How astrology changed my approach to relationships

Struggling to find my keys at the doorstep, I stopped for a second and checked the time on my phone. It was 2am — I was feeling relatively tired and tipsy after my company’s Christmas party and I had gone through a break-up just 7 hours ago. I probably drank enough to the point where my head was clouded but my thoughts were still intact. After giving up searching for my keys, I sat at one of our front yard chairs and hoped the cold, dry wind was enough of a minor punishment for now. Deep down into my subconscious, I knew I just didn’t want to go into my room just yet — her bed sheet and blankets where still laid on my bed and I dreaded the thought of having to return those at some awkward point during the following week.

I asked myself what truly went wrong — hoping the stars above could give me some sort of answer. I had just started learning about astrology— her and I used to joke and talk about it frequently for fun, so much so that memories of those conversations came rushing back at an instant — that I was a Scorpio and that she was just another incompatible fire sign. Back then, I didn’t really care about the ‘incompatibilities’. I just felt that our relationship could work through some communication and compromise.

And when we didn’t work out, I wanted to know the why.

I wanted to understand why we had so many heated arguments. Why I felt somewhat trapped and emotionally exhausted at certain points. Why my inner emotional, possessiveness would at times take over and ruin a good date. Why I felt both some sense of relief and sadness that our relationship was finally over.

I was also tired of talking about it during my therapy sessions. I think I had enough of talking to a stranger who effectively failed to connect with me on a personal level before digging deep into my psyche. Meanwhile, certificates were hanging on the office wall, right above a messy desk, perfectly distracting on a weekly basis and proudly boasting a sense of superficial perfection I couldn’t care less about. I just wanted something real and relatable, rather than some textbook gibberish you could get for free on some LifeHacks page. Don’t get me wrong — my counselor was perfectly cool, but in the back of my head, we never clicked anyway and so I guess that low-key annoyed me.

And so I decided to set myself a goal: a 1 year dating hiatus until I was able to figure my sh** out.

Ok, maybe that’s a bit dramatic (plus this all happened around the end of 2019, but I thought I’d share the story for context anyway), since I know we aren’t meant to get along with everyone, but I still wanted to understand how people worked—what made them tick. At that point I felt like I was rather socially awkward and so by doing so, hoped I’d find a way to understand why I acted or felt the way I did, so that I could better, not just my relationships with potential significant others, but also friends, family and the occasional random stranger. I tried devouring most of the basic articles and online videos, love languages (Quality time), enneagrams (type 5w4) and even Myers-Briggs (INFJ) but I didn’t want to follow any sort of curriculum. I didn’t want to be placed in a certain category, if that makes sense. I wanted something with intuition. Something I could feel. Something off-beat.

Eventually, I landed unto a general tarot reading video and I realized that being a Scorpio meant I was just in another ‘category’. However, I forced myself to give it a shot, although I had a feeling it was just another newspaper horoscope rip-off. Plus, I never truly believed in anything relating to future predictions anyway and I still don’t. But as I listened onwards, I found myself resonating with some of the cards being shown — because they weren’t telling me what was going to happen, but instead, were showing the possibilities of what could come. And that hit me hard. Not because I was expecting anything to manifest, but because I just wanted to feel some sense of comfort and hope throughout my self-discovery. I wanted to know that it would be alright. That I could somehow affect these possibilities through logical gestures, while allowing the irrational thoughts to somewhat guide exactly that. The next step was to study my birth chart.

[If you want to find out more about your birth chart, click here. Bear in mind, you’ll need to enter you exact time of birth as well as the location/time-zone.]

What I discovered was that we all have a bit of every zodiac sign in us.

In other words, you aren’t just a Taurus or whole-heartedly an Aquarius. There is a possibility that you may be a Sagittarius with a few Capricorn traits sprinkled here and there. In other words, we all share some personality traits between each other — your Sun sign being the most dominant of them all. And to me, that was both intriguing and mind-blowing. While all the other aforementioned personality quizzes would place me into a certain category, birth charts showed me that we all belong in one huge collective. It cleared up the reasoning behind why so many people could not necessarily relate to their own Sun signs. It made me understand that I wasn’t just a Scorpio (Sun Sign — rules your zodiac personality and ego).

Disclaimer: I don’t personally believe that astrology is a science — but instead, a tool that can be used to explore the deeper meanings of who you are. Of course, it is not for everyone, so tread at your own expense.

In fact, my Moon sign (represents your emotions and inner mood) is Capricorn and my Rising sign, otherwise known as my Ascendant (represents your outlook on the world and the first impression you give off when you first meet someone) is Aries. Of course, there’s more to it, but I don’t want to dabble too deep into my chart. The important thing to understand, is that all these signs represent aspects of your behaviour and existing personality traits.

But, how do I utilize this information on myself to improve my relationships?

STEP 1 — Embrace who you are.

Read your birth chart, know what makes you tick and give yourself a pat on the back for even making it this far. Understand what it means to have a Moon in Aries or a Venus in Libra. Look at the positive traits within your birth chart and learn to use them as your strengths in various social situations. This also means, that you need to accept the ‘negative’ traits or, for a lack of a better term, the parts of you that you may not like.

Trust me, honest self-criticism can be a b****, but it’s the best way to re-evaluate your own self if you feel you aren’t you’re making the cut.

Lessons learnt: During that time, I felt proud of who I was. Less so when it came to my ‘negative’ traits, but I took it all in. This taught me how to take my emotions out of certain decisions, how to stay away from the feeling of ‘blind love' and to be more self-aware during those trigger points.

STEP 2— Do NOT use your chart as an excuse.

Just because your Mercury sign (represents your style of communication) is in Aries for example, doesn’t mean you can just go off blasting your thoughts out with no filter and expect someone to not get hurt by your words — thinking of my sensitive Pisces and Cancer friends out there!

“Hey, it’s been a while! Seems like you’ve gained weight since the last time you visited!”

Some will take this comment light-heartedly as mindless banter — others may take it personally and keep it to themselves until it grows into an insecurity.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing to have no filter. In fact, in some scenarios it can be positively practical. But hey, boundaries exist and we must learn to be mindful of others and respect them.

Lessons learnt: During the first couple of weeks of my dating hiatus, I constantly fell into the trap of an “I am the way I am, so deal with it” attitude, which inadvertently was somewhat toxic. I realized pretty quickly that I couldn’t just live as a protagonist in my head, but that I needed to understand that EVERYONE had their own birth chart and not everyone knew about it. It wouldn’t be energy-efficient to tell every person I ever met that this is how I viewed things. No — I needed to change parts of myself and improve instead. It would make interacting with people, that I naturally wouldn’t go along with, somewhat bearable at the least.

STEP 3 — Learn to adapt.

Think of it like the character creation from Cyberpunk 2077 — without the ‘extra’ bits of course.

You now understand your basic default self. You now know that everyone has their own basic default self. You also understand that you can’t change everyone because you know that they are their own person and that it is up to their own inner curiosity to figure all that out. So instead, do yourself a favor and ‘throw out’ anything you don’t need while keeping what it is you admire about yourself.

Example:

My Scorpio self was tired of feeling jealous and somewhat vindictive to those that hurt me. How could I use my logical and rational Capricorn moon side to control and stabilize that? If that doesn’t work, how do I at least control my actions through my free-spirited Sagittarian side? Aries rarely hold a grudge — can I use that to overpower my Scorpion ego?

Lessons learnt: At this point, I was learning to focus my energy on the people that mattered to me. I felt like that was the only way I would be able to fully be confident of who I am and of course, take it a step at a time. I eventually found myself scrolling through my social media accounts, checking everyone’s birthdays and retrospectively understanding why certain interactions went a certain way. Why I struggled getting along with the air signs (Gemini, Aquarius and Libra) back then — when now some of my closest friends include both Air and Fire signs. I started embracing, not just my own chart, but everyone else around me. I learnt to see their perspective of life and what they valued. Was I able to compromise with most of that? Maybe not, but at least I understood where they were coming from. And that taught me the biggest lesson of them all.

STEP 4 — Appreciating people for who they are.

For those who know me well, I used to be overly pessimistic — about people, society and anything else you could think of. In a way, it was my way of coping and always having a ‘Plan Z’ if you may. But that all changed of course.

It was weird at first. I got to the point where I could remember people’s Sun signs before I could remember their names. I would look at my co-workers and somewhat predict how they’d act. For those who exposed more of themselves and bothered to find out about their birth charts, I learnt to figure out how they deal with problems and mainly how to calm them down.

However, when it came to strangers, I realized their ‘zodiac name tags’ were a bit fuzzy. I could technically judge who they are, but that would be counter-intuitive, since I would be seeing their Ascendant instead of their Sun sign. And that’s when I found out how cool that was.

If I met someone new, I wouldn’t directly know their Sun sign of course, but judging based on how each sign would interact later on, I could allow myself the luxury to predict whether our next interactions would be a smooth or bumpy ride. And therefore, stay cautious if I ever was treading over thin ice.

I learnt to love how direct and assertive Aries people were, while also knowing when to back off and avoid conflict due to their relatively high temper. I knew how much Taureans cared about their social stability, but also how we shared the same sense of purpose in life. I fell for the fun experiences Gemini’s could provide but also knew that if I wanted to talk at a deeper level, I’d have to do so with the next sign in line. Cancer’s nurturing and positive outlook of life definitely matched my intensity but I needed to be aware when it came to treading past any extreme emotional limits. Although, I used to find them a bit much for my taste at first, Leo’s (my dad’s one of them, so don’t @ me) had a sense of self-confidence, passion and charm that definitely grew on me and inspired my current optimism. Meanwhile, Virgo’s taught me respect, pride in one’s work and the ability to control my emotions when needed while also balancing that determination and grit for perfection. And speaking of balance, if I couldn’t tip the scales, at least I knew I could trust my fair-minded Libra’s out there (as someone who was raised by one, I should know). And when it came to the extremes, know that I’ll always be somewhat biased and have a soft spot for my fellow Scorpio’s. And since there are times where I feel like too much of an open book with Scorpio’s(I sometimes feel like we can sense and ‘read’ each other a bit too well), I turn towards my free-spirited and soothing Sagittarians instead. With a mind so honest and optimistic, I admire your passion for exploration but at the end of the day, I also want some sense of structure. To my Capricorns, I definitely rank you as my favourites. My own moon sign admires the ambitious and disciplined approach to life — although, I must say, we can be a bit too into our work towards future goals sometimes — we need to learn how to not be too stiff at times. And if anyone can do that properly, that’s eccentric Aquarius. It can be hard to grasp the sense of freedom and quirkiness you may want in your life (I have two in my birth chart), but I love that you are that way. I understand your sense of independence (as I like to call myself an individualist at times) but also respect the selflessness you imbue unto others. Last but not least, Pisces can share that similar selfless behaviour but it’s your deep intuition and sensitive nature that catches my eye. You know how to forgive better than any sign and have an imagination with no boundaries — and as a creative myself, I appreciate that.

Just be (the best) you

In fact, there’s so much more I should and could write about what I love about each sign, since it’s not all that clear-cut — and that was just off the top of my head. There’s a LOT to learn from each zodiac sign!

Remember, we all have a bit of every sign in us — some more than others. You may also not entirely agree with what I see as a ‘negative’ or ‘positive’ trait (some of you may see the possessiveness as a good thing — I don’t judge of course) but that’s the beauty of it. You get to choose what you want, how much you are willing to compromise for and how you plan on building a better version of yourself. The more I learned about astrology, the more fascinating it got when I noticed a part of myself in someone else — even if it was just 1/12 of it.

And when it came to relationships, whether it’s friends, family or S.O., I felt like I genuinely understood where they were coming from. I found that life experiences can also affect their actions and behaviours despite what their birth chart says of them. Because it’s never that simple to normalize this concept of pseudoscience. Because for the most part, emotions are intangible and what we feel can not always be described logically — and I knew that beforehand too.

The journey ahead

I’m not done tinkering with the parts that make me who I am — and I believe we never should be. I hope to continuously evolve and learn more than just astrology of course, but I also hope this gives someone a different perspective when it comes to personal development, should they need it.

As for my final outlook on relationships? I don’t need to know someone’s zodiac sign to necessarily get along with them — I’m not that type of astrology addict. In fact, astrology taught me the different ways one can view the world and how that can change my entire mindset during social interactions. And so, knowing that we are all a part of each other’s lives — I hope you, whoever you are, know that I will appreciate your unique self.