|
Talking about Love
Edited by Lidia Fassio
Love is something that we all want more of in the world, that we all gasp for, we all hope to a real partner and dream of a life lived in a state of perennial love; most people have of the a vision of love like fairy tale that ends with the words “and they lived together happily ever after". Unfortunately, however, the fable finishes at the moment in which a relationship begins, and the fable is no longer thought about.
If we enquire a little deeper on what the people think about Love, we discover some interesting things.
many people are convinced that love is something that is acquired automatically; others are convinced that love is "to be loved";
another big and rasher part of humanity thinks that love should be subordinated to meeting the right person;
others still have the sensation that the love is a passive condition, something that "arrives in life", without in any way instead thinking of Love an act, therefore something that we can or cannot make happen.
A really small number of people know that a true, mature and gratifying relationship, based on the reciprocal love, can only exist when the problems that arose in the first relationship of your life have been examined and faced; the one with our mother, when all the "needs" that were sacrosanct in that part of life have been overcome, but that, if they were not rewarded, will keep on existing and making themselves felt in all the relationships that will involve us as grown-ups.
In the mind of many persons a great confusion reigns besides between love and need.
In astrological terms, too often it is thought that it should be enough to look at the Venus position in the natal chart to know what we look for in a relation and the type of person we want. This can be also be true, but it is reductive because the planet does not announce only the type of person that will attract us, but goes much more into details that are strictly connected to the formation and to development of our identity, to which certainly they contribute in love and in relationships.
In my experience of couples I can say that, without fear of being contradicted, that the accounts based on love are very few - those that we can astrologically define as the seventh house, while there are many who have other aims and that are founded therefore on "needs" which we can call lunar.
Venus, like lady of the 7th house - which Balances - represents the possibility for a person of encountering the unknown part of himself/herself through a relationship, carrying out the sophisticated mechanism of projection, or hooking onto the partners positive and negative personal qualities, which are generally unknown to the subject.
its main domicile in the first house over the horizon presupposes the overcoming of certain infantile and emotional themes that are characteristic of the imperfect closing of the relationships with parental figures.
An adult can establish true psychological relationships only when he/she has managed to make the undifferentiated mass of the family I emerge, that automatically responds and does not allow a true separation.
The subjects that have not solved these problems always aim to have a "triangular" approach to
relatives or other persons in their relationships in order to create complicity that allows the original dynamics to remain intact.
Another important point to be included is due to the fact that while the Ascendant is the sign that rises at the moment of our birth and represents everything that is easily visible and identifiable in us, the sign on which the Descendant rests, is what in the same moment is happening in the darkness and, in psychological terms, is hidden in the unconscious.
Everything we meet between the walls of the 7th house will be something that belongs to us but that we will discover the "differences" from ourselves through another.
Venus represents either the possibility of meeting and bringing it close to us, or an unrepeatable occasion to discover that part of us that is unconscious.
Venus is tied to the archetype of discovery and myth and in fact it wants to self-generate through a relationship in order to feel complete and self-gratified, give itself a greater value; in a few words it represents the possibility of knowing oneself.
In mythology Aphrodite is the loving relationship that is intellectual and creative since, if a union is true and there is heart and spirit, there is a kind of alchemy that leads to a psychological, emotional and spiritual growth.
When it is a Venus that influences this loving relationship it will never be circumscribed purely to the purely romantic or sexual sphere because for her the union is at the level of soul - psyche that always involves growth, a change of values and personal enrichment.
its way of proceeding begins with attraction (the Goddess is fortified with an irresistible magic belt) then who it wins over (therefore making Eros intervene by shooting an arrow); however, the search does not only consist in love, but in what 'love can
lead at the level of internal energy; it is something that is put into movement and that drives to discovery passing through the communion and the exchange with other.
In a union Venus looks for a reinforcement and a widening of its own sense of identity; in fact it is one of the personal planets that assist in the process of individualization, together with Mercury and Mars.
With Venus everything must enter into communication and this is quite different from the emotional symbiosis that the Moon wants that instead of searching for a fusion with others loses and mixes its identity in an attempt to recreate that certainty and
heavenly sensation that guarantees belonging, protection and roots.
Venus has its main domicile in an Air sign and represents entering into communication without getting lost and without merging, but trying to discover the parts of the other that are reflected. A mature love is an union on condition of protecting the integrity of both and it is an energy that manages to remove the barriers that separate us, something that lets us overcome a sense of isolation and of loneliness, but that at the same time allows an individual to remain himself/herself and to keep his uniqueness and individuality. All of this is only possible if there is emotional separation and if there is freedom.
With Venus two people have the possibility of approaching, of comparing and trying to be with each other while it is still not that transcendence that will lead to regeneration, since this will happen later, through the diabolic seduction - passion of the eighth house.
Jung arranges the sentiment between two rational functions; what is tried instead by love is an instinct, drive and emotion — something that guides us and that often reigns over it and that is absolutely irrational, caused by the senses and not by reason. The Aphrodite myth reminds us that only she was the one to make the "choice", but the fact of intervention thus allows Eros to show that love needs distance, perspective and reflexion, characteristics that give us reasoning.
Astrologically speaking Venus works in relation to about three astrological houses and, obviously, three signs:
First domicile in Taurus - 2nd house
Here affectivity has its origin with our contact with our mother. It is the look, the way of touching the child, his reduction and the pleasure that she proves for her child that she will make her send back a sense of total acceptance that will change into the sensation of being "deserving of love" and of possessing a personal value from which a sense of self-esteem will result, which is fundamental to facing any equal relationship.
There is, however, a total symbiosis and dependence on the object of love in this first phase and exchange is not a union: the child enjoys the contact, is avid for affection and must receive unconditionally: this initial fulfilment will allow him/her to become a someone who is able to Give and to Love in the future, (only those who have received will be able to give because he is rich).
In this part of life love is used for satisfying each need of the child, but the mother is still not conceived as being separate and autonomous.
It is an instrumental and infantile love that looks in the other person for the reflection of and confirmation of one’s own existence (there is still no one ), here the child thinks "i am loved... therefore... I exist).
If this phase is not completed properly, the parenthetic clause then a need to be satisfied will remain in the mind, ready to be released when, as grown-ups, we come into contact with our partner. Two types of relationships are based on this:
those of support: in which a motherly model is seen, someone who contains, is nourishing and satisfies needs but who also reflects a positive image that allows closing the gap with identity and the self-esteem shortcomings.
Narcissistic people: for whom the other is only an object and is only loved as such.
Both these ways have nothing to do with love and "a relationship" since this is only when two persons are both differentiated and separate.
In both these forms there is a search for confirmation of one’s own existence or someone who confirms an identity that does not exist; it is explained very well in the phrase "if she/he is not here I... will die"., exactly what a new-born baby thinks about its own mother.
Here there is no love but only an engulfing of the other - the relationship is symbiotic in which one depends and one supports the other.
According to domicile - Cancer - 4th house
Here affectivity must grow and this happens in relation to the motherly figure, a process that will allow a child to tolerate the frustration when the "the object of love" is not present. It is the "object of perseverance" that gains if the mother is able to favour and reward the efforts of autonomy that the child faces, but is also ready to give attention and provide certainty when it is needed. At this age the child easily becomes anxious even for short term periods, since it has not yet acquired the internal sensation that the mother is there and loves him/her even if she is not constantly present.
In this phase a child also begins to interact with other members of the family - goes out of the dyad and enters into an affective triangle.
If this phase is not completed in positive way, the temperament will be that of "clinging" which is typical of Cancer in which "to be apart and to be autonomous" creates anxiety, panic and insecurity.
These people, who are adults that depend on one other, sometimes even need a physical presence; they want protection, warmth and general acceptance.
If there is no other person they feel lost and life loses its meaning.
For these subjects others must be there because they are "weak and fragile" and are dependent on continuous affection.
In practical terms they love their mother and if they do not get what they want they develop clinging and manipulative attitudes alternated by needs of control over others that they exercise through emotional blackmail.
These appear again at any manifestation of independence from the other and become depressed if the other person spends a lot of time away from them.
Also, in order to do things (10th house) they need someone who "provides" them what they need when they need it.
These two types of relationships are very common but are much more lunar than Venus, and Venus in these two instances regards the process of the formation of the values, with a sense of self-esteem and with the sensation of being unconditionally loved and accepted; this base will allow a child to part without feeling itself destroyed and without being afraid of abandonment (2nd house). In the fourth house Venus prepares the relationship when the child starts exchanging affection with other members of the family and a personal concept of "relationship" forms.
These two phases are the presuppositions for the last and most important Venus symbol in the 7th house that represents "the choice and the psychic relationship". If, however, there is not enough of a separate identity, if there is no sense of self-esteem and if personal values have not been structured, they will not be chosen by us but only through instinct and compulsion (it anchors Moon).
Mature that in the 7th house is characterised by the overcoming of the two phases described above to let the relationships be based on the psychological differences that are discovered through the comparison of two identities that are different and separate, during which merger imaginations leave in search of everything that can be shared and exchanged with others.
The seventh house is a contractual house which means that it must be able to negotiate with other changes that intervene and all of it is in constant search of new balances.
In this house other’s identity grows through the continuous withdrawal of projections that are thrown onto the other and that little by little come back to us because of the reflexion that Venus produces.
In the present state of the things, even though we are in an era in relationships can be talked about, unfortunately we keep on setting them up as relationships with second and fourth houses without ever joining them to a real psychological relationship in the 7th house and without ever knowing what love is.
Love is a search, it is an energy, it is tension towards each other, it is movement and knowledge, it is rational sentiment that is based on consciousness and on the acceptance of one’s own and the other's limits and on the presupposition of the freedom of choice for both as well as shared and reciprocal pleasure.
In the first part of our life we tend to repeat and search for known models that are imprinted in the psyche and await being able to latch onto a partner with whom the dynamics that are still being processed can still be lived.
Emotional problems interfere powerfully with affective ones and at times a real development of the latter is blocked and therefore, as soon as a relationship is established, the need to still address them reappear that will prevent true affectivity from emerging.
This is therefore the reason that Venus relationships are rare, and they are defined as being Olympic, because they are not based on needs, but on a real ability of relating equally to one another, knowing that this is free in the same way we are and knowing that WE can become one without losing our identity, and that on the contrary, we will widen and consolidate ourselves through what we will discover in the interaction with the other person.
In order to reach this phase it is necessary to have achieved the ability to be ourselves, of discovering who we are, what we want on the basis of the values we have identified.
Print this article
|
 |
|
