Three years ago, I found myself unceremoniously dumped.
My heart was shattered, lacerated, ripped into a million pieces. I almost didn't want to live.
The person in question was married; however, he’d moved out, consulted a divorce lawyer, and told me the marriage was over. From what he told me about the way she was behaving, and had behaved for the past twenty years, I could see why. For the past four months, he’d described an emotionally cold and distant marriage, with a woman who alternately bossed and belittled him. It was clear why he’d taken this long to finally move out: he was darling, but he was an adult child of an alcoholic, and I knew everything that meant. (See my article, 13 Signs You’re An Adult Child Of An Alcoholic, for more information.)
It was one of those situations where you know you’re going to be happy together, just like when I got together with my late husband. And then … and then …
*POOF!* He was gone.
Most of us are familiar with those horrible feelings of desperation, those times we’d do anything, and I mean anything, to get our old love back. This is when the desperate turn to astrology.
I didn’t know a thing about astrology. I had surfed the free parts of astro.com, and I had even bought some of their Liz Greene yearly transit reports on occasion. But I had no idea what those little symbols scribbled in the margins meant, or how on earth Saturn could “trine” Jupiter, much less how Pluto could ever “trine” itself! And I’d never bought more than one at a time, because they aren’t exactly cheap, and my money had always been tight.
But now, in the midst of this huge personal crisis, I was at least doing better at work. With that came the ability to buy more than one yearly transit report at a time, and for multiple people. I started snooping. Everything I knew about me, him, her, and their marriage told me it wouldn’t last. He’d have to come back to me; I just knew it.
Thus began the education of this budding astrologer, courtesy of astro.com. (I’ve taken some professional classes since.)
For those who are as bewildered now as I was then, “transits” refer to where the planets in the heavens are now, in relation to where they were at the moment of your birth. Every time a planet makes an exact angle with the position it or another planet occupied at the moment of your birth, it reflects a mood, a feeling, a quality of time in your life. A crack professional astrologer who reads literally thousands of charts a year notices repeating themes, and will be able to tell you, “Typically when I see this aspect come up in someone’s transits, these kinds of events are what’s been happening in these people’s lives.” When you’re consulting a professional astrologer, or you’re buying a computerized transit report, this is what you’re paying for.
I bought transit reports for myself, him, and his wife for the next few years, buying dates three years apart to save money, as I’d noted that many of the transits spanned over one year and they overlapped one another. I began to read. The first thing I noticed was that everything that appeared in one chart reflected in the other two. That gave me the creeps. Then, as I read on … it happened! Reflected in all three charts was his leaving her and returning to me. In about three years!
Overjoyed, I bought one more set for three years from the last date I’d read. I expected to see that he’d left her for good, and we were happy ever after.
Um … not so.
Instead, I saw myself left again. Even though the marriage was still rotten, and her behavior had improved not at all, there he was, back home again. She looked supremely happy, and the two of us were miserable. If I thought my heart was broken now, apparently it was nothing compared to what I’d experience then.
What … the … hell?
Of course, after that I had to keep on reading. He was still unhappy at home! Surely, surely he’d be back! And there, two years on, he’d finally had enough, and he was. Our transits reflected a joyous reunion, and hers, frankly, didn’t know what had hit her, despite decades of questionable behavior.
Yey! I mean, normally I feel sorry for the wife, but in this case … well ….
This had to mean we’d live happily ever after, right? I just wanted that wonderful confirmation, and so I bought one more set, three years farther ahead. And received one nasty surprise.
We weren’t happy. We were having significant problems. Only I was largely unaware of them, because … what?
Here’s where astrology has given me its greatest gift. I was raised by a parent with borderline personality disorder. For those who don’t know what that is, it’s a serious mental illness that wreaks havoc not only on the sufferer, but on any minor children being raised in the home. Because my relationship with my mother was so difficult, I spent a good portion of my twenties and thirties reading self-help books, relationship books, and adult-child-of books, and because of this, I know a great deal about codependency. Enough to recognize it when I see it described in a horoscope transit.
Astrologers are a poetic lot. Anxious not to antagonize the client, they excel at presenting clinical signs with sympathy and from the client’s point of view. Especially if they’re Liz Greene and their previous career was as a counseling therapist.
I was reading phrases in his report such as: “If you have allowed your need for closeness with others to obstruct your need to be a separate individual, you may be challenged to assert your own values and ideals with greater honesty and openness. External conflicts and relationship issues may highlight the fact that you need to achieve a new and more creative balance between these two sides of yourself.” “Try not to turn your back on opportunities just because you don't want to upset others or are afraid of seeming selfish in their eyes.” “But somehow what you want may not be communicated properly to those who could help or support you; and you may feel very angry, frustrated, aggrieved or victimised. You are not wrong in pushing for change and better opportunities. You may also need to define yourself as an individual more directly within your personal relationships, and this could involve friction with family members. But you may first have to consider the ways in which you are asking for what you want, and recognise that you yourself have created or accepted the role you are now playing, and others have assumed this is who you are.”
Huh? I thought. This is codependency! What the hell? Hasn’t this person been in therapy for years already? How could he leave her to be with me, and still be codependent?
This utterly confused me. I pondered it on and off for several days, and as I considered it, one solid fact emerged.
Codependent when we met; codependent years later when we finally get together. He’s with me, he’s with her, he’s with her, he’s with me, the family is all upset, the adult children are involved … years and years of drama, this is!
But during all those years of drama, what was missing? This much-adored man of mine applying himself to his core problems of codependency and low self-worth, studying and healing and getting well, that was what! Look at all the progress he could have made over those five years! But he didn’t. What was he doing instead?
Having an affair with me.
Then I started to recall phrases from my transit reports, about being too needy and anxious, about the need to stay out of power and control. I hadn’t known what to make of those. Me, domineering and overcontrolling? Why, that was his wife, not me!
Apparently that wasn't quite true.
What I finally understood, after months of poring over these transit reports, was that, even though I recognized him as codependent from the beginning—I was the one who insisted he start therapy—if I elected to pursue an affair with this man, I would be the person keeping him from what he most desperately needed to do:
Apply himself in therapy to his own problems—not everyone else’s—study healthy relationships, what went wrong in his family of origin, and heal and work and get well.
And keeping him from doing that is a hell of a way to treat someone you say you love.
It was about that time I figured I had better start studying astrology, and learn how to read this stuff for myself, instead of relying on a computer to do it for me or hiring an expensive professional I know nothing about. Since then, I’ve become a good enough astrologer to cast all our relationship and natal charts, and I can pick out the aspects in ours that reflect the issues I’ve just described here.
This is only the beginning of my story. I plan to post more about it here, from time to time. I’ve predicted events in all three of our lives that actually happened. Last October, there were a number of signs that I would indeed hear from this man after three years apart. It happened. (Only this time, I was ready.)
Most important, I’ve learned so much about myself. It turned out that my charts and transits were pointing out aspects of my unhealed childhood that I never would have suspected still needed my attention, and that’s proven to be an invaluable resource to direct me in my own therapy.
I used to doubt astrology, but after this experience, I see what an important and useful tool it can be. If you’re searching for answers in your own relationship, it’s certainly worth a look.
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