posted August 17, 2016 10:22 AM            

(edit - sorry - when I read this again, it didn't make sense! :-/)

posted August 21, 2016 02:53 PM            

In this case, the two obviously blend together because he's so incredibly important to me and in my life. I would want to know 100% of the deepest secrets, motivations, family pathologies, inner psychological workings of my daughter's father even if he was some guy I'd never met--if he was a sperm donor and I'd bought the sperm, or I'd adopted her and he was her birth father.

I always want to know what someone is thinking/feeling and where their thoughts and feelings are coming from---also especially with that malefic 7h of mine, what they think of me and how they feel about me and WHY. Unless I don't care about them at all, negatively or positively.

The writer/researcher/8th houser in me just has to dig.

And the common thread here isn't me. I parted friends with my other longish-term exes....I can't ever know for sure whether they cheated and lied, but I suspect not. Whereas his last serious relationship ended with her having to go on psychiatric medication and telling him to never contact her unless she contacted him first, and then never again contacting him. In contrast to my last serious relationship, where last time we were in the same city we met each other for brunch with our current partners.

posted August 28, 2016 05:02 AM            

The conclusion that I've come to with our synastry (which is v good) is that it really makes no difference if a) you meet at the wrong time b) one of you has the wrong attitude to the other/people in general or c) if one of you chooses through their own free will to be a c0ckw0mble. All good synastry does under those circumstances is drag it out and make it very painful and personal.

I've spent a lot of time feeling like a mouse in the parenting apple barrel (round and round with no way out) about my relationship with my son's dad but I've eventually come to the following conclusions:
- I want my son to grow up seeing healthy relationships. Healthy relationships with people who aren't very nice need to be distant and protective.
- It is ultimately better for my son to have an emotionally healthy primary carer than parents who speak or even contact with his dad.
- I do not owe son's dad any explanations for any of my decisions and do not have to seek consensus because, as much as I'd like him to see the situation as I do (which he steadfastly refuses to do), in the end I have to honour my own feelings about it before his, and I personally don't like it when people aren't nice.
- Our relationship is broken, it is completely unbalanced and I am, whatever I do, hugely resentful about it. The only way forward is to let it die a death so that it can be reborn as something different and better if it comes back at all (I am unable to abandon hope altogether, this is my way of hoodwinking my psyche into agreeing).
- I believe in forgiveness. But I cannot forgive whilst I'm constantly working to change the attitude that I'm supposed to be forgiving, because I haven't accepted it. And if I do accept it, then by necessity I will have to take the responsibility of protecting myself from it.

I've also found from personal experience that maintaining a connection that is damaged and damaging has had a really negative effect on my ability to build other supportive relationships with the people around me. Your comments about struggling to socialise with your daughter reminded me of this. Lots of people struggle with badly behaved toddlers, the difference between them and you is that they probably aren't being made to feel bad and judged in lots of other ways by their co-parent.

Anyway, the upshot is that I have recently decided to cut all contact with Son's Dad - he picks son up, he drops him off, he tries to talk to me and I say "I don't want to talk to you". I can't explain this without talking to him, so I don't, but if I had to justify myself I'd say "I have a massive problem with your attitude to me", which is true and pretty much covers all of the issues without getting too far into it.

I feel better, and less ashamed of myself than I did when I was letting him walk all over me. I also feel lonely, because I really did rely on him for a lot of social intimacy and contact, but I'm trying to see that as a good thing, because it frees up space for better things and gives me an impetus to push forward with life.

That is very long, and completely focused on me (sorry) - I don't want to give direct advice because it's your situation and not mine. Also it's easier for me in that son is five and we're past the infant-stage now. But I do know about the very singular and strangely agonising pain of this sort of situation, and I wanted you to know that you aren't alone in feeling like there aren't any options.

The only advice I would give (and this is something that astrology has taught me, if nothing else) is to deal with the present - try to avoid projecting into the future or finding a solution for the next eighteen years. You don't know how you'll deal with different eventualities until you're in them and you're there. For me, trying to deal with the future has led to fear-based responses and kept me very much stuck in a repetitive, stagnant, soul-destroying present.

I've included our synastry so that you can look to see if there are any similarities (I notice he's hitting a lot of your angles, this is a massive ouch for me! Also! My Mars is quincunx his Sun, although you can't see it because I've set to 50% orbs). I do think, as well, that Pluto in Capricorn and the Pluto-Uranus square really haven't brought out the best in anyone, particularly folk with cardinal placements. And now Saturn-Neptune, woop

I'm looking forward to Jupiter in Libra

posted August 28, 2016 02:12 PM            

The dynamic where I feel my ex judges me negatively (for my parenting and everything else) is so complicated. Today little one was rejecting toward him and I felt protective of him and my heart went out to him....complicated, complicated, complicated still. Because it's a three-person dynamic.

posted August 28, 2016 04:53 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Lucia23:
Fireandspiritanddew!!!!!(I love your screen name)

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Thanks It's only because lookit! I have no earth placements to speak of - possible explanation for my lack of common sense

I looked up Nessus and Dejanira and wished I hadn't...

my Nessus is opposite his sun, and his Dejanira is opposite mine... I am not horrible rapey, killer-shirt Nessus! That is a really sensitive part of both of our charts, though - son's IC/MC runs through our Sun-Sun opposition, and so does his mother's AC/DC. And the composite Moon sits on it. So I guess it's possible that he senses it and it makes him anxious.

I've also included Persephone on our chart (breaking my Greek/Roman rule, but mine is conj his Pluto, and they're conjunct on the composite) and Diana, because his Ascendant falls on the midpoint of my awkward, commitment-issues Juno-Diana square. I tend to see asteroids as tiny little bits of great big stories, though, and I'm a bit cautious about Nes&Dej - all I think that they mean is that you CAN hurt people if you want to, but they don't compel you to and it's still a manky thing to do.

In terms of your relationship, apart from not dipping any clothes in your blood out of spite, I've found the following helpful to remember:

1) You do actually HAVE a relationship. It took me ages to get my head around this, because he's always said that we haven't, even at the times when we've been emotionally and physically intimate. It's easy to chase that as the ultimate goal so that you can get on with sorting it out. Actually, it's very easy to not-have a relationship with someone, you just don't talk to them. In the end, I've come to the realisation that he wants a very specific relationship with me - basically one where he gets all the support that he wants and needs in return for no obligations whatsoever (including things like acknowledging me in public - yay!). This isn't acceptable to me, so I'm not going to engage with it anymore.

So, rather than thinking "how can we have a relationship?" I'd try to frame it as "What sort of a relationship am I being offered and do I want it?" If the answer is "No" (or indeed "Hell, no!!!!") then you don't have to engage with it. I don't know what your feelings are about staying in a bad marriage for the sake of your child, but I always said that I wouldn't... and then I did, because it wasn't actually a marriage or a relationship or anything.

2) Having a child, ime, leaves you feeling incredibly vulnerable and bruised, and rejection under those circumstances is awful - I think it triggers some really primitive survival thingummies. I didn't meet anyone who really understood how awful it felt until I spoke to other single mothers - that was the first time I felt that other people genuinely got it. Having said that, it doesn't make the rejection any more your problem or any less theirs. And actually, there are probably a whole host of other issues lurking just underneath the surface that are everything to do with them and nothing to do with you.

For example, my pregnancy brought up a load of stuff with Son's Dad about his own parent's unhappy marriage, and that was clearly something that he was going to have to work on at some stage, I was just the unlucky soul who got lamped with it.

3) You won't be able to form a happy healthy relationship (with ANYONE - him or otherwise) until you yourself are okay, and right now it seems as though you're not. If the relationship has got itself into a negative spiral, then the best thing you can do is to detach from it, give yourself a break, get yourself back into peak physical condition (in my case this involve basic things like Eating and Sleeping) so that you're in a better place to deal with it. That way you'll know that your reactions are actually your reactions and not just a primal panic. I know it's difficult when you're so tied up with him at the moment, but are there ways that you could make a bit of space for yourself? For example, does he spend a lot of time in your house and, if so, is there any way that you could change that so that you've got a place where you can feel safe and unhassled?

posted August 28, 2016 05:05 PM            

My ex has a Sun-Dejanira conjunction in Aries.

I'm all stirred up and anxious with pre-eclipse energy right now, so not being too articulate, but I wanted to point that out.

posted August 28, 2016 05:14 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Lucia23:
Um, if I'm reading it right, your ex has a Sun-Dejanira conjunction in Cap?

My ex has a Sun-Dejanira conjunction in Aries.

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Oh hey, yeah! I was looking at his Nessus on your Venus against mine opp his Venus.

It looks like his would've been right on the Uranus-Ceres conjunction in June as well?

posted August 28, 2016 05:19 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by FireandSpiritandDew:
Oh hey, yeah! I was looking at his Nessus on your Venus against mine opp his Venus.

It looks like his would've been right on the Uranus-Ceres conjunction in June as well?

That's interesting. Does yours identify as a victim of the circumstances a lot?

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