The Thinking Other Woman

                      Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash

Oh, the misery of falling in love with someone married. Gripped with anxiety, some of us turn to esoteric (and some say, fraudulent) sources of information, reassurance … or perhaps just self-soothing.

Nonetheless, I've found that occult studies such as astrology and tarot, when approached with deep thought, are often wellsprings of wisdom.

Consider, if you will, the following yod, which I've stared at in the relationship chart of myself and a certain married person many times, with sort of a vague idea of what it means:

Generated on astro.com. The "yod" is the dashed triangle in green.I have a whole treatise on yods in relationships here, but the short version of the lore about yods in astrology is: they describe some conundrum in your life that is extremely difficult to make work out well. The long end of the yod, the "tip of the witch's hat," if you will, is said to be working against whatever the two planets at the bottom symbolize.

This chart is our Davison, which is said to reflect the purpose and possible future trajectories of a relationship. A lot of yods really suck, but the tip of this one appears most fortunate: The Sun and Venus, separated by only three degrees, and the Vertex - a fated meeting - one degree off that.

You can't get much better than that. House Seven is the house of marriage, relationship, and partnership, and Venus here really is the goddess of love. Virgo is not a great sign for old Venus, there, in fact, the worst sign Venus can be in, but the Sun sitting almost on top of it is a great influence here. Anyway, how bad can Venus in Virgo be? I can think of a lot of worse combinations! The worst thing you can say about it is that this goddess of love is trying very hard to be dutiful here, and very anxious and worried, when she's more at home in tolerant, fair Libra or earthy, homey Taurus.

Now we have to look at the legs, or the bottom corner of the witch's hat. One of these corners is Saturn in Aquarius, where it traditionally rules, House Twelve, and the other is Jupiter in Aries, House One (almost in House Two). 

Before I knew much about astrology, I used to stare at this thing and wonder. I knew that Saturn symbolizes restriction, hard lessons, difficulty, bad luck, and discouragement in astrology, whereas Jupiter is seen as the highest benefic - great good luck, happiness, and optimism. The worst thing you can say about Jupiter is that it sometimes reflects the tendency to go overboard, sort of like a gambler betting an entire month's salary, sure he can't lose.

I always used to think that, because the Sun and Venus were up there at the top, surely they couldn't be "getting in the way" of anything, as is usually the case with a yod. Especially since Jupiter echoes the whole happy vibe. The whole thing seemed to me to be a decently compatible relationship, with the Saturn and Jupiter at the bottom providing advice: Don't get too optimistic or too pessimistic about this. Either mistake will sink the ship.

Not the traditional way to interpret yods, but what else are you going to think with all these benefics in here?

In the past few days a couple of other writers have detailed what looks like the final breakups of their affair relationships right on Medium. In one relationship, both parties are writing, so you can read both sides of the story. One relationship broke up because the married couple stayed married; the other one is breaking up even though the married couple broke up also.

While reading these dramas, I also received a tarot reading that sounded an awful lot like my yod, up there. In it I was told that hanging back and not speaking destroys the relationship, and that possible reasons for failure to communicate include anger because of abandonment wounds, and low self-worth that convinces someone that the other person would be angry and not want to speak to them anyway.

I haven't heard from my former affair partner in over five years. I have gotten suspicious hits on my website over the five years and I don't see who else this particular view pattern might be; but this person doesn't speak to me and I don't expect him to. However, I think this whole paradigm that's been presented to me explains the dynamics of the affair relationship and why it always breaks down.

Think about it. People who have affairs may very much want to get divorced and start over with someone else; but I don't care who you read, the thoughtful folks in my pub https://medium.com/unfaithful-perspectives-on-the-third-party who agonize over all the pain and disruption to their entire family, or the blithely defiant cheaters over in The Scarlett Letter (also on Medium) blatantly teaching each other how to cheat and not get caught, the one denominator common to all is: 

They're afraid to leave their marriages.

I mean … c'mon, y'all. If the cheating spouse could leave their marriage, it wouldn't be an affair.

Invariably, if somebody's cheatin' and the naughty couple falls in love, what results is years of pushmepullyou: The cheated-with longs for more. The cheater promises the moon. But, then … nothing happens except a pile of excuses, "Not-right-now, honey"s, and, "As soon as the children finish (the next phase of school, no matter what grade they are in.)"

Until the cheated-on finds out. Then the cheater goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. This continues for years until someone, usually the cheated-with, has had enough and ends the relationship.

And then … and then …

The cheater slinks back and tries to resume the cheat relationship! (Oh, the drah-mah.) Yes, this even happened to me. Five years ago.

In most cases, this is where the affair relationship breaks up for good. Even when the marriage is also over! But why?

I mean, good grief. I'm watching one couple right now who clearly has a decent shot at making a go of it.

But, oh, woe, those Abandonment Wounds. 

Seriously, what else do you expect after a person has been strung along and disappointed so many times? But, despite those broken promises, it's often more complicated than that.

I once wrote that it isn't just what's happening now that brings up feelings in a relationship, it's what happened before. Long before. Therapist Mark Smith points out (linked on this website on the page "IMPORTANT VIDEO") that when a cheated-on spouse reacts with great trauma and can't get past even a devoted and chastened spouse vowing to do anything to repair the marriage, that person has abandonment wounds from childhood in their background.

It may not be obvious from a cursory glance at the family of origin, but in some way the parents didn't respond in a way that person needed as a child, and now the cheater has failed that person again. The cheated-with is no different. This person probably has the same childhood issue connected with the unavailability of a parent.

Both partners of the cheater also take it very personally that this individual has someone else. Every time he switches partners, the person who's currently out of favor feels disrespected and put down. "It's gotta be me."

But it doesn't have to be you. Even the most cursory trip through the headlines on this pub reveals cheaters who were just narcissists, who would have cheated on anyone just because they needed that dopamine hit.

This isn't to say that every cheater is a narcissist. (Although it is fashionable to think so these days.) Many of these folks have low self-worth and are very codependent. The same thing that makes them fawn over a distant spouse, trying harder and harder to get their needs met until they just can't stand it any more, also impairs their ability to make their minds up as they agonize over everyone's feelings except their own. Then they don't communicate their needs and feelings even when they know what they are, out of fear of rejection.

Kind of sounds like the two legs of our otherwise good-looking relationship yod up there, doesn't it? Seems as if that one pattern in that one chart diagrams just about every relationship that would otherwise survive a love triangle. Even a husband and wife who want to stay together can fall victim to the same thing.

Is it possible to overcome this? Sure. 

But you may need to add a little thought.

P.D. Reader is an NCGR level one astrologer student.