Ikasten (HABE)
Can We Break Our Patterns In Love And Dating?
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To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer. Not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you’re getting this down. ~ Woody Allen
Part of why I decided to start this site with Sammy is that I love to talk about love. I always have, except for those total oasis times in my life where I’ve had none, and then the opposite side of the coin denoted my feelings – I hated talking about love (and everyone else seemed to want to). Even in the hating love-moments (being part of the same coin and everything), the subject is almost always on my mind – some might call it obsessive. I call it being a romantic.
So it didn’t surprise me when, during my first astrology reading, I was told I am a Venus in Scorpio (at least after it was explained to me). For those of you who don’t know what the hell that implies, it basically means being a glutton for punishment in the area of romance. More kindly – to myself and others of the same condition – it means I’m loyal, sexually charged, and at times, a bit mad. Or as Jessica Shephard wrote in her post on the subject, I’m a part of a group that has an “intense need for both passionate involvement in her relationships and creative life, along with the necessity of periodic reinvention.”
Ah, yes. Intense need for passion. Both a great draw and a downfall. In my younger years, my male contemporaries couldn’t handle it for long – initially hooked in by the dramatic flair, they ran away kicking and screaming by Act III when I lost it, once again. I quickly decided older men could handle me better (or at least they were so excited about dating a younger woman, they’d put up with more). For most of my 20s, I dated men who were at least 20 years older than me. Eventually, though, they too would scamper off.
It’s certainly tough to love love and yet be so allergic to it. Thing is, the excitement (and deep, dramatic sadness) comes from the desire for another. Often, once I’ve “gotten” that other, the excitement quickly fades. I begin to feel trapped, or that this wasn’t the person I thought he was. I get itchy, bored. They inevitably notice this and consciously or unconsciously begin to pull back. Suddenly, I perk up, wondering what I’ve done wrong, why they are moving away… ‘wait! but we’re PERFECT together!‘ The cycle would continue as long as they could stand it. And so I was always left feeling no one ever really loved me (also the plight of the Four).
It was only in my late 20s, as I sat in a class and wrote down the name of every man I’d dated or been interested in for the seven years before, that the pattern struck me – hard and loud. Damn, no wonder I was always single. I spent most of my time pining over guys that either weren’t available to me, or just weren’t into me. Or, I drove them crazy.
Noticing our patterns is certainly the first step in changing them. But it’s not the only one, nor is it a guarantee that we’ll actually change. And here’s the tricky part: I’m not sure I’ll ever FULLY change. Or that any of us can fully change from our “bad” patterns, no matter how often we point our fingers at them.
As a very wise astrologer friend recently said to me: “It’s hard to find a man who is patient but not smothering. You need someone close, but not too close.” In a way, that’s just a part of my genetic/emotional/energetic make-up. Fighting it becomes exhausting.
Yet, the edges certainly have softened over time. At some point, I decided to be continually honest with the men I get involved with, and I think all the work I’ve done on myself over the last say, eight years or so, has drawn a different type of man toward me. They tend to understand what they are getting into, and in some ways, thrive off of it. And I explain myself in a way I didn’t used to, in the way where before I expected them to just know. Now I provide a little guide map and point out the speed bumps when they are coming up on the horizon.
Jessica adds that a Venus in Scorpio flourishes in a strong, committed relationship:
To arrive there she must move to higher ground – rise above the betrayals, secrets, violations, abuses and power imbalances she’s perpetrated or endured. In the bid for higher love, she must take back her beauty and power…When she does that, then, to the people she loves, she offers a sacred cauldron of safety, protection & kindness during the most difficult times.
She continues that while passion and danger seem to be the call for a Venus in Scorpio, intimacy and vulnerability are their pathways to a sacred relationship. When you think about it, being vulnerable is just about the most dangerous thing we can do, because being vulnerable puts our ego on edge. Ooh and ouch. Uncomfortable and threatening as hell.
But I can tell you, the returns on intimacy are beyond comprehension.
I’ve tried to loosen my grip on my need to “change” what is in someways, my birthright. I’m firey. I’m passionate. I go back and forth on just about everything. I love to be called a goddess, to be worshiped by a man (in his own way, not some pre-determined rite). Instead, seeing myself for who I am – in love, in life – and most importantly, being honest about that self, sheds the larger self-sabotage. So I’m not fighting my innateness, but rather shining a light on it, giving it a hug, even laughing at it at times.
And sharing these truths with you just continues that process. Hopefully, sharing some of your truths here will do the same for you.