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I am doing that thing again, that needy little girl thing. It’s painful to witness in myself, so I can’t imagine how others could feel about it. I can’t seem to help myself…I want to earn his affection again. I want him to see what a giver I am and want to hand over his heart. Except it doesn’t work that way. Instead of being more interested he gets overwhelmed or avoids me. I can feel what I’m doing, trying to find anyway to help him…I seem to believe I have to earn his love. Somehow it feels that I am not worthy of love the way I am--I have to prove it.
Thing is, it’s not just him, it happens all the time in my people pleasing mode where I am desperate for people to like me. I can’t help the neediness, it feels so old. So desperate for love that I will do anything it takes to get it. Sometimes the neediness escalates into a deep, dark coldness and loneliness. An existential dread of being alive and the meaninglessness that comes with it. Sometimes the pain creeps in so quickly that I don’t notice it is there until I’m eating an entire tub of ice cream and zoning out watching a movie that I’m not interested in. I want to numb myself from this experience of utter dread and isolation. Wondering what the point is of life and wanting to sit with Nietzsche and curse human existence.
Alternatively, I start trying to make plans and reaching out to as many people as possible to convince myself I am not destined for loneliness the rest of my life. Or I may start booking my week or day as busy as I can to forget this feeling in the background. Slowing down means feeling the sadness and I’m too afraid. Afraid it will take me over and paralyze me--it feels like death.
“You cannot heal the things you cannot feel.”-Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Warming the Stone Child
I start to feel victimized and sorry for myself that I am alone and without a partner and that I can’t seem to make a romantic relationship work. Devastated that I seem to keep falling for unavailable men or those who don’t care for me in return. Or alternatively falling for men only because of the safety and security they offer instead of loving them. Angry that our society puts such an emphasis on romantic partnership, but I feel separated from friends too. Everyone seems far away, I feel locked up inside a cage and unable to escape or build a bridge to connection.
Then I slow down, put down the cold ice cream, stop myself from offering to help others and feel it. This feeling of coldness as if my insides are made of ice. As if the warmth that should be my internal self is nothing but lifeless stone. The profound loneliness and melancholy that comes with a deep sense of not feeling loved or connected.
I don’t need to know how or where this coldness came from anymore, I just know it’s probably not going away for good. Then I remember Saturn, the slow, heavy planet that inhabits my chart with a karma and beauty I haven’t yet fully been able to appreciate as it would rather hang out in my unconscious (nadir/IC for you astro folks) that reveal itself in my consciousness. Saturn has two major expressions: icy or weepy (I tend towards the later more often, thanks to my Cancer rising.)
“Saturn seems to have impressed the seal of melancholy on me from the beginning.” -Marsilio Ficino
When Saturn is in relationship to the Sun or Moon in a natal chart it can certainly evoke a sense of separation and loneliness. However, when Saturn is with Venus the planet of love and relating it can become an entire suppression of the sense of feeling connected at all. And that is what we do as mammals, in fact to not feel connected is similar to death on a basic survival level.
I’ve often felt my Venus opposite Saturn to be the most devastating part of my chart and even astrologer Liz Greene agrees with Venus-Saturn as “one of the most painful contacts to deal with.” She goes on to say, “More than any other aspect Venus-Saturn appears to strike at a person’s happiness…a nagging discontent and the feeling that one will never be able to be happy or take pleasure in life.”
As a woman with a lot of Venus in her chart (Sun in Taurus, Moon conjunct Venus at the midheaven, and Venus squaring my ascendant), Saturn creates a suppression of the part of me I most want to express in the world. This weekend’s new moon was conjunct Venus and opposite Saturn shed some light onto the part of me that wanted Saturn to remain hidden in my shadows. Today Venus is also exactly conjunct the Sun and wants to be seen. No doubt this is an ideal time to think (Gemini) about our relationship how we related (Venus) to the karmic lord Saturn himself. In addition, Saturn went retrograde on March 25, 2016 and will seem to move backwards in the sky until August 13 when it begins to go direct. Even more interesting, yesterday Saturn began an exact square to Neptune helping us dissolve illusions.
“It is the area of relationships that human beings are the most vulnerable, and consequently it is here they can make the greatest steps in growth and self-understanding.” – Liz Greene
Of course, I don’t blame Saturn for my attachment junk and needy little girl, it just so happens the propensity for this unconscious pattern is stronger if someone has this complex. In the past I filled this emptiness with accomplishments or objects, to feel a sense of being surrounded by bounty, but I didn’t feel bountiful. Saturn is a hungry ghost for whatever we feel we are missing that can’t be filled…with Saturn-Venus it is often love.
As with all planets, Saturn is not maleficent nor benevolent, instead has a spectrum of expressions that may be present at any given time. That being said, Saturn certainly has a reputation for evoking more of the detrimental versus uplifting archetypes. It rules time and therefore cycles of karma.
Here are some of the more difficult ways Venus-Saturn may show up in someone with this aspect (though you may also hear yourself if you have Saturn Moon or Sun contacts):
· Long-distance love (I have been in many of these)
· Fear of love and intimate relationships
· Unrequited love (heartbreak, ugh yes)
· Feeling alienated from love
· Scarcity of love
· Isolation from connection
· Judging love and people we care for
· Difficulty receiving love or awkwardness with affection
· Attempt to control love or relationships
· Uncomfortable with pleasure
· Tight with money
· Choosing work over pleasure
Perhaps more positive expressions might include:
· Taking love very seriously
· Long-term love
· Patient in love
· Karmic partnership
· Practical love
· Love of someone older
· Stable, secure relationship
· Boundaries with love
· Expert on love and pleasure
· Elegance and timeless beauty
· Discerning with love
· Getting more beautiful with age/time
When I look at this list I begin to shift my experience and choose to focus more on myself as someone who is wise in love (and hopefully gets more beautiful with age). An astrologer once told me that Saturn-Venus aspects tend to be more difficult when we are younger, because with consciousness and enough heartbreak those of us seem to grow in wisdom. Perhaps the highest expression of Venus-Saturn contact is the capacity for a love that stands the test of time.
How do we heal the loneliness, coldness, and isolation that Saturn often evokes? We heal it with love and warmth. We heal it with slowness and time--with our own wisdom. We heal it with feeling (the moon) and consciousness (the sun), and love/connection (Venus). Ultimately we heal it with realizing our own worthiness and that there is no need to grasp or fall prey to Saturn’s ideas of fear or scarcity. Good relationships, good feelings, fullness, and abundance are our birthright…no matter what Saturn is doing in our chart, or in the sky.