parents, although he isn’t mature yet. When a child gets older, he will usually express love to his parents. But when a fully grown person suffers from a lot of katnus (immaturity) in his soul, he will only want to be loved, and he doesn’t have a desire to love someone. He wants to be loved - even if it is by a person whom he doesn’t love. He will want to be loved by someone, but it doesn’t have to be someone whom he will love back; as long as he feels that he has received love, he feels fine, and he does not feel a desire to love the person back.

We can view this as a lack of gratitude to the one who loves him – he doesn’t give back in return, yet he still wants to be loved. This is the unhealthy nature that can exist in a person: he wants to be loved, but he doesn’t want to give any love back. The healthy kind of love is when one desires to give love back to the person whom he feels loved by.

Hashem created in us a nature that we want to love, as well as to feel loved. However, if you take a look at the world, how many people enjoy a reciprocal relationship? It is rare. The world today is immersed in pursing their own gratification, and there are a few people who search for true love. What we see mostly today are people who pursue desire, not love. We can see some sparks of love every here and there, but it pales in comparison to how much desire is taking place.

But deep in our soul, our soul wants real love; our soul wants to find real love. People get married, some later in life and some earlier, and come to the conclusion that there is very little love to be found in their life. Most people come to this frustrating conclusion and give up on love.

For example, the average couple gets married and thinks they “found each other”, and after some time, when they have gone through much frustration with each other, they give up. As they have children and raise them, they sort of put off their wishes as they take care of the children, hoping that things will work out on their own and that it will all work out, that the love will form between them on its own.

Lo and behold, the children get older and don’t need their parents anymore to take care of them, and the couple is back to where they started, seeing that the situation hasn’t gotten any better since when they were newlyweds; the matter was merely on hold until now. They are back to their original disappointment, and many times they are full of resentment at each other. They might receive their love from a particular favorite child and get consoled from this, or they might imagine that all of their children love them and that is where they draw their comfort from.

Often, there is some love they are indeed receiving from their children, but it pales in comparison to how much they need to love and be loved.

In Search of Love

There are two different possible results from this.

Either a person despairs from love – both from finding it, and from getting it. Or, the person will become so desperate for love that he will search endlessly for it.

This kind of person (in the second outcome) endures terrible inner suffering. In the home, his love will depend on whatever situation he has been given by from Hashem; the amount of love he receives will depend on his personality, his spouse, and all of the family members. But when a person searches all the time to love and be loved, it will envelope his entire life.

In his home, he will always wish to love and be loved, but it will go further than his home. In shul, in the beis midrash or kolel, in the apartment building with his neighbors - he will always search to love and be loved. Wherever he goes, he wants to see loving connections between people, or else he is turned off. He wants to always see love in the world, in whatever situation he is in.

These kinds of people will often make meetings in their home just so they can see their old friends again. If they can’t do that, they will seek connection in their chavrusa, always agonizing and wondering if he has a close relationship with his chavrusa or not….

Sometimes, he is indeed successful in forming connections with others. But at a certain point in his life, he might realize that he made a mistake about certain people he became friends with. It’s all a question of time before he realizes that he feels betrayed by others, and in general, he feels that others aren’t reciprocating. He goes through a constant anxiety with this.

Summary Of The Three Kinds of People

So we have explained thus far three kinds of people.

Some people are simply emotionally hardened, and there are a number of people like this. It is not a large percentage, but it is not a small percentage of people either. These might be people who are working people, or intellectual people, or even people who spend the entire day immersed in learning, but their emotions are never accessed, because they have become hardened somehow. Their emotions are hidden from them, and they will need to work to bring them outward.

Of course, every person expresses some emotions sometimes, but for the most part, these kinds of people do not have much emotion going on in their life; their hearts are not alive in what they encounter.

Another group of people have emotion revealed in their life, but they feel disappointed in people, because they aren’t finding people to deeply connect with. They give up on their relationships with people. There are a small percentage of people like this.

A third group of people are those who do not give up on love. They keep searching for love, because they are desperate for it; they will not give up. But they suffer tremendously, because they are always searching for love no matter how much they are met with disappointments in their relationships, and their friendships keep changing; there’s always a new best friend, until the next time the best friend does something to him that turns him off and he finds a new best friend.  He gets hurt by one previous best friend, then he finds another best friend, again and again, and he keeps getting wounded inside from all of this.  

We have been brief about this kind of problem here, but it is describing an enormous amount of internal suffering that takes place on this world. If you know anyone like this, you should know that his entire life is full of suffering.

These are the three groups of people which we generally find in the world.

The “Private” Aspect Of The Soul

Now we will talk about an additional, deeper point.

We all seek companionship (Dovid and Yehonasan had the most perfected friendship in the world). People seek love that is dependent on something.

There is depth upon depth to love. Until a certain point a person can love another, but when it comes to a certain point, a person cannot love others beyond that point.

To illustrate, there are areas in which friends can’t be involved in together, either due to their differing personalities or simply because of circumstances. All friends have some companionship with each other; each person gets different things with each other. From one person you get one thing, from another you can learn knowledge in Torah from, etc. Each of your friends gives you something else. But there is one part of yourself which does not include anyone else – it is your “private” aspect, and no one can be included in it.

Most people do not identify this part in themselves, so they don’t have a problem including others in every aspect of their life. But when a person understands himself well, he is aware that there is a part in himself which is “private”, that he doesn’t want to include others in.

If he would try to include others in that part of himself, it’s like the suffering of Iyov – why? Because the needs of this “private” aspect in the self really cannot be filled by others. It is entirely about being alone.

For example, it can happen with a couple in which one of the spouses is very emotional and wants that the other spouse be included very much in his\her life, and he\she feels that the other spouse really has no such interest. The emotional spouse might accuse the other of being uncaring, while the truth is that the other spouse really is paying attention to what’s going in the other’s life, and it is simply because the other spouse is simply not able to give of his heart past a certain point. He really is giving all his heart, as much as he can, but he can only include the other spouse in his life up to a certain point.

This can be for either one of two reasons. Either it can be because beyond a certain point, a person doesn’t recognize himself, and therefore he cannot extend that part of himself to others. Every person has a point in which he can’t include others in, and with each person this is different. Some people cannot give of their heart to the other because they don’t recognize themselves well; and in others, it is simply because there is a part of us which cannot be included with others. Chazal say that “each person is created individual”, because each person has a private aspect which cannot include others.

This is not a coincidence that Hashem made us this way. We have two layers in us – a part in us which connects to others, which we need, and a deeper part in ourselves, which is “private”, reserved, alone. Both parts of our personality are necessary. When one understands this well, he knows how to live alone in himself, as well as to live with others and get along with others.

When a person doesn’t recognize his “private” aspect, he will always feel that others need to be included in his life. He will be met with frustration, because he will see that it is simply impossible to always include others in all aspects of his life. What will happen to him? Either he will become hardened inside from all of this frustration, or, he will keep searching for more and more deep friendships - and he will never be satisfied.

But when a person realizes that the soul is multi-faceted, he is aware of the two parts in himself. The word “face” in Hebrew is panim, from the word pnim (inside), because if you only give a happy panim toward others and you have no pnim developed in yourself, it is not panim. But if one has developed his own pnim (internal world) inside himself and he also has panim to others, this is the meaning of giving he’aras panim (an illuminating countenance to others). It means to shine your pnim outward.

There are people who always smile at others, and they are not in touch with their pnim; it’s better than nothing, and they will get reward, but it is not he’aras panim; (it is he’aras chutz). Only when one has a pnim is it called he’aras panim; he has a part in himself which is being turned outward.

Developing The Power of “Alone” In The Soul

This is the deep way to live properly. With this perspective, every time a person goes through disappointment from others, he has a place of “alone” that he can return to in himself, instead of falling to despair.[2] He tries to be included with others, and when he sees that sometimes he can’t, he has a place to return to in himself which is private and doesn’t need others. It is painful when others aren’t included in our life, but it doesn’t have to break you, because it is only one part of yourself; when it happens, you can return to the private aspect in your soul, and then you will be able to survive from there.

When one is in touch with his private aspect and he nurtures it well (and the intention here is not to despair from relationships, or to become a cold person who becomes self-absorbed), he lives a life of “rotzoh v’shov” (to “run and retreat”). Sometimes he is involved with others, and sometimes he turns inward into himself, in a cycle, back and forth.

So we must be aware of these two parts in ourselves and keep cycling between them, back and forth, all the time. Our relationships with others are necessary, and indeed, Hashem created us to unify with each other. But that is only one part of ourselves.

What will happen if one truly connects with others all the time and he has not yet developed his private aspect? He experiences others’ ups and downs, physical and spiritual, and this will also take a lot of emotional and mental strength from him; (this requires its own discussion in how to deal with). There are people who are so caring for others that they truly suffer from others’ problems.

When the average person is told of another’s difficulty, he will usually just nod his head and maybe feel him a little, but he doesn’t really experience the other. But a very caring person will actually experience the other’s pain, and he might get so pained by what he hears that he falls down together with his friend, because he has no place inside himself where he can run to for relief; he has no “alone.” It’s very dangerous to have deep connections with others when a person hasn’t yet developed his power to be alone inside himself.

The true way to live is to develop both abilities: to be able to turn outwards to others and be involved with them, but at the same time, to be able to enter inward and live alone in themselves.

So on one hand, a person has to always be in touch with his emotions (and if a person is too emotional, he needs to develop his intellect more so that he can learn how to detach from his emotions sometimes, but we are not dealing with this now), but at the same time, one must be balanced. If a person is deeply feeling and he doesn’t have a place of “alone” in himself, he might go crazy from all that he hears going on in the world. With proper frame of mind, he can learn how to be balanced even with all his powerful emotions, to feel others yet also return to his alone.

The amount of how much he needs to connect is different with each person, but the point is, he will know how to deal with two worlds at once. The outer part of himself is involved with others, with This World, and the inner part of himself is his place of alone, which reflects the Next World.

This is the key to enduring disappointments with regards to others. When one gets hurt from others, he can return to his place of alone, and be calmed. This is a fundamental concept in life, and it stems from knowing how to use the element of water-of-fire-of-water in the soul: the need to love, and the need to be loved.

The Point of Unconditional Love

This is a broad discussion, and we are only briefing it.

Here is a following deeper point: We should also understand that there is a deeper part of our soul which can love yet not have to feel loved in return.

Earlier, we spoke about the part in the soul which wants to be loved yet not give back love in return, and this is a lower part in the soul which is unfortunately dominant in today’s world, in which so many people want to be loved but they don’t feel a need to give love back. The healthy part of the soul is the part in our soul, which softer people are very in touch with, is the part in us which wants to love and be loved, to enjoy a reciprocal relationship. We have dwelled on explaining this part of the soul, and how to use it properly and give it balance.

But there is a deeper part of our soul which loves others and doesn’t expect to be loved back. It is even deeper than the love a father has for his child.

A father loves his child and wants to be loved back, and in addition, there is not always a reciprocal relationship between a father and a child, because the father’s love for the child is certainly greater than the child’s love for the child. The Torah discusses a father who comes to rob his son’s home; we do not suspect that the father will kill his child, because the father always loves his child, even if he would steal money from him. But the child might kill his father. So the father-son relationship is never a completely reciprocal relationship.

But there is a part in the soul that wants to love, yet it does not expect to be loved back.  A person who is very in touch with this part of the soul knows how to transcend his private existence and unify himself with the collective essence of the Jewish people.

This is referred to in the language of our Sages as “Shechinah” or “Kneses Yisrael”, when there is a collective kind of love that is not based on individual kinds of love. It is a general love towards the entire Klal Yisrael, and it emanates from a higher part in the soul, not from the part in ourselves which wants “love and to be loved”.

(On a more subtle note, in deeper language, one has to be able to leave the “root” and love even the “branches”; [he must first begin with the general love towards Klal Yisrael and after he has developed that power, he must descend from that level and try to love each member of Klal Yisrael individually.] But the higher kind of love is the part of the soul that feels a need to love yet to not expect to be loved back in return. This is a very pure level of Ahavas Yisrael.

Summary of The Three Different Kinds of Love

To summarize thus far, the lowest kind of love is when a person wants to be loved yet he doesn’t want someone to give love to. This stems from the nefesh habehaimis. The basic and healthy kind of love is when one wants to love and be loved. The higher kind of love is the need to love without expecting to be loved back. The deeper understanding of it is that it is not just a desire to love; it comes from the love of the soul towards all people.

Unconditional Love Is Present In Our Gedolim (and Parents)

This deep part of the soul (to love yet not expect to be loved back) is the part in the soul which the Gedolim accessed in themselves; the Gedolim where all our faithful shepherds that led their flock, which was us, always guiding us no matter what we did to them. And a father as well knows of this kind of love towards his love, that even after his child hurts him, he continues to lead his child, because he knows how to love yet not expect love in return.

If a leader\father needs others to love him in return, he will only get hurt by the people they are involved with; unfortunately, most people are not that grateful to what is done for them, and if they feel that the one who is leading them needs love in return, they will not feel that motivated to give any love back.

This is because most of the time, people don’t recognize at all the good that was done for them; or, they are simply ungrateful, so they end up ‘repaying good with evil’, as we see from people who hurt those who try to help them. An ungrateful person will hurt someone who tries to help him if he’s not getting the help he wanted, and he will even have feelings of resentment towards him, which he doesn’t even have towards someone who never tried to help him at all.

The Need To Be Loved Cannot Ever Be Denied

Even if a person has reached selflessness, though, it is still impossible for a person to suffocate his need to be loved. Although the deep part of the soul is prepared to give love without getting back love, the outer part of the soul wants to be loved, and it is impossible to deny its needs. But, those needs cannot be sustained through This World.

This is a fundamental mentality that a Jew needs to live with: There is no way for a person to receive all his love from anyone on This World! There is no perfect love to be found on this world, because there is no one on this world who has completely reached the depth of his soul.

Most of the time we can’t receive love from others, simply because we live in a cold world, and even amongst our close surroundings, we cannot get complete love from them. There are a few people on this world who can provide love to people, but even the love that is being offered is not deep enough to keep us sustained; it doesn’t emanate from a deep place in others’ souls. Therefore, we are never able to be completely loved by anyone on this world, because there is no one who can give it to us!

The more sensitive a person is - or the more in touch he is with his Avodas Hashem - he can feel a giant void in himself, always feeling alone on this world. It is really because a person does not have a truly deep connection with another; the part in our soul which wants to be loved is not getting its needs.

Most people don’t feel this way; the only ones who feel it are either people who are very sensitive, or people who work very hard in their Avodas Hashem and they have entered very deep into themselves, so they feel this part of the soul. There are very few people on the world, though, who are like this.

It is impossible for a person to get his love completely from anyone on this world. It can happen that a person imagines that another loves him as deeply as he wants to be loved, and that is how he calms himself. The person will get hurt by that friend, then find a new friend whom he can get his imaginary love, and then repeat the vicious cycle, again, again, and again.

As an example, if a person is on his second marriage, he might claim that his wounds from the previous marriage have healed, and that now he is getting all the love he needed. But the truth is that it’s impossible for a person to receive his love completely from any situation on this world. There’s no such thing.

Where Will We Get Our Love From?

So where are we to receive complete love from?

This is the depth of Ahavas Hashem: to love Hashem, and to be loved by Hashem. One who wants to find absolute love will not get it on this world, and he will only get it from Hashem. This is the depth of the power in the soul to love Hashem.

Without uncovering the need for this, a person can still love Hashem, but it won’t be complete. The complete level of Ahavas Hashem is that a person reaches a place in his soul in which he realizes that no one on this world can completely love him, and that only Hashem can truly love him. There is no other option.

The more sensitive and feeling a person is - the more a person enters the depth of Avodas Hashem with the more he is in touch with his soul - he identifies this part of the soul: the need to love and be loved. That need either results in causing him to suffer terribly on this world, because of the horrible loneliness he feels - or, it can cause him to go in the other direction: to reach the depth of love for Hashem, and to feel loved back by Him.

In that deep place in the soul, one can be bound up with Hashem in love, and he can receive a love which is not found on this world from any person. When a person reaches this place in himself, he reaches the total bond with Hashem.

The more a person enters inward into his soul, the more he can feel Hashem’s love for him, and he should then express his love back to Hashem, more and more, which connects the soul deeper and deeper into the love of Hashem for him. It is there that a person can truly get his need to be loved. It is written, “Much water cannot extinguish the love” – the endless kind of love comes from Hashem, and it is the only source we have for receiving complete love.

If a person has any doubts about this, the only love he knows of will be in small amounts, not enough to really sustain his needs. He won’t receive all the love he needs from others, and even more so, even his own love for others won’t be complete.

The View of Modern Therapy Vs. The View of The Holy Torah

There is no place for trying to denying the need in a person to feel loved.

Often, when a person gets older and matures, he discovers his need to be loved, and when he gets hurt by others, he will develop a survival tactic by denying his need to feel loved, so that he can avoid the pain of getting hurt by others. He might go to a therapist who will advise him that he doesn’t have to feel loved by others and just take his mind off it, such as by getting busy with his private goals, etc…

But the way of the Torah is to acknowledge the need to be loved, and that there is no place for denying our need to feel loved by others.

Sometimes, we do have to know how to detach, when the situation calls for it. But this cannot become a general mentality to have in life. Generally speaking, we need to awaken our need to be loved, and we always need to be in touch with it and satisfy it.

Just like a child always wants to be loved, so do all of us retain this inner child that always wants to be loved, no matter how old a person is. You always need love – right now, this moment! It should never be denied. You just need to know how to get it in the right way.

In Conclusion

To summarize: The need to be loved, without needing someone whom we can love back, is a negative trait that stems from the nefesh habehaimis, and this problem, if it is manifest, must be fixed.

The need to love and be loved in return, is a healthy need. If a person merits it, he might get his love from certain people on this world who can give it to him. Most people, though, do not merit this. But there are indeed some people who do find love on this world. But even such a person, who feels loved on this world, also needs to understand, that only part of his love can be gotten from this world.

Why? It is because each person, at some point in his life, needs to develop the power of “alone” in his soul, a part of himself which is private and does not need others.

This is not to be seen as hardening oneself, but rather as a healthy kind of emotional detachment that is necessary sometimes. One can return to that private place in himself whenever there is need for his emotional health, or whenever he gets hurt by other, so that he can have a place of inner serenity in himself which he can return to at times and draw strength from.

But there is a deeper part in the soul which can love and not have to be loved in return. This is a person who has the trait of leadership, and all of the Gedolim reached this power. The leaders of our people, throughout all the generations, never expected anything in return for all that they gave to us.

Finally, a person needs to be aware that there is always a part in us which wants to be loved, even if one has reached selflessness; and that this need cannot be received from anyone on this world. One should awaken this part of himself to be loved and realize that he can only get it from Hashem. It should not be suffocated (except at certain times when it is necessary to detach). Generally speaking, one needs to feel loved, and he should awaken his need to love Hashem and be loved by Him.

If a person merits it – through purifying himself, through tefillah, and though truly searching for Hashem – he will reach the love of Hashem, which is contained deep within the Jew’s soul, and then a person will feel the love of Hashem for himself and his love for Hashem in return.

In this way, one can enjoy a life of constant love. Just as we can always feel the warmth of the sun on our body, so can a person always feel the warmth on his soul from the love of Hashem - that he can feel all the time, when he has penetrated to that place in himself.

These matters are broad, and we have been brief here, so as not to digress too much from the current topic, in which we are learning about how to fix the trait of desires. We have described here the deep desire of the soul to love and be loved; may Hashem help us that these words be properly pursued and in their proper guidelines, working his way upwards [in order of the steps that was presented here][3].