The Pisces LoverYou might expect that all the qualities we have mentioned about Pisces would be in abundant display in his love-life, for Pisces is usually in love. If not with a human being, then with a cause, or with God, but he is usually in love. It is in his nature to give, and since this is a water sign, a sign of feeling, it is impossible for Pisces to conceive of a life alone - unless it is a kind of aloneness which the monk or the nun elects in exchange for union of a different kind.You may see the sensitivity, the gentleness, the tendency to devotedness in abundance. You may also see the overcompensation of many Pisceans to their own need for people, exhibited in coolness and a deliberately forced detachment. You may see the Piscean tendency always to put the other person's wishes first, and to blossom under any show of affection or tenderness. Or you may see the shadow side take over, where the partner must always be in the position of the servant catering to the lord's whims. Either way, the root is the same. If Pisces can trust, he will give everything. Not necessarily tomorrow, or next year. Fidelity and structure are not part of his nature. But today, now, in this moment. And if you string together a long string of moments, you may discover that it's been a lifetime.One of the more disturbing qualities about Pisces is that he is so ready to enter into a relationship with just about anybody on a certain superficial level that people misunderstand his motives. He's not really coming on; he's listening with sympathy. He's also easily seduced, not necessarily only literally. You can't cage Pisces; his extroverted side flows out easily to other people that you may as well get used to it. But this is, remember, a wise soul. He sees through people very quickly. And although he's led often one way or the next out of sympathy or flattery or a stronger personality, he has the capacity to recognize what's really of value to him.This is not likely to be a lover who only notices one man, or one woman. That's impossible for Pisces; he's not only interested in everybody, he's often attracted to everybody. His morals are his own; better find out what they are first, so you aren't surprised later. Don't take him for granted. But the curious detachment in this sign is in evidence even in this highly fraught situations, when he says it meant nothing, and it would be better if it meant nothing to you too. If you're the really possessive type, you're in a little trouble. He may be technically faithful; his imagination certainly isn't, and never will be. Not likely that he'll be either. But it depends upon whether you value technical fidelity, or a depth of understanding and tacit communion which no other sign can offer.There is also a quality in Pisces, like Virgo - the opposite sign - which is essentially untouched and unpossessable, no matter how formal the contact is, no matter how long you've known him. Some part of Pisces will always belong to the cosmos, to his own inner self, and not to you. Unlike the simpler signs such as Aries or Taurus, Pisces is simply not capable of saying, 'Here I am, a simple soul at heart. I'm yours.' He may give you forty-five of the sixty-eight selves he's discovered that week. Don't expect all of them. There will be dreams, visions, that he can never communicate. If you keep asking a Pisces what he's thinking about every time he gets that vague, dreamy look in his eye, you'll drive him and yourself crazy, and never get any satisfactory answers. The real truth is that he probably doesn't know; he just went off, and if left alone, will undoubtedly come back again. Many of Pisces' ways of communicating are nonverbal; it's not a sign that excels in debate and defence. Many Pisceans are completely inept at explaining themselves or their feelings. They rely on touch, atmosphere, a subtle communion that is almost telepathic. Try to force them into rigid explanations and definitions and it's like holding a handful of water; it slides through your fingers and it's gone.Evasiveness is a word often used to describe Pisces.Deceptiveness is as well. But it isn't the calculated statesmanship of the Capricorn, or the deliberate secretiveness of the Scorpio, or the mental gymnastics of the Gemini. When you see thirty different things, how can you explain one? Especially when the chances are that the other person can't even comprehend what it's like to see thirty? And ambivalent emotion - well, that's equally difficult. How to explain when you love and hate someone, when they're ugly and beautiful, when everything shifts and changes, and takes new shape faster than you can say chameleon? For all these reasons and more, Pisces is an elusive partner. You take the feelings as they come, and let them go as they go. Attempting to define and freeze them into structures is a futile exercise. Many people are badly hurt by Pisces, not because the sign is cold and unfeeling, but because the other person expects a conventional linear expression of love, like 'I love you, I always will, and that's it', when a phrase like that is downright ridiculous to the Piscean who knows that love is a very varied state, that it has many meanings all of which change all the time, that everything is relative, that you can't plan the future, etc. etc.But if you know enough of the world and yourself to allow for motion rather than stasis, basking in the flow of a Pisceans' feelings can be the most healing and regenerative relationship you'll ever have. The trick, perhaps, is not to ever trample on his dreams, nor ever think you understand him completely. Just when you do, he'll change on you. If you dislike change, pick a Taurus or a Leo. But if you like unexplored regions, and unclimbed mountains, and futures that are shrouded in mist and beckon, and magic castles and unexplored treasures, then don't fear Pisces. Only don't think you've got only one person. You've got everybody. A cast of thousands. What better way is there to learn about life?The Pisces ManYou may have observed that Pisces is a strongly feminine sign. Feminine, that is, in terms of its feeling bias, its imagination, its softness, its compassion. Many Pisces men are extremely masculine, and perfectly capable of what Jung calls, 'Knowing what you want and doing what you have to do to get it'. But all in all, the combination of being a man and being a Pisces is a slightly uneasy one. Largely, once again, because of collective pressures and social expectations.There are a great many turntypes among Pisces men. They compensate in a thousand ways for being Pisceans. Some of them run in terror from the depths of their underwater visions, into an extreme and brittle kind of rationality which calls for statistics, definitions and proofs. They are the dogmatic material scientists, attempting to stamp out in others what they fear in themselves. They have no tolerance for what they call 'emotionality', and cannot abide moodiness in others because their own threatens to overwhelm them.But if a Pisces man has the courage to face his own vulnerability, and to see that it can live happily side by side with his manhood, then you have a rare creature. And he's able to maintain his manhood without disappearing underwater into the realm of escape, that is. This is the hero of so many books and films, the antihero, the gentle fighter, the sensitive lover. It's perhaps closer to our modern myth of man than any other, since it's a peculiar marriage of male and female. The Pisces man who has accomplished this has a rare charisma, a drama about him that makes him endlessly fascinating both to men and women alike.Sadly, many more Pisces men hit the extremes. We've mentioned the rationalist, the Pisces who hates being a Pisces and wants desperately to protect his own sensitivity. The opposite kind is also common enough. He's the fellow who loves strong women, especially women who can support him financially; who can take care of him while he's writing the eternal half-finished novel, while he's contemplating the job he'll never take. He's the passive victim, abused and betrayed by a cold, brutal wife, looking for pity and sympathy and playing for all its worth to the maternal instinct of some poor foolish woman who thinks all .. ..his romanticism is true tenderness and feeling. These are pathetic Pisceans and their wives and lovers are frustrated women who have to be men most of the time and chafe violently against it. Many Piscean men of this type gravitate toward the powerful signs in women: Leo, Aries, Scorpio, Capricorn. They have no strength of their own, and seek it in a partnership.As you might guess, Pisces tends to run to extremes. It's rare that you get a neutral Pisces. It's generally one extreme or the other.The Pisces man generally needs to feel 'understood' more than anything else. This isn't so much a sign of physical passion as it is a sensuous sign, a sybaritic sign. Dragging the woman off by the hair to the cave isn't generally Pisces' style. Allowing himself to strike up a warm, sympathetic conversation and then allowing himself to be seduced by good wine, soft music, satin sheets and erotic underwear is much more his style. Pisces is as happy being passive as a lover as he is being, literally or figuratively, the one on top. It's his particular brand of masculinity. Often he will make himself the buffoon, the clown, the victim, for he works a lot from sympathy and empathy. Women love to protect him. He can protect himself perfectly well. But it isn't always in his interests to let you know that.Trust him and you'll bring the best out of him. See only the shadowy side of him and he'll have a devil of a time trusting himself. He never trusts himself anyway; he's brutally realistic, beneath all those visions. He needs the trust and loyalty of another person to bring out his own - the realistic trust, that is. Accuse him of something, and he'll happily go out and do it, just to please. His way of fighting is not to fight; it's to bend so far backwards that you fall on your face. Impotence is also his way of fighting. In this, you'll see the feminine side of the sign in strong colours. Passive resistance is a technique dear to the Piscean heart.You might think he can easily be dominated. Think again. In fact his world doesn't include dominant or submissive. He'll play pliant on the surface because it's easier, because it's not that often important enough to draw blood. Beneath that pliant surface, it isn't that he needs to control; he just wants to be left alone. Try to dominate, and you'll discover you're empty-handed. He's simply drifted away, without a fuss.If you are the type who likes to have all your decisions made for you, don't choose a Pisces. On the other hand, if you want someone to henpeck, pass on this one too. Now you see him, now you don't. No promise or marriage contract means anything to him if the fundamental values of the relationship have been abused. And he'll see through all the games pretty quickly. He just won't be there the next morning. No note, no phone call. Just gone. Like the fish.But if you want a relationship which is more nearly like the ideal vision of what the so-called 'liberated' woman seeks (and these are rare animals as well), you will find that Pisces is not one of your diehard male chauvinists. Being strongly emotional himself, he usually has immense empathy for women. He generally gets on with them better than men. And with his profound understanding of human nature, you're not likely either to be the housekeeper or the sex object. You get to be a person. And that's worth quite a lot.