So Why the Fuck Do I Change My Mind??

FUTURE

WHAT convinces me to do this, when I see how things are now?

All through this, I haven't been STUPID. Last time, I looked for the classic, married-man-swears-he's-leaving-but-always-has-an-excuse-and-never-moves-out. THAT'S what fooled me the first time. He consulted a divorce lawyer. He moved out. He went to counseling. It was going to be divorce counseling.

THEN it fell apart. Why? Guilt. Codependency.

Clearly, I'd need to see behavior at least as convincing as that in order to change my mind, so I presume that this is what happens. 

And we all know how well Chi can act. He's such a good actor, he even convinces himself he feels some way about a thing when he really doesn't. Anything, anything to make someone else happy and avoid conflict of any sort.

And then I remembered something.

A year and a half or so ago, I told my therapist, the wonderful Janice (who hasn't committed me yet over all this astrology!) that I was rereading all our notes to each other, and I had noticed something. Every time a new person walked onstage and started talking, what Chi thought would SWING to match what that person said.

Now, look at this: It's been three years. To all outside observers, the marriage LOOKS stable. (Because, once again, Chi is groveling to PLEASE OTHER PEOPLE, and NOT TELLING THE TRUTH.)

Because the marriage looks stable, the kids, the friends, and the relatives have all shut up.

Marriage counseling is over. He's upstairs writing me while Rory is downstairs. (Once AGAIN, as if the intervening three years never happened.) 

Rory has shut up.

There's no more individual therapy. He's only in group. His therapist, most unfortunately and unwisely, has shut up.

Once again, Chi is lonely. And once again, I am the only one talking.

And what did I just say?? "I guess we'll just have to end contact."

OH, SHIT.

He's already mimicking me now! About our club meetings. I already told him they'd just lead to disaster. I got no argument. I got agreement. Then: He started telling me what I originally said about it!

And then what did I say?? "You deserve so much more than this in life. How can you accept so little? Why are you doing this to yourself?"

Now his therapy group is going to talk. They've heard the ENTIRE story of the past two and a half years, much more than I heard. What do you think they're saying right now??

And we all know what Chi does when a new person steps up onstage and talks.

What's he going to say to himself now? BUT: Is he any more ready or able to follow through on that?

Let's add one more clue to the compilation I put up here one week ago:

20.) Chi NEVER thinks for himself until he's desperately, desperately unhappy. Literally, until he's entertained the idea of suicide a couple of times. (Really. A person needs to be thinking for himself long, loooong before that.) Until then, his first response--he believes it's his first DUTY--is to adopt the thoughts, opinions, and perspective of the other person. (Unhealthy Sun in Libra in action, folks!!) And he ACTS with the skill of Robert De Niro.

And THIS is why we have communication problems! 

Sometimes deception in a relationship happens because one person is  consciously trying to use and hurt the other one. 

This deception is happening because one person can neither find nor fight for the self.

THIS IS MOON OPP NEPTUNE. This is the deception and miscommunication I've been warned about.

He's going to come back to me and say all this--"I can't live like that anymore, I love you, I miss you, I have to leave--" AND FOLLOW IT UP WITH BEHAVIOR--and I believe him.

This is what happened the first time. And I fall right for it again, because:

I DON'T UNDERSTAND THAT THIS IS A MANIFESTATION OF CODEPENDENCY AND A WEAK, WEAK EGO. NOBODY DOES!!

I BELIEVE IT'S REALLY HIM.

Especially when, especially when, especially when, especially when--

It's what I think he should do anyway! (Remember how I'm advised to stop CONTROLLING?? Because I need him to make me feel less afraid and more secure in life? You know--that stuff I'm supposed to be doing for myself??)

Especially when, especially when, especially when, especially when--

I'm lonely and needy and it's what I long to hear.

There's my Neptune in house three! There's why I misunderstand.


But really, who knows? 

I mean, fuck, man. It could really be him, but...

...as soon as he leaves Rory, the relatives all start up again, and his thoughts, all over again, SWING to match their pain and SWING to match everything they're screaming at him. And the next thing we know, it's back to, "They're going to cut me out of the family. I'm causing other people too much pain." 


Because he hasn't done any work within himself to know any other way to handle the situation.

And how do I know that?? Because I've spent the past two and a half years reading books, watching videos, uncovering what's wrong with ME, journaling, and healing--and he hasn't. All he's done is sat in the back of a therapy group watching OTHER people working, healing, getting well, and moving on. While he speaks in that group maybe once every few weeks. And focuses ALL HIS ATTENTION on other people, other people's problems, doing what other people want, and making sure other people are happy and nobody's mad at him.

Folks, this is the definition of codependency. All he's doing is cycling and cycling back through it, 

f
  a
    l
      l
       i
        n
          g
             
           back, back, BACK INTO THE ILLNESS that got him here

                       DOING IT ALL OVER AGAIN

instead of studying, working in therapy, healing from the sick childhood with sick parents that did this to him in the first place,

            INSTEAD OF GETTING THE FUCK WELL.

PLEASE NOTE:

Recovery from a broken childhood is not a spectator sport. 

If you spend sixty years avoiding difficult emotional work, you spend sixty years forever a lonely, sad, broken child, making everyone else your parent, bending over backwards for mommy and daddy to love you and take care of you the way you needed when you really were a child. 

And you do the same damn thing, over and over...ruining everyone else's life in the process, because YOU WON'T LET YOURSELF KNOW WHO YOU ARE, AND WHEN YOU DO KNOW YOU WON'T TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT IT. 

Because, believe it or not, YOU ARE A PERSON. You are a real person, just like other people, with the VERY SAME NEED to BE YOUR REAL SELF.

Only, growing up in a sick family, you learned that you shouldn't be your real self. What you should do instead is look at everyone else to tell you who you should be. And when we do that, it hurts. Humans have to be themselves, and acting hurts. And everyone else knows that, but sick families don't. And you believe that being your real self instead of performing for the people around you, is bad. 

Because your family of origin displayed to you that YOU were bad, and should not have a self. And you're still believing that, even when you experience that living this way hurts you. So you don't even understand why it hurts, and you keep trying to mute out the hurt, stamp it out, push it in, cram it in, so you can keep doing all the things that please everyone else and keep everyone else happy. 

And eventually it hurts so much you can't stand it anymore, and blow up and move out or have an affair, and it's right about now that everyone else wonders, "What's wrong with you?"


AND YOUR LOVED ONES GET THE SHIT KICKED OUT OF THEM, BECAUSE THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND YOUR NEED TO ACT FOR THEM, AND THEY TRUST YOUR WORD.

And half the time, you're so worried about what they will think of you, you're trusting your word, too! When, 


if you just had some of your OWN approval,

you wouldn't need so much of everyone else's.

(I don't know how many times I thought this same thing of my mother, watching the way she acted when I was a child.)

So you run around and around the same worn track, avoiding those codependency books and videos like they're the damn plague, when they are the only way OFF the same worn track. 

Then you wonder why three more years passed and you're still living in a world of pain.

                                 ***

There's a saying among astrologers that the only reason astrology is predictive is: WE DON'T LEARN.

Yes, it all happens all over again, only this time I'm even more horribly devastated. Because this time I thought it was for keeps. He stays out of the marriage for two years this time. Marriage counseling didn't work; Rory is still behaving abominably; anybody else would leave. 

And I'm judging him by that adult part of him that holds a Very Important Position that requires a lot of smarts and made him a million dollars. I expect that that sad hurting little boy healed and grew up, because he can LOOK like it for months at a time.

But without the WORK, these things don't happen. And look who spent the past three years working on other people, instead of on himself. Again!!!

This time, we're together twenty-four months instead of only four.

And this time, I am devastated beyond ALL recognition.

                                  ***

Unhealed from old child feelings of being scared, lonely, and unable to take care of myself or find any meaning in life if I don't have some close loved one around, and without the tool of astrology, 

I can't see this.

Healed, and with astrology, I can.

And THAT'S the crucial internal process I was supposed to wait to complete, and why I've been so obsessive and in such a damn hurry these last three years. 

If I'm incapable of finding my purpose and my own two feet, I'm so needy, a-tiptoe to hear him say those magic three words ("I'm divorcing Rory") that I have NO hope of figuring out what's actually going on. (And I'd better, because I'm not too sure if this therapist of his has any fucking clue.)

I need too badly for it to be real.

And our whole relationship goes on and on like that!! For TWENTY YEARS! IT NEVER STOPS. Because he never sets to work and HE NEVER GETS WELL. And I was going to perpetuate it, because before I started reading the astrology and seeing all these warnings, I was frozen in place, that sad, scared, lonely little child wounded and hurt by HER parents. I wasn't going to get well, either.

No matter how hard I thought I was listening or how it looked like he was telling me the truth, our relationship would have been just like Chi and Rory--especially if I stay controlling, trying to mold him and our life the way I wanted. I'd hear this, and it would look like it was the truth: 

"Yes-dear-yes-dear-yes-dear-yes-dear," until one day...

"AAAUUGGHH!! I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE!"

Only he isn't assertive enough to a.) say that early on, and b.) back himself up...which would have prevented the problems! 

Instead, he just finds other people to complain to, and one of them about ten years from now is an unattached woman, and then... and then ... 

I get to be Rory.

(Hence the saying, If he cheated on her, he'll cheat on you. In this case, here's why. Unhealed, untreated, RAMPANT codependency and low self worth. Ah, giving in to codependency always looks like you're doing the right thing at the time...doesn't it??)

And Rory and I and everyone else are always baffled. It looks so much like it's really him.

                               ***

And IT'S ALL HAPPENING. In the next three months.

HOLY

FUCKING

SHIT.

Well, now I've already started it. I've already started the trajectory. Here we go.

How to alter the forthcoming bad transits? Is there any possibility of a happy ending? What's the middle road? Is it so dangerous to me that I no longer care?

In a word: YIPES.

Assessment of What I'm Being Told About the Next Six Years

FUTURE

"You will feel brilliant for moments at a time."
                         --a joke when I was in professional school.

Looking at the astrology, I am finding a number of intriguing clues I feel compelled to put together, about my future, about Chi's future, about his wife's future. As you read, you will see why. Some of these are downright scary.

Most of these bullet points represent the advice of one transit or progression, unless otherwise noted. I'm noticing as I learn that every time two points in a chart form an aspect to one another, it's kind of like a justice on the Supreme Court: it writes you an opinion. You get some conflicting opinions, or situations in which the opinions partially concur, say, about an outcome, but not the reasons why it's happening. Astrology isn't Game of Thrones, it's Game of Clues!

Obviously, the more deep understanding you have about the particulars of your own situation, the more of a leg up on this you have. And that's where the mountain of psychology, relationship, and self help books I have stand me in good stead. In order to steer your ship around the icebergs, you have to assimilate all these clues with your particular situation and try to put them all together and figure out what is actually going on.

To that end, in no particular order...

1.) Chi comes back in the (very) early spring. I'm trying to learn more precise techniques of prediction right now. The best I can tell, around Valentine's Day looks like a good candidate for this. Let's see if I'm anywhere close.

2.) (And this is the scary one.) Something inspires me to try to fight his family for him, even though I'm determined not to do that now.

3.) (This just comes from bitter personal experience.) We should never, never, never expect or plan on what we might ideally hope to get, because that is one scenario that never, ever happens.

4.) MOON OPP NEPTUNE.

5.) I'm told I'm not necessarily fated to lose Chi forever, but it depends partially on whether I wait to complete some "internal process."

6.) I don't know how to stand alone in the world. I'm utterly dependent on having close people in my life, or I don't know how to feel okay.

7.) If I don't learn this now, if I kick this can down the road ANY more, I will end up alone in extreme old age because I misnegotiated a relationship, trying too hard not to end up lonely. It will be hideously painful, first in two years from now when I'm left again, then in about nine years from now when I find out I've been cheated on during a crucial period in my life, then in twenty-two years when I finally dump the guy. And I'm seventy-fucking-one.

8.) Chi finally leaves Rory in the spring, I bully him to divorce her, he goes back to her in 2020-2021, ends up VERY unhappy, and I get him back for keeps in 2023.

9.) He's STILL horribly, horribly codependent, and our relationship goes poorly, with many of the hiding, not-telling-the-truth, refusal to know or stand up for himself for fear of anybody being unhappy in the moment, obsequious, acquiescing behaviors he did with Rory repeating with me.

10.) And I don't see it happening, because I'M JUST AS CONTROLLING AS SHE IS.

11.) A little story by way of illustration: I'm not getting a whole lot out of this astrology class right now. It isn't very structured, it's more like an instructor and some students hanging around shooting the breeze. The instructor is elderly, and, I'm afraid, getting a bit senile. She forgets she told you things and she'll tell you the same story three times.
      And one of the things she's told me over and over is, "You have Neptune in the third house (the house of communication). You're prone to miscommunicate, prone to misunderstand. Prone to miscommunicate, prone to misunderstand."

12.) And I notice a transit to Chi's and my Davison right now that warns us to be very, very clear about what we're saying, to be very, very honest, and to avoid miscommunication and misunderstanding.
      In the parts of my yearly transit reports that talk about a theme for the whole year: During a year that Chi's with Rory, I get a standard paragraph telling me that I'm addicted to drama, so I'm satisfied because there's lots of drama going on. (I'm beginning to understand that a liking for drama is NOT a good idea.)
      And during a year I have Chi, what am I told?? I'm prone to miscommunicate, prone to misunderstand. Prone to miscommunicate, prone to misunderstand.

Um, does it sound like I'm being warned about something, here?? And SOMETHING this year makes me change my mind and accept Chi back into my life again, EVEN THOUGH I see the wisdom now of not doing so?? WTF is that???

13.) I'm informed that, this spring, Chi hits some kind of a breaking point and acts rashly and impulsively.

14.) Chi's charts are advising him to slow down, think, mull options over, delay, learn.

15.) I'm told that the success of mine and Chi's relationship depends on how capable I become at not needing other people in my life and being able to stand alone.

16.) Well known to all psychologists and therapists: WHEN WE DON'T GET WELL, CYCLES REPEAT.

17.) I'm warned about the desire and need to control him because I'm scared of losing him.

18.) One of us is supposed to make a sacrifice for the other one. This cryptic information comes from our Davison relationship chart.

19.) His chart, my chart, and our composite, Davison, and synastry charts are FULL of yods. According to Alice Portman, a yod confers the ability to unlock constrictions and problems with the right sort of work. I can interpret some of our yods. Some of the others are a bit cryptic. The ones I can interpret carry the idea that there's one middle road that makes the relationship work. Too far one way, too far the other way, and it doesn't. Going too slow vs. jumping in too fast. Blithely thinking it's all a slam dunk, or getting too discouraged by the amount of work required. There's a lot of tests and traps for him, and a leap of faith for me. I'm said to be in spiritual graduate school and testing myself, having handled situations like this well in previous lifetimes.

Now,

WTF????

Assimilating the clues...Spring is right around the corner, and the transits that describe a (most likely disastrous) affair then are wayyy more prominent and findable than the ones that said I'd see Chi in October. (I had to go back and ask Alice what she was looking at that predicted his return in the fall.) These new transits are no joke. They practically hit you in the head with a two by four.

And look what just happened.

Look how unhappy he is right now. And I'm about to say goodbye forever. And we know, thanks to Facing Love Addiction by Pia Mellody, that to a love addict with low self esteem, a person walking away looks very, very attractive.

WHAT are the odds, given what we know now, that these transits are right? Especially since they're slow-moving Uranus and Pluto, VERY powerful in both Chi's and Rory's charts and last some seven years?? And especially since I have this lovely Uranus-about-to-move-off-Saturn transit that usually coincides with a big change of heart about something Important? I never thought it would be him...and that's exactly what this transit is telling me.

Obviously, what I'm being told is that, faced with losing me forever, Chi can't stand it and bolts. Even the online tarot is telling me the same damn thing. Only...how much work has Chi done the past three years on his childhood? Low self esteem? Assertiveness? Self-differentiation? Individuation?

Nothing! He's run around, once again, trying to make everybody else in the family happy instead, hence the problem. I don't care what he wants or needs to do, he's not healed enough from low self worth and codependency to be able to negotiate those relationships...or indeed any relationship at all. I'm a little easier for him to deal with because I've got all this shit figured out, but I still can't read his mind. If I have to read his fucking horoscope to know his mind, his needs, and his feelings, something is fucked up, and besides, that wouldn't work anyhow. They're not that specific.

What I couldn't figure out was, WHY THE FUCK DO I CHANGE MY MIND??

Especially since, clearly, I have every evidence and every reason to know better??

Hold the Bar; Thread the Needle

FUTURE...

Now that I'm getting a few more hits than I used to, I find myself getting hit, literally. With pejoratives.

I shouldn't feel surprised by this. 

Most people, unless they are monks or nuns and will never have a romantic partner, are terrified and enraged by the very thought or mention of that horrific eight letter word, cheating.

They're thinking about themselves and how hurt, how destroyed they would be if it happened to them, how ruined their lives would be, and how much they would hate the parties responsible. And some would drag in the name of God. A sacred vow, you're going to hell. All that.

Anyone participating in cheating, therefore, is branded with The Scarlet Letter and heaped with scorn. Hit with words. 

And I understand the sentiment. Once upon a time, I worked in a place where the owners, married, were having problems. He took up with his assistant, who was in her early twenties and looked like Kate Winslet, only thinner. 

I was very angry, bitter, and judgmental. I had heard that the wife was an alcoholic, but I just didn't have any direct experience with that until the husband left the business, taking his girlfriend with him, and filed for divorce. Then the alcoholic wife started bouncing my paychecks and drunk-dialing employees late at night.

Very soon I figured out exactly what the man was dealing with, and how wrong it was of me to judge. He married the girlfriend, they started their own business together, she nursed him through cancer, and they have two beautiful kids.

I say this to make three points: One, unless you are VERY close to the marriage, and I mean VERY close, YOU DO NOT SEE THE TRUTH EXPERIENCED BY THE TWO PEOPLE IN THE MARRIAGE. Often, people are taking great pains to hide that from you. So, although you know full well how YOU would feel in the situation, you don't know anything about their situation at all. 

The last time I ran into the two people in question, I apologized to them for how I'd acted. I really didn't understand, and I really had no idea. And my behavior had just made a bad situation worse. And now others are behaving the same way to me. (On the Facebook page for this blog, not here.)

Two, simplistic moral answers, even though in most or all cases they may be essentially right, don't really help. All they do is slap people's hands and say, "It's bad. Don't do it." They don't do one thing to resolve the problems that are driving people to do it, any more than slapping cake out of someone's hand is going to force them to lose a hundred pounds. The problems are much deeper than that, and to heal the problems, you need deep understanding.

And, three, once you HAVE that deep understanding, you don't have the urge to perform the problem behavior anymore. IT GOES AWAY ON ITS OWN, once the necessary learning around the issue has been achieved. 

To that end, I'm going to discuss that deep understanding I've arrived at here. 

It's taken me almost three years to get here. I think it's pretty valuable. 

When Chi dumped me to enter marriage counseling, one thing he said to me was that I had set the bar high for what he should be able to expect in an intimate relationship...and never had, in this marriage.

And so I did. I set the bar high for Rory.

And then I spent the next three years setting the bar higher for myself. I had unresolved childhood problems and issues I was trying to rope Chi into fixing my feelings about. Rory did the same thing, and I detested her for it; so where exactly did I get off?

But there was one person I never raised the bar for.

Yeah, that guy.

A few months back, when I was receiving many astrological indications that Chi would come back into my life, and I really needed to be considering what the right thing was to do and how I would handle it, I realized that the range of acceptable behavior, behavior that wouldn't absolutely torpedo the lives of all three of us, would probably fit through the eye of a needle.

But I love Chi. So, the only thing to do is hold the bar up high, and thread the needle.

You see, each person is allowed and should have the freedom to be with whom they choose, especially in a situation where mean, unacceptable, hurtful behavior is occurring. I mean, look at this. We look at countries like India where arranged marriage is the norm, and we're shocked. Parents should never choose who their child is going to live with in marriage! And yet we believe it's perfectly okay when an adult child wants to choose for the parent who they should be with in holy matrimony, or when it's we ourselves who think we know what that person should do. Why do we think that's okay?

But people cannot choose a healthy relationship consistently when they are unhealthy emotionally. 

And that's the case here. That's why we got into this mess in the first place. Rory, Chi, me...all unhealthy emotionally. 

I've WORKED MY ASS OFF to get better, even studied astrology in order to do it. 

I'm sorry to say that I have not noticed similar efforts or progress on the part of the other two corners in my triangle.

Rory may never change. It's one of those situations where a person is inflicting pain on someone else, but feels fine themselves. Why should they change? They're not unhappy. They're fine. It's the other person who has the problem, what's wrong with them?

But, Chi. Ah, Chi. I've known Chi twenty years now, and he's been wrenchingly miserable every single year I've known him.

There's only one cure for this: Codependency recovery. Emotional HEALTH.

In the previous entry, I discuss the astrological signs that Chi CAN do this work, and that this year could be a banner year for him to do so. I've always wondered what the hell to make of all the clues I've uncovered these past three years: 

1.) A big split in his transits starting right about now, between those that reflect a person working in therapy and healing and getting well, and spending the rest of his life much happier and healthier, and those that reflect a person who makes no progress, makes the same mistakes over and over, torpedoes his next relationship, and dies alone and shattered.

2.) My transits, which call me addicted to power and control and warn me repeatedly not to reenter The Bermuda Triangle with these two.

3.) Our Davison, which states that one of us makes a sacrifice for the other one, and that the relationship can be healthy if and only if I heal from emotional problems and am completely capable of living all alone.

Well, after the work I did in the previous blog, the last piece of the puzzle has fallen into place and it all makes sense. I was confused, because it appeared that perhaps Chi simply isn't capable of working in therapy and getting well AT ALL. So what was I to make of all this conflicting stuff I was reading? 

Now, it's very clear: Chi CAN get much, much better, but he's scared of the work and doesn't want to do it, and he keeps getting sidetracked running off to nursemaid anyone else in the northern hemisphere who's having problems they can in any way rope or guilt him into prioritizing above his own.

If I offer him a way out--an opportunity to have an affair with me INSTEAD of doing the work to heal from ACoA issues in therapy--that's what he does instead. And the time in the life this happens is now. If I'm correct, his progressed sun by both methods should be sextile to his natal sun. Checking the charts, it is. 

One degree per year of the life. A sextile is sixty degrees, and this is Chi's sixtieth year. Right on the money. 

I was supposed to kick him into therapy and walk away, risking that I'd never see him again. If I'm not strong enough to do that, I get him in the end, after seven painful years of horrible angsting and back-and-forthing, but he hasn't gotten any better and our relationship is horrible, just a repeat of Chi's and Rory's in a different key. 

Chi may just decide to live with what he has, and through therapy find his way to living with his marriage in serenity the way it is, so he can keep the ties with other family that he values. Or he may leave after all, and I may see him again. 

But it's HIS choice, not mine, and it has to made AFTER progress in therapy, NOT before, with a healthy heart and not a sick one.

And if I'm too scared to lose him, I panic and start to pull him back to me again. I try to fight for him, and I, the person who came in to inspire him to go to therapy and heal, end up being the very person who destroys the therapeutic progress she came here to initiate. It's pretty clear: I don't know what happens if I walk away and don't have the affair, but if I do have the affair I absolutely destroy any chance Chi has of ever getting well...and now I know, he does have one.

And fuck knows, I of all people understand that there's NOTHING more important than doing your work in therapy and healing and getting well.

There's only one choice here. You can moralize all you want about God and about "hurting the wife," but this wife made her own bed. All she does in lie in it, and she doesn't even want to change the sheets. It's her choice to heal and do better in her marriage, or not. 

But nobody who professes to love anyone, could or would destroy that person's one chance to recover from lifelong emotional problems because she's too selfish and too scared to let go of him. And I started out thinking I'd be helping by hanging on! Clinging, directing, trying to live someone else's life for him, instead of letting go to allow that person to find his own competence.

So, the course is clear. 

Hold the bar, thread the needle, and say goodbye.

I may never see him again, but I'll know I did the best thing for everyone. 

WHY the Right Answers Are the Right Answers, Book Three

FUTURE

(includes ANOTHER PREDICTION.)

So we’ve seen that all three of the people in my triangle, Rory, Chi, and me, all didn’t grow up right due to unhealthy parenting, and we’ve all given up on ourselves in some way. We each have the child’s desire to avoid the hard work of growing up by fusing with someone else who will kiss the boo-boos on our knees the way Mommy should have when we were three, and who will take over our problem areas and do them for us.

But we’re not three anymore, and we don’t need Mommy to kiss our boo-boos and take over and do it for us. What we need is to experience our own feelings of strength, and the competence that comes in finding out we can do it ourselves. Rory and I need to do whatever it is we want to do on our own, without somebody super-competent in worldly affairs like Chi there to take over for us in case we can’t. Chi needs to esteem himself appropriately on his own, instead of martyring himself to someone else so we’ll keep telling him he’s okay.

(It doesn’t matter WTF we say anyhow. He doesn’t believe it anyway. His believer is broken, and nobody can fix that but him, under the guidance of a competent therapist.)

Everybody in the triangle needs to grow, heal, and develop so they feel okay on their own, standing as separate people, and don’t smother their significant other, in the event that they do have someone.  I can look back over the past four years, and the entries in this blog, and I think I’ve done most of my work and am about there.

What I saw two and a half years ago was Chi waking up and realizing he needs to get there, because maintaining this infantile fusion state with other people has costs. Yes, they love him, but they don’t love who he really is, because he’s too scared to show them anything they won’t love. So he’s kept the parts of who he really is that will disappoint anyone under wraps, and acted and pretended to be who others wanted and only who others wanted, for forty years. It hurts to be someone else and not yourself all the time, and two and a half years ago Chi noticed it was getting more and more and more and more painful. Especially when you’re with ANOTHER person who also wants fusion because she doesn’t want to grow up, either, and that person’s need for fusion manifests as caustically as Rory’s.

Here’s the sad thing. Looking down the road at Chi’s transits from about 2023 on, if he doesn’t complete growing up emotionally within the next seven years, and he gets paired with someone weaker than Rory, he starts acting just like her! Demanding emotional fusion and caretaking from his next partner—only in a sullen, whiny, needy, complaining way that’s childishly, babyishly demanding and drives his next partner away.

So:

Seeing that this is the problem for all three people—this fear of how tough the world is, that we’re in some way not good enough, that we’ll never be good enough to be loved or to competently take care of ourselves, so we think we need someone else to be Mommy and do it all for us—obviously, growing out of it is good. We all need to grow out of unhealthy Neptune into mature adult beings.

But, there’s only one right way. And, for anyone contemplating an affair out there, that is: Your ASS in the therapy chair—with somebody COMPETENT—finding out what went wrong in your particular childhood. Reading the books, watching the videos, keeping the journal, suffering the pain of remembering what happened to you, crying the tears, listening to what your therapist tells you and doing as you are asked.

That’s what I’ve done the past two and a half years, and that is the process you see reflected in this blog.

Not that that’s the only way to do it. There is another way, and it sounds something like this:

I feel stifled in my relationship. I feel unhappy. This person is treating me badly. I find another person who treats me better. (What’s talking here: the need for growth, the need for health, the need to develop oneself as a whole person.)

But when I try to leave—! Uh, uh-oh, but my son said this. Uh, uh-oh, but my daughter said that. Uh, uh-oh, but my cousin just WON’T approve! Oh, whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa, but everybody is looking at me funny! Oh, whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa, but Rory just showed me real emotion (for five minutes out of the past twenty years) and she was angry and she said everything was allmyfaultandI’mabadguy! (What’s speaking up and talking here: Unhealed, unhealthy needs for approval; unhealed, unhealthy needs for fusion with other people.)

So what happens? The person runs to the second partner, feels unlovable for doing something so bad, then runs back to the first one and feels unloved again. Back to Number Two, feels unlovable and bad, back to Number One, feels unloved. Ping-ping-ping-ping-ping! like a pinball in an arcade machine. And unfortunately, in our case, it’s pretty clear that THIS triangle can become stable, last a miserable seven years, and destroy ANYONE’S chances of getting well.

Folks, THIS is why the right things are right. THIS is why we don’t have affairs. THIS is why the better way is working in the therapist’s office to grow ourselves up in a careful, compassionate, thoughtful way. THEN we can decide which relationship is right for us and why, and we can carry that out with a minimum of back-and-forth trauma to everyone. Because when we’re weak, scared, and afraid to do that work, look at what happens. If we just give up the ping-ponging and sit ourselves down in the therapy office and do some damn work on our damn childhood, we can see it if we’re being slaughtered in our primary relationship and we really have to leave someone, and we can do it in a growth-promoting way, with as little damage to ourselves and other people as humanly possible.

And this is why all three charts in my case are in perfect agreement that a stable triangle starts in the next month and wreaks TERRIBLE havoc, and why I’m getting all this advice no matter what oracle I consult, NOT to enter it. Why the tarot says that right about now, either ORDERLY STEPS are taken to SOLVE THE PROBLEM or an unhappy family situation ensues, and the person who decides that outcome is the most feminine knight in the deck, riding slowly and carefully along: ME.

I have to put my foot down and not allow this person to run from pain and try to solve his childhood wounding in a way that won’t solve it: an affair.

All I can say is, thank fuck for all that Saturn I wrote about earlier, all those difficult circumstances that made my life hell for so long. At every horrible mess I fell into, I always wished I had had access to all the facts BEFORE I made the decision to do something, because if I had, I would never have made the choice that I did.

Well, now, thanks to that horrible childhood that made me read all that psychology, and those enchanting four months, the loss of which drove me to astrology, I had the capacity to do the work to see all this ahead of time, so I can heal the right way and insist that others do, too. If I didn’t know then what I know now, I’d be so scared of losing Chi again that I’d hang on and refuse to let go this time.

When the truth is, if he will not get himself into the therapy chair and heal from his childhood at the hands of alcoholic and woefully incompetent parents, he will always live his life dishonestly, and he’ll never have a relationship that does not end in disaster.

And it’s important that both he, and I, know that.

And now that I DO know that, there is NO EXCUSE for ANY unhealthful behavior on my part over the coming months. (Should the occasion, in fact, arise.)

Folks, there really is only one right way.

Go to therapy, not your affair.