Lucy Looking Upward

You want a post on Saturn squaring Pluto? Okay, here’s your post on Saturn squaring Pluto.

As a rule, I have a pretty bad track record with relationships. (“YOU?! REALLY?!” my readers gasp. You’re funny, guys.) As a therapist’s kid, as someone who read Deborah Tannen when she was six, as someone who’s spent considerable time observing and evaluating other peoples’ relationships professionally and just because they interest me, you’d think I’d be awesome at them- and I am, when giving advice to other people. When dealing with my own, however, I’m ashamed but forced to admit that at worst I can be a little bit like a twelve-year-old Jennifer Jason Leigh. Typically, this has been blamed on my natal Neptune-Jupiter conjunction in my 7th House. “You give other people the benefit of the doubt too much!” “You idealize other people too much!” “You’re a Pisces, need we say more?”

Well, yes and no. The first two are true- I know I do these things, and although it might not look like it, I’m very mindful of when I’m doing it and whether or not it’s getting out of control. I get better at modulating it every time. However, even when I think I’m doing so much better that this time will be different, inevitably I end up falling into the same trap. And after ages of agonizing over IS IT ME OMFG WHAT AM I DOING WRONG, I kind of realized what’s actually happening here. (Well, Saturn squaring Pluto in my 5th and 7th Houses made me realizing what’s actually happening here.)

This is what’s actually happening here: Okay, yes, I’m very Piscean in my affections. Yes, I have let certain relationships carry on way, way too long because I was not willing to acknowledge very serious red flags- or at least terminate the relationship when I was good and mad enough instead of letting someone else break me. But I’ve made efforts, very strong efforts, to move past that. I’ve dissected and examined and analyzed nearly every pattern of mine in relationships, I’ve spent years of my life modifying my behavior so that I’d be better equipped to have successful relationships, and I’ve realized that at a certain point there’s really only so much that I can do. I may have Piscean tendencies in relationships, but I also have Venus in Aquarius at the top of my chart. As far as girlfriends go, I am not a clingy girlfriend. I am not a high-maintenance girlfriend. I do not immediately drop all of my interests and goals when a relationship ends because they were actually my boyfriend’s interests and goals that I had taken on for lack of my own. For the most part, the only thing I’m really doing “wrong” is being emotionally forthright and having strong opinions- which I can’t just stop doing, and wouldn’t stop doing to appease someone else. That would be a lousy relationship.

No, amazingly enough, the Pisces self-blame has to step back: it’s not me. I realized how my Neptune-Jupiter conjunction in the 7th House has been playing out for most of my adult relationships (and by adult, I mean out of college- it’s such a different dynamic when you’re not in college anymore). See, the 7th House isn’t just your attitude towards relationships- it’s also YOU in relationships, that is, the role you play. “Isn’t that your Ascendant?” you might be asking. “No, not quite,” I reply. Your Ascendant might not be who you truly are, but ultimately it bears qualities that are important to you, that consciously or not you want the world to see. This is not necessarily true in an intimate relationship. Your Descendant, the Ascendant’s opposite, reflects the type of person who complements you, who makes up for what you lack- but the planets in the 7th House reflect what kind of partner you can be to that person, to that prospective complement.

So take me, for instance. I have a Sagittarius Descendant, and without fail, I always, ALWAYS end up involved with Sagittarius Suns or Sagittarius Risings. Like literally, it’s to the point where I’m shocked if someone I like is not one of those. Yet I keep coming back. Clearly something about Sagittarius is attractive to me- is it the good attitude? The sophistication, real or imagined? The height? The build? Whatever. The point is, after so many disappointments with this type of person, I’m very well aware of the potential hazards, and I do try to protect myself. But nonetheless, my Neptune-Jupiter conjunction plays out, and not the way you’d think. It’s not so much that I idealize the other- and this took me a while to get to intellectually, even to admit- it’s that they end up idealizing me.

Not idealizing me in the sense of “I love you too, Dream Woman!” I mean that in the Neptunian sense of the word- the Pisces sense, of escapism and illusion and fantasy. Although I don’t try to, I end up being literally whatever some guy wants me to be. I remember when I was thirteen or so, I read one of those Sydney Omarr books about Pisces in which he wrote that “Pisces is the most dangerous ‘other woman’ of the zodiac,” and being a Jan Brady thirteen-year-old who’d been to second base over my shirt once I was like YEAH RIGHT WHATEVER. But as a more experienced adult, I can say with certainty that IT’S SO TRUE. If a man is not actually using me to cheat on his girlfriend, he is using me as a distraction from something else- his dissertation, some encroaching sense of melancholy, fear that everyone will think he’s crazy if he doesn’t have a girlfriend RIGHT NOW. I can’t ever just be “the girlfriend,” like the real, down-to-earth, non-intimidating girlfriend. I always have to represent something larger than or totally different from his experience. His girlfriend is almost always skinny and flat-chested and mousy and wears no make-up, so he can give himself a cookie for being attracted to me, who looks kind of like a Rubenesque redheaded Stevie Nicks without all the blow. His dissertation is almost always on some boring ivory tower shit that even he finds repellent, so he feels titillated but at the same time somewhat dirty being with someone who actually, you know, worked for three years between undergrad and (almost) grad school. His encroaching sense of melancholy is almost always totally his own fault, because he can’t be honest with himself about what it is he actually wants, so the idea of a woman who actually is really smart and knows about a lot of subjects and has diverse interests like gender studies and horror films and astrology and the occult and makes proactive decisions about her future is like WHA-AT.

And since for the most part I exist to the other solely as a distraction, as their distraction, it’s imperative that I don’t change. This is usually where things will start to go south- when it becomes apparent to the other that *gasp* I am not solely what they imagined me to be. I’m not talking about a situation where, for instance, someone is totally nice to you for the entire duration and then breaks up with you by screaming in your face that you meant nothing to him and calling you an unhinged lunatic. (That is called… I don’t know what, but it’s freaking nuts.) What I’m talking about is this crazy idea that women have different moods and aspects, just like men do! Whoa! The men who appreciate that I can be sweet and affectionate are put off and intimidated when they discover that I actually have really strong opinions and will call them out on dumb shit they do. On the other hand, the men who appreciate that I have really strong opinions and will call them out on dumb shit they do are disappointed and pissed off when they discover that I can be sweet and affectionate. If that’s not Neptune-Jupiter at work, I don’t know what the hell is. I mean, Christ, we wouldn’t even have mythology if the gods were incapable of getting angry or jealous or self-righteous or acting differently than we’d expect of them. How could anyone possibly think it might be okay to expect that of me? Or of any human?

So what am I supposed to do about that? Well, there’s always Jung’s transcendent function, or some way out of a problem that really has nothing to do explicitly with any of the variables. I’ve been following Donna Cunningham’s incredible Pluto-Saturn Preparedness Kit, which you should also check out if you haven’t already. Following Donna’s guide, I’ve made inquiries into volunteer programs with an academic focus, I’m revisiting Julia Cameron and the idea of “morning pages” (or “evening pages,” for the days I have to get up at 5 a.m.), and I’m making more of a conscious effort to include social time with my solid friends between studying and sleeping. All fantastic, helpful things- but ultimately, I still have to get around this relationship bugbear somehow.

Do I treat others the way that they treat me? No, of course not. As much as I’ve fantasized about emotionally destroying some perfectly nice boy (Pluto final dispositor), I would never actually do it. While it may look to me on the wounded outside that the people rejecting and using me have boundaries, they probably actually don’t- it takes a serious miscalculation of risk to be able to do that to someone, and not just, you know, get help for your mental problems or freaking break up with your girlfriend if you hate her so much.

What I have to do for myself is to learn to exercise real boundaries, and to be incredibly Saturnian about how I start to view potential partners. It’s really unfortunate, but I’ve gotten to the point that if it seems someone likes me, I can’t totally trust it. But I’m starting to think that’s a good thing. “Oh, no, Lucy, you’re only twenty-five and a half, how can you be so jaded???? How come you can’t do what I did in 1979 and just go out and meet someone at a bar????” (Because I know someone out there is thinking that, and whoever you are, you need a nice tall glass of shut the fuck up.) I need to start holding people to a higher standard. I think I’ve done more than enough of my fair share to make sure I’m emotionally equipped to be in a relationship, even in pursuit of ambitious personal goals. That’s not to say I don’t want to be in a relationship at all- I do, for Christ’s sake, I really do. I just don’t think I deserve to waste my time on someone who doesn’t care that much about me- or hell, even about themselves. Plutonian sacrifice, well, I know all about that. It just has to be directed towards the right place. My health, I can’t afford to sacrifice. My education, certainly not. A short-lived relationship with someone who’s probably using me because he can’t get his shit together? Yeah, I don’t think I need that.

In the meantime, I will be sitting up with the Greek gods and the Orishas, being imperfect.