When I told this story the first time, someone asked for some astrology on the men and to tell you the truth I don’t know much about them. The first husband was having a Uranus transit, I can tell you that. But it was the women who turned out to be interesting.
For starters this was a big dilemma for me. There is such a thing as confidentiality of course. But I had this idea I should introduce these two women. Because think about it.
I was talking to both of them and both of them were in terrible pain. Might it help them to know this woman was a serial cheater? With men named XXXXX, who are married to Leo Rising, Pisces Women with Pluto and Uranus opposite their Sun? I thought it might. But I also thought I might ought to keep my mouth shut! In the end I did tell them about each other and they became friends. But that’s not all.
I also became friendly with both women which is another weird boundary thing. I have heard some astrologers say you shouldn’t have anyone as a client you wouldn’t like to have as a friend. That’s something to think about but other astrologers are far more detached. For example, I know I can advise anyone. It doesn’t matter if I like them or not, I’m going to do my best work. On the other hand, if I had a client is just a total pain I don’t think I would like that all, so the idea may have some merit.
In whatever case I worked with the first gal, was contacted by the second and I introduced them some weeks later. The first gal stayed with her husband. The second women divorced. Two fish, two directions.
Both women, though hurting had perspective, a sense of humor and a level of understanding I admired. They received support (not just from me, but in general) and they held up phenomenally well. They also became friends and at this point I removed myself from the situation… but not for long.
It was about two months later the first woman contacted me for another consultation. Seems she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Whaaat?
She was in her early thirties, with a young child. A baby, really. A two year old. And my son was three at the time, so I really felt this. How do you die when you have a little kid, hmm? Let’s just say it hit close to home. And I got to thinking about that woman who did the cheating with the husbands. I wondered about her karma. Can you imagine? It reminded me of a story.
I once had a brazen friend. Come to think of it, all my friends are brazen but anyway she had a habit of parking in handicapped parking places. I know, I know and she would defend it.
“How many people use them, anyway? There’s no one ever parked there! And can you believe someone had the nerve to confront me…”
“Well you know,” I said. “You’re not handicapped. And has it ever occurred to you that you’re tempting fate? What if you park in those spots now when you don’t need them and then wind up needing them…”
She never parked in a handicapped spot again. And I thought of this story in relation to the cheating woman. Say you nab someone’s husband. And then six months later, that woman is dying of cancer, leaving a baby behind. What’s that feel like, hmmm? It was chilling really. On all levels.
Skip to Breast Cancer and Storytelling
as freaky as the level of coincidence will always seem what strikes me most about this experience is that I now have much more perspective due to my astro twin. any time something has seemed aweful I remember that I don’t have to deal with what she did (knock wood) and I am grateful. and sad.
Right on Elsa.. I agree.. never tempt fate. It’s just not worth it. I am still amazed at the coincidence, but then again, I don’t believe in accidents.. not anymore!
I imagine it feels like a giant pain in the ass especially if it leads to bunches of people feeling like they can judge you.
Maybe it’s the Libra Mars in me but I’m feeling compelled to play devil’s advocate here although I’m not dismissing the pain of adultery orwhat it must feel like to have cancer and a baby.
I am all for ethics and personal responsibility, but the mistress did not give anyone cancer. She is also unlikely to have forced the husbands in question to shag her. And if she is sleeping with these unavailable men with the same name and same sort of wives then it speaks to me a lot more of what must be an issue/complex/bigmajorfuckupwound in her than of Karma.
Maybe I’m just weird but I tend to take a lot dimmer view of the cheating partner than of the person they cheated with. After all it is the partner who has made promises, and who is responsible for the marriage and the repercussions that infidelity might have. It’s they who break promises and betray.
Unless of course the person cheating is say, your friend, at which point they also get a telling off and become an ex-best friend.
I don’t have time to elaborate, other than to say I’ve been on both sides of the cheater’s fence, and I have to agree with Nia. Word for word. Great discussion!
Stole my words Nia!
I too don’t see what it has to do with the mistress.
Baloney. I agree that the cheater doesn’t get as much flak as the Other Woman/Guy but if you’re serially going after other people’s partners, you’re fucked. I can understand it happening once bc sometimes love takes us by surprise and stuff but when you make it a habit? No, rather, a fetish bc that’s what it is. A person who serially goes after others’ partners is being competitive and that’s not about love; it’s poaching. It’s trying to poach what someone else has bc you believe there’s not enough to go around. And, yes, it’s sad but my feeling sorry for someone like that doesn’t mean that I’m going to think it’s cool.
Sure, there’s an element of karma there but we do have freewill and we do have a responsibility to try to work with our “evil inclination” for good and not to hurt others. And, yes, adultery is a complicated matter bc the “betrayed” is not always as innocent as we think he/she is but either way, one has the responsibility to do one’s best to behave as ethically as possible toward others. You know, there is also such a thing as GOOD karma and you gotta earn the airmiles by facing down your own demons. Otherwise, it’d be a breeze to be good.
Either way, let’s not kid ourselves here, people, and let’s call it like it is. I’ve indulged in plenty of bad behaviors myself and while I can relate to someone doing them, I’m not going to just absolve someone bc I did them myself. That’s just an acrobatic way of justifying myself.
Btw, Liz Green has a great essay on triangles in which she deals with this particular subject.
“especially if it leads to bunches of people feeling like they can judge you”
That is part of belonging to society – people judge others for their actions every day – whether on the job, in romantic relationships, in friendships, in blog comments, in the tabloid press :P. And its unrealistic to say it shouldn’t ever happen. But each of has 2 (not mutually exclusive) options: 1) act in ways that we are personally proud of and 2) decide who’s opinion we care about and don’t worry about the rest.
That being said, I tend to agree with Marly’s take on the matter.
Did I miss reading something somewhere? Is 2 a series? Was “occupied” tattooed on the husband’s forehead?
I agree, there is freewill…No one forced the husband to cheat. The poor wife paid the price for not walking away and for perpetuating her stressful marriage.
I agree with Nia and Rainie, except for the karma part.
Spouses have made a legally binding commitment the other adulterer has not. It really is that simple. There are degrees of obligation and offense (moral, emotional, spiritual).
Like kundalini(or chi/qi), karma is a Sanskrit word easily misunderstood, and almost meaningless, out of its philosophical context.
Karma isn’t quite as simple as action=reaction, but one’s “issue/complex/bigmajorfuckupwound” *is* a symptom or manifestation of one’s karma. As are one’s talents, joys and pleasure.
“Issue” and “complex” are psychological terms and “karma” is not. Psychology is conditioned by karma. “Complexes” are conditioned by psychology. Liz Greene writes about this as “fate”, but she is an western alchemist/Jungian, not an eastern yogi. Similar principles, but formally different. I prefer more joyful psychological astrologers like Arroyo and Hamaker-Zondag.
Of course the husbands screw with their karma when they screw with other women, but people who screw with married people KNOWING that they’re married are doing the same to themselves. Why? Because it’s a shitty thing to do.
You know, with all this talk of karma, I am starting to wonder the condition of the Saturn, and 6/12 axis of the woman with cancer. We already know she is a Pisces with strong 8/PL themes. Life threatening illness and marital betrayal suggest a pretty heavy karmic burden of her own. I’m sure she doesn’t have Saturn in 12, but things are looking rough.
She has my boundless sympathy, because people are recognizing her story and connecting it to a specific individual – while the adulteress is still anonymous. So much for confidentiality.
I don’t know whose karma is worse, it all appears unfortunate.
People seem kind of oblivious to these aspects of karma(or loathe to discuss them), and how we may participate in tying even more difficult knots of karma through our mistakes of intellect/emotion while contemplating about such matters.
Why point the finger at someone’s behavior as karmically troubled and then sympathize with someone obviously reaping the highly unfortunate karma of cancer and a cheating spouse *in the present life*? Karma just isn’t intended to be invoked that way, and dharma is absent from its rightful place in the equation. All parties have lessons to be learned on the karmic wheel of samsara.
Elsa: pretty soon you’re going to have to start your own forum! You can call it Elsastrology.
Hi Marly!
>A person who
>serially goes after others’ partners is being >competitive and that’s not about love; it’s >poaching.
Agreed. But she’s not putting a gun to anyone’s head. Poaching won’t have power unless someone lets themselves be poached.
>Either way, let’s not kid ourselves here, >people, and let’s call it like it is. I’ve >indulged in plenty of bad behaviors myself and >while I can relate to someone doing them, I’m >not going to just absolve someone bc I did them >myself.
I don’t think understanding and absolution are the same things at all. I understand why my grandmother did the things she did but I have a very hard time forgiving her for it. I try to avoid blaming (except obviously my partner when he doesn’t do laundry to my standards) but responsibility is a different thing entirely. I’m not saying that she did nothing wrong-only that we shouldn’t lynch or demonise the woman or lose sight of the fact that it was the husband who chose to cheat.
>Btw, Liz Green has a great essay on triangles in >which she deals with this particular subject.
Yep, and she also did a great seminar on envy in case anyone has access to the CPA tapes in which she talks at length about triangles and adultery – particularly how infedelity is sometimes more about “the rival” than about the “object of desire”.
I don’t think I’m lynching the woman, am I? I’m definitely being judgmental, that’s for sure. Though I agree that we’re letting the husband(s) off the hook. I guess I find the Other Woman much more threatening than the Asshat Husband.
Ok. So I have a problem. I attract married men, men who cheat on me, men who leave me for other un-available women. I have never once said yes to a married or otherwise unavailable man – him lying is another story. You might ask why. Well, being cheated on taught me a basic concept – respect the vows/institution of marriage. It was created for a reason. If your marriage doesn’t work this isn’t the dark ages, file for divorce, separate, leave. Call me when you’re available. If more people operated with a bit of restraint and a bit of respect for the commitment that someone is attempting to live – maybe less pain in this world? I can hope. I can dream!
My guess is though, if the cheating woman didn’t care enough about the wife that she stole her husband, she wouldn’t really care if the wife got breast cancer…..
I never responded to all the critics on this but do stand by what I wrote.
I was looking at this from the woman’s perspective, which seems normal – I am a woman!
It seemed to me this gal had an imprint because she was flying in to nail the husbands with the same name and I was just contemplating how I would feel if I had done something similar.
Really, that is all that is going on in the story… I was relaying my feelings and thought process rather than making a charged statement or judgment.
This whole story is like everything else around here – It is an inkblot. You look at it and you see what you see and what I noted at the time… well I just looked through the cheaters eyes.
See, I have a real feeling of giving-ness or charity to women who are pregnant or have young children. This is just a character trait.
It is so hard to have a baby.. especially your first. You’re so tired and I just feel very strongly that people who are NOT taking care of a baby should not burden those who are.
The baby and the mother are just so vulnerable and to target the husband like sport… well, I do see this coming with a heavy karmic price tag.
As for the husband, I have thoughts about that too, they just did not make it into the story.
I agree with Elsa completely. Of course the woman who engaged in the affair equally shares the blame. She and the husband are partners in shame here. She willingly engaged in an activity that is deeply hurting someone else, not to mention innocent children, whose lives may now be completely uprooted, because of her selfishness. Good luck with that karma.
If I’m a sleezeball enough to steal your husband, I probably wouldn’t give a wit if you got cancer and died. I would probably be more worried that the husband I stole would have to pay more child support/ or less alimony or maybe god forbid, I’d be stuck taking care of ‘someone elses’ kid while the mom was sick and i might miss my pilates class or mani/pedi.
From a karmic standpoint, my monk told me that we have planted the seeds of samsara over millions and millions of life times (even though it feels like I get clobbered within 15 minutes of doing anything wrong) and when your Karma is ready to ‘ripen’ there is not much you can do b/c you have planted those seeds long ago.
Example: I was betrayed. I knew something was ‘not right’ and to figure it out, I made a conscious decision to be like a a ‘bad rogue undercover cop’. And my friends were HORRIFIED at my actions.
All along I kept saying – this is wrong, you are planting the seeds of samsara here — millions of lifetimes of bad karma… But my desire to know…to figure it all out and triumph over that sob (Mars in Scorpio) was stronger than my desire for a pristine ‘karmic’ landscape. I kept saying ‘ yea, i know, my karma…. but so be it, i wanna figure it out now’ and i wanna see the karma bus run him over too.
And i have ‘modicum of awareness’ about cause and effect and this was the best behavior I could muster.