Willingness.

Present.

Since the time for the predictions is rolling around, and I haven't seen hide nor hair of Chi, this is the time I'm starting to get worried. To the point of upset, to the point of obsessed.

And that isn't okay. Obsession is painful. Obsession obscures everything else that might have been good in my life. Obsession increases the chance of doing something DUMB. Obsession means I won't be happy with anything other than the outcome I wanted. And that outcome, as far as my eyes can see, isn't happening.

Astrology. What a double-edged sword. What I've discovered helped me feel better, in that I saw that stepping into this in the first place did something beneficial in this person's life--at least in terms of showing him that what he was dealing with wasn't normal and that he could actually have a relationship in which he was treated differently. I once had an hour-long panic attack because of my ethical qualms in doing this. AND I have seen, thanks to last October, that I don't have to hate myself for what is normally a horrible, horrible, horrible thing to do. He needed it. It was beneficial for him...although it did usher in a period of, um, change in their relationship. In that sense, being able to read charts has been helpful.

BUT...unfortunately for me, I could also see the best possible outcome of our relationship. And it was one that I would have been very happy with. This has been unfortunate for me, because now I want that and I'm anxious about it.

I keep going around and around about this. Right about now, Rory has some pretty big transits showing she's being borderline abusive to Chi again. (Nothing she hasn't done before, sad to say.) And this was to be the occasion of her entire next year, which I took a look at this week and found...shocking.

She has exactly one out of twenty-four transits that talks about happiness in her intimate relationship. ONE. A couple more talk about being of retirement age, and about happiness in things she's doing in the outside world. The rest, and I mean ALL the rest, are talking about great unhappiness in her intimate relationship, the fault mainly of Rory herself, and fully twelve out of twenty-four transits and progressions talk about somebody in the relationship having an affair. (Three guesses who that is.)

Correspondingly, only three of twenty-two transits and progressions he has speak of any kind of peace in his intimate relationship. ALL of the rest describe great unhappiness, and five specifically point to an affair starting.

Of mine, half are talking about being the third party in an affair, cautioning me to watch my behavior and stay out of power and control. In the other half, I'm all alone, and half of those, I'm sinking into ennui and despair about it. The other half of the alone ones show me finding a creative purpose for my life and being content with just that.

That last is, well, a happy enough ending, I guess. Things, as you can see, could be a hell of a lot worse.

But, thanks to astrology, I have our Davison, which shows me that the happiest of endings here was indeed possible (once possible?) and of course when you meet someone you are that compatible with and love this much, you want that ending. (At least, I do.)

This is the bad side of being able to read for yourself. Now I sit here and point at that happiest of endings, and go, "But how do I get there?"

Here is where I start to second-guess myself. What if I had said yes last October?? Well, if I had, I would have virtually guaranteed the affair starting right around now, because we would have been speaking regularly and in contact.

But I said no. I had the chance to say yes, and I said no. 

Does that mean I can never be with this person now, because I heard from him again and I said no?? Was that my only window, and now it's over and that's the end, because I could have said yes then and I didn't??

In that case, am I sorry I said no?

Yes, because I love and want this person and that may have been it, my last chance!

But...wait a minute...

WHY did I say no?

I said no because I saw in the astrology, and I knew from the past, that if he had me to complain to and fantasize about, he wouldn't W-O-R-K ON HIS CODEPENDENCY. He wouldn't engage with his problems. He'd simply use me as an escape and as a complaining outlet, and he wouldn't get better. Clearly, that would not be the best outcome for him, so I bit the bullet and did what I knew was right. I did what I knew would be best for him.

Besides, I knew that there would only be one reason I would have said yes to that. Because I saw that he was sniffing around again, and I was trying to tempt him away from Rory once again. In other words, an unhealthy exercise of power and control, which I am expressly advised NOT to do, and which I completely see the wisdom of. 

These two VERY good reasons were why I said no last October. AND ALSO...

Looking ahead to this year, I could see that I stood an excellent chance of getting him back again no matter what I did, so I bet big. I placed a BIG bet that if I did the right thing, I would get him back anyway...which made doing the right thing a whole lot easier. If I really believed then that if I did the right thing, I'd lose him forever...I'm not so sure I could have done the right thing.

So now I've done the right thing...and I'm doomed to lose him forever no matter HOW shitty Rory acts from here on in??

Wow. Life IS unfair.

(Again.)

So now I find myself in a tailspin. When was I supposed to see this person again, anyhow?? The last time was pretty easy to extrapolate. The markers I used last time were clearly obvious to me. I'm trying to pin down how my teachers did it, and I'm afraid I'm just not good enough to be able to pin anything down to any specific month. Some of the same kinds of things are active again, but that's over a period of time and I don't know how to pin anything down any better. All I know is, if it's March 1st and he's still gone, he's probably gone forever at that point.

And I keep doing this to myself and it's miserable. Why do I want someone who puts me through this???

I had to think long and hard about that. 

One answer, and this one I know. (Besides that, it's also clearly spelled out in the astrology.) And that is, I DO NOT HAVE CONTROL.

I've been over this before. I. HAVE. NO. CONTROL. OVER. THE. OUTCOME. OF. THIS. SITUATION.

Just like I have no control over what my mother did and whether she got well and ever treated me better or not, I have no control over Chi and whether he will ever get well and treat me better or not. As with all problematic love relationships, this one mimics, absolutely perfectly, the old childhood struggle to get my mother to act better and treat me, a tender, vulnerable young child, the way I needed and deserved for her to treat me.

(So does Chi's with Rory and Rory's with Chi, come to think of it. That's why we're in the triangle to begin with.)

I have one and only one legitimate area of control: If the relationship shows up again, look to see if it appears healthy or not. If not, say no. (That's what I did last October.)

Last year I accepted that. This year, I have to bring myself back to the fence and accept it all over again. Because I lived a childhood that taught not only that it was GOOD for me to try to control other people's decisions to heal or not heal, but that I COULD control other people's decisions to heal or not heal.

And I can't.

The only person who can decide to heal is Chi. And if Rory does, too, I lose.

(At least two of us would be happy that way. An almost acceptable outcome.)

The other problem I see is one of willingness.

In order to accept the outcome that Chi and Rory grow together and become happy again, and I never see him again, or they don't, but he just doesn't respect himself enough to leave because he still feels as if everyone else's feelings are more important than his own (this is unhealed codependency, folks), I have to be willing for that outcome to happen.

And I'm not.

I want my fairytale, goddamnit!!!

No, I don't want everyone else's lives ruined. But, I don't want to be the instrument of ruin, either. Then, I simply have to accept that the only way I get my outcome is if, A.) Rory continues to be the same old Rory--she sure was last October--and, B.) Chi gets healthy enough that leaving looks like the only option.

And I have ZERO control over either of those. Zero, zero, zero.

So I might as well stop scanning those horoscopes and overthinking last October. This has already been decided for me.

All I have to do is accept it, and be willing to live another outcome than the outcome I wanted.

Because it very well may be that next spring rolls around, and I'm still living here in the outcome I didn't want. This outcome I'm not happy in.

And there won't be any recourse then, just like there isn't any now.

How can I make myself stop hurting, and make myself willing to live the rest of my life just the way things are now?

Do I even get a consolation prize for doing the right thing? Like, do I get someone else?? Not that I can see. Not 'til I'm sixty-five, if then.

Clearly, I'm supposed to become happy without Chi, without any romantic male partnership ever, ever again. I'm supposed to be willing for that to happen, I'm supposed to learn to be happy with that.

Man.

That is a very tall order.

But it kind of looks like that's the way it's going to be.

And I'm very sad. That's just the way it is for me. I am very sad.

Because of our Davison--correct in the case of me and my husband, correct in the case of Chi and Rory--I see that we really could have been very happy together. If we BOTH were willing to do the work.

And I hope one day I won't feel this way about it anymore. I am too sad.

I have learned a lot, and I have become wise from this experience. I'm just so, so sorry I had to lose this man in order to do it. The price of wisdom is just too high, sometimes.

I would have been SO much happier the other way. Provided the guy actually got healthy enough to be in a relationship with me, and I felt solid enough in that knowledge.

But I don't control that. Chi does.

What I control is, do I get well from this or not? Can I become happy again, no matter what happens?

And HOW THE FUCK DO I DO THAT????

A Letter to Myself.

Present.

Probably within the next three weeks, Chi will be back and I will have to finish this job.

I really have no choice. I can't let this person back into my life and get treated the way I KNOW I will be.

I know, in general, what I have to do. Exactly how to phrase it, I don't know. I don't have that part yet. I don't know exactly where his head will be or what he'll say.

I do have some pretty good guesses.

By mid-March, this job should be over. I can't change my mind. I absolutely can't, I just can't. That way lies tragedy, and this I know.

So, by mid-March, Chi will have left my life--or I will have left his--quite possibly forever, and this will be my life. Just as it is now. I see nothing different, nothing new, nothing better, in my future. Not for many, many, many years. I'll be a senior citizen by then!

But, you know, that's the way it has to be. If I got anything wonderful and new before I learned how to accept my life the way it is, and be perfectly happy and satisfied with only what there is now, I'd just mess everything up again. Simon was the one person that wouldn't have happened with.

He was the happy childhood I deserved and should have had. Now I've moved out of the house and for the first time in my life, I am both all alone and an adult,  instead of a child.

Before, I could be happy because I had this starry-eyed belief in myself, sort of like he had. I believed in a much, much, MUCH better world than the one we actually live in. I can't do that anymore, so there's no more flying up on the wings of anticipation of being the next J.K. Rowling. I'm just going to go along doing my work, and that will be it. There's no one close to me but myself, and  no life but the one there is.

After the life I had, this isn't much of a life at all. I wake up and ask myself, What am I even doing all this for? What is the point? And, Why do I care?

Most days, I don't. I've been really sleepy all this week. I'm beginning to suspect I'm just depressed.

And no wonder. Who wants to spend the rest of their life like this?

But, it's unacceptable to run back to Chi, although I suspect I WILL have that opportunity over the next month. 

Once I was so happy because I knew I'd see him again. Now I know exactly what I'm looking at, and I've already skipped ahead emotionally to the time when I've said goodbye and now I have no life at all. I feel like Bella Swan in that horrible second Twilight movie, where all she does is mope and moon.

I need to remember that those movies were HUGE hits. And that, while J.K. Rowling was divorcing an abusive husband and ended up fired, jobless, and on welfare while alone raising a newborn baby,  feeling awful about life and herself, she did her best work.

I guess some people can do something good with a time like this. But, I sure won't be happy doing it.

I don't think, most of the time, that I will ever be happy again. My life just fell all to pieces--twice--and oh, well. 

Last time this happened, Simon asked me out within two weeks. Not gonna happen now, not with anyone emotionally well enough to be in any relationship, at least. This time, I really do have to tough it all out alone.

But that's no excuse for helping someone else perpetuate his own illness. If I do that, everyone pays, pays big, and pays bad.

In theory, if I learn my lesson, I push Chi to learn his...which, in theory, he has a decent chance of doing. If I DON'T learn my lesson, well, he has to keep teaching me my lesson, and those are painful lessons I don't want to undergo. I keep getting this transit, and he does too, that a teacher is coming into our lives that doesn't look like a teacher. 

I need to test out of that course.

Codependency 101 was bad enough.

In theory, Chi has the stuff and is capable of doing much better.

In reality...well, look at his track record. It's bad.

I have to figure out how to go on living this way for the rest of my life without being so miserable. I haven't solved that riddle.

One thing's for sure: If I don't solve that riddle, and I end up brokenhearted forever, for the rest of my life, I can at least know that I stuck up for what was right, insisted he GET THE FUCK WELL, and refused to support him in staying sick.

At least I did that.

How can I live this life and not be so sad anymore?

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. 

If I fuck THIS up, shoot me!

FUTURE...

A note: this post got so long I'm going to have to break it in two. If you know anything about astrology it may be of interest. But I'm starting to know enough to get technical, so if you aren't interested, you may want to skip this post and just wait for the next one.

This post is more the technical, Here's what I  discovered, and the next one is, And here's what that means.


So, if you've stopped by here on any occasion, you know that, in addition to extensive reading about ACoA issues, relationships, and all manner of adult relationship problems stemming from wounding by abusive parenting in childhood, I have also used astrology to help me figure out the issues surrounding this affair situation. It certainly helped point out to me, my own childhood wounding issues I wasn't even aware of.

Of course, one is drawn to the predictive branch of astrology, the claim made by the discipline to be able to forecast future events. I have already accurately done this three times, and I'm just a student; so of course that whets my appetite to discover: How does this actually turn out? 

Almost three years ago, when all this started, I was quite the starry-eyed ingenue. I knew Chi was my Second Guy On The White Horse, and I wanted it to end Happily Ever After. (With him taking care of me in these and those ways, and me taking care of him in those and these ways. Let's hear it! "I love you, you love me, stuck in codependency!") 

I would  have been utterly heartbroken forever and ever more if it didn't turn out that way. In fact, that was how I got onto the astrology in the first place--tripping over the transits that showed him coming back, then leaving, then coming back again, and us having a HORRIBLE life. ("Aauugh! No! NO!")

I'm proud to be able to say now that no matter how Chi ends up choosing to structure his life: If he is wholly and truly at peace with it, I am wholly and truly at peace with it. 

Even if it means I never see him again. 

Which doesn't mean I'm still not curious whether or not this guy is ever going to be happy, with anyone. Or in just giving up on the marriage and staying in the family for the kids and grandkids and just making his peace with it for real (because he sure isn't now.) I'd hate to think he's just going to be miserable forever. Is there any way he's ever going to avert that miserable fate?

Turns out there is, and for those who know anything about relationships and solving relationship problems, it should come as no surprise: Both people need to be emotionally healthy. Or, at least, emotionally healthy enough to work honestly together in good faith. Or, if giving up on a marriage and just accepting it the way it is for the rest of his life, a person has to be emotionally healthy enough to actually make and accept that compromise. 

So the real question is, Can this person ever achieve livable emotional health?

So, here, I putter around the charts hunting for that. 

I mean, look at this. Chi is nearing sixty, and he's been hideously, hideously codependent his whole entire LIFE. We won't even mention the inhumanly low self-esteem issue. 

What are the chances--?

In predictive astrology, the rules go as follows: You have to evaluate "natal promise" in the chart. If the chart you were born with does not contain the potential for you to be, do, or have something, it's not gonna happen, no matter what transits or progressions you get to that chart.

Then comes "progressions."  In "progressions," a planet moves so many degrees for each year of your life. There are different systems for deciding how fast the planets move. Most of them give you essentially the same thing, except for slow-moving planets like Uranus and Pluto. Some astrologers prefer the use of "secondary progressions" for these, and some prefer a method known as "solar arc."

I, however, digress. Progressions are said to reflect (NOT determine!) changes that are happening within the psyche of the person.  Then there are your transits, that is, where planets are now compared to where they are in the chart you were born under. Transits are said to reflect events from an outside source. (Again, reflect, not determine.)

In order for an event to occur, you need at the very least the natal promise for it, AND a strongly impacted progression. (Which makes sense, if you think about it. If you have no acting talent you will never be a movie star, and if you don't have the desire to do so you most likely never will, either.) In the majority of cases, you need a transit as well--at least one outside event, to make the natal promise happen. (If you don't get discovered by an agent, or make yourself known in a modeling career first, or get that first big part, your career on the big screen won't happen.) Makes sense, right?

So now, I'm combing through Chi's chart. At the ripe old age of almost sixty, critically ill with the DISEASE of codependency his whole entire life, is there any natal promise whatsoever, combined with the inner readiness and some outer event, that will push this guy to a.) WORK FOR, and b.) ACHIEVE, wellness??

I've known the relevant transits for a long time. Those are pretty easy to get...you can buy a report of those, whether you have any clue how it was calculated or why. I've had those in my possession for a while now. 

The transits are there for both hard work, great personal growth, and VERY good progress...and for, um, avoiding hard work, zero personal growth, no progress at all, and utter, utter DISASTER in his next relationship, whoever it's with. Unfortunately, reflected in my charts and in Rory's, that utter disaster appears to be with ME, and it appears to begin...oh, in another month or so?

THAT is fucking SCARY.

Especially since EVERYTHING in the transits, from November 2014 right up to October of this year, HAS COME TRUE ALREADY. In my chart, in Chi's chart, and in Rory's.

(Did I ever tell you I predicted the date of Simon's death using astrology? I was one week off.) 

Well...nice to see those good ones, but how the fuck do we get those and not the disaster?? I've been wondering that for ages now, and that was why I started learning on my own. I want to understand this stuff for myself.

I learned enough to figure out how to do progressions. In doing predictive astrology, you start there, since any natal promise in the chart not being activated by a progression is likely to be dormant for the period of time you are looking at. So: What in his progressions holds any promise at all for actual progress recovering from codependency and low self-worth? 

Right now he has the Sun on his natal Saturn, which is of note because his natal Saturn forms the following, which sounds just like Chi:

"Saturn Aspects
Saturn rules our conditioning or the way we were taught and brought up in the world. It is associated with restriction and limitation, but with this it brings structure and meaning to the world and our lives. It reminds us of our boundaries, responsibilities and commitments. It is often associated with a father or authority figures. Saturn's lessons actually help us to grow. In your chart the position of Saturn reveals your limitations, fears and sense of responsibility.

Saturn Opposition Midheaven

This can be a difficult placement, indicating that you feel so lonely and so different from others that it is hard to relate to them. Also you may sometimes feel that there is nothing inside you, that if others could look at you they would see only emptiness. This belief is not based on fact, but it can seem very real when you are feeling unhappy. It indicates that you need a great deal of emotional support from your family. Your mother, especially, and possibly your father as well, may demand a great deal and expect you to live up to very high standards, without giving you very much emotional reinforcement. Even if they do support you, you will not feel the helpful effects as much as others would. One possible effect of this placement is that you will be very active socially, almost as if you could not stand to be by yourself, even though you feel alone when you are with others as well. This is an especially likely effect if your chart has many planets above the horizon. You are trying to escape from your sense of inadequacy through others. However, the only way that you can conquer this feeling is by going inside, confronting yourself and accepting what you are. You prefer to keep your immediate personal surroundings - your room, and, later on, your home - neat, with as few obstacles as possible. Others may think that your tastes are rather stark and ascetic, but you prefer not to have to contend with any more material possessions than necessary.  

Fortunately, anything Saturn can go much, much better with dedication and hard work. All my difficult Saturn aspects have become much better with therapy and the kind of research and thinking I am doing here, and this one is weaker than all of mine, so I have to take this as an indicator that with the right work, progress can be made. The Sun here tends to reflect, from what I've read, a desire to work and manifest results.

Natal promise and a good progression! Whew!
Another one: 

Moon opposite Uranus in the natal chart gives an exciting but unstable home and family life. These and other unusual domestic conditions are outward manifestations of your highly strung and erratic emotional life.
Regardless of what your conscious intent may be, your feelings and reactions control the direction of your life. This is especially so for your close relationships. Your intimate relationships are where this aspect is most noticeable.
Uranus creates emotional distance which makes it difficult to form close bonds with other people. This detachment will cause, or is caused by, your strongly independent and freedom loving nature.
One of your parents, usually your mother, may have reinforced this inborn independent streak. Depending on other aspects and fixed stars, Uranus in your childhood could manifest as a scientific, astrologer, angry, abusive, crazy or absent parent. Whether a good or bad example, they influenced how you relate to people at the emotional level.
An inability to make meaningful and stable relationships is common while you remain unaware of the erratic impact Uranus (please note: Uranus here is a SYMBOL for something, not the actual determinant of the situation. In my opinion, Uranus here symbolizes codependency and low self esteem.) has on your subconscious feelings and reactions. Emotional turmoil, dramatic change and unexpected events can affect your home, family and close relationships.
The key to reducing the unsettling impact of this aspect on your private life is to gain conscious awareness. Massive breakthroughs and personal growth can come through astrology, psychology and medicine.
To enjoy more stability and control over your emotions and reactions, you want to slow down and calm down. The aim is to quieten your impulsive, erratic and unexplainable emotional reactions.
Like so much in your life, compromise is needed to find the right balance between boredom and excitement. You cannot be the mad genius and the caring emotional partner at the same time.

I ask you, does that sound familiar or not? Fortunately, this one apparently responds well to, *ahem*, active WORK in therapy. Two progressions are activating this one: a Jupiter square and a direct hit by Chiron, the wounded healer. Look that up in Greek mythology. This is where "Chi" gets his pseudonym.

Computed by the solar arc method, Chi's North Node (signifying the goals the soul has for this lifetime) is sitting right on Saturn--seems significant to me--putting the solar arc nodal axis right on top of the MC/IC axis. That's a big activation of the natal promise to make some progress, here. And...well, will you look at this? Solar arc Saturn is sitting right on the natal Moon, activating the above Moon opp Uranus, which describes a lot of Chi's issues and good natal promise of making some progress with them. Saturn reflects that a lot of restrictions, trouble, and delay will happen, but if you work with them you can get some major things accomplished.

And, oh, look at this: Solar arc Mercury sitting on Saturn. This also activates Saturn opp Midheaven, reflecting heavy and often depressing thinking that seems to be needed around some serious and challenging mental work. But serious discussion, thinking, and goal-setting can lead to useful outcomes.

So, it would appear that Chi's got the transits, the progressions, and the natal promise to do some good, hard, lasting work on codependency, ACoA issues, and low self-worth THIS YEAR COMING UP.

And let us not forget: Chi has Pluto in 12. Pluto is the planet of deep, scary transformations that require us to confront the deep things we're afraid of. House 12 is the hidden house, the house of self-undoing. Any planet found in 12 will find its influence challenged in the person's life. So, Chi is going to have a very difficult time going within and making changes to parts of himself and influences in his life. However, those with Pluto in 12, should they make that transformation, can end up very deeply wise in the area they initially had difficulties with, and the chart DOES confer the ability to do this if the person will knuckle down and WORK. House 12 is the house of the subconscious, so with Pluto here there's definite potential to heal.

Thank fuck.

I was really beginning to worry.