A few days ago, a client posed a question, “How do you live, when people around you are dying?” For many, nowadays, this is the question of the day!
I ran across this post from 2012, which touches on this topic. It concerns my marriage, and a dozen years have passed since I wrote it. I guess it’s a Jupiter cycle; you want to look at these things in a “big picture” or a philosophical way.
If there’s interest, I might elaborate on this. Other details and also, how this decision was made. But I want to pull this up regardless for those who are in this situation, in proximity to suffering, if for nothing else, so you know you’re not alone.
From 2o12:
I thought long and hard before I got married. My husband insisted on this and seeing as my natal Mercury (mind) is pressured with the fury of his Cardinal T-square, I had little choice.
I’ve copped to not wanting to sign on a life this hard when I was younger. I knew my husband then, when I was still a teen. He wanted to marry me but he told me that he’d probably be killed at war. I don’t how a girl is supposed to hear something like that and say, yeah. That sounds good, let’s tie the knot.
When my husband and I got back into contact almost 10 years ago, he told that people avoided him. It seems his lack of luck is legendary and people don’t want to catch it. They don’t want it to rub off on them as they say. Someone even believed the Illuminati was causing my husband’s bad luck for a time. It’s that obvious a problem and this person was looking for an explanation because it does not seem that a person could have this much bad luck without help.
“It is something,” my husband said, chucking. “But not the Illuminati!”
My husband was very upfront about his circumstances before we married. When you’ve lived with this kind of burden all your life, you become very clear the size and shape and weight of it. He wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into.
I think most women would have blown this off as nothing but I did not. I spent three weeks…maybe four weeks, thinking it through, deeply.
You know how they say to “hitch your wagon to a star”? This would be the opposite of that so the fact a a person would even consider doing this indicates a deep root.
I didn’t just stew on my own. I talked to people about this. Satori was one of the people. I had to ask myself just what I was up to. You’re going to step into quicksand? Why?
Obviously I worked this out. I got married and I have been very happy and satisfied but I’ll tell you, it’s grueling. My husband doesn’t understand how his difficulties impact me. He doesn’t think I shouldn’t concern myself with what he goes through, the least little bit. It doesn’t work that way though. For one thing, I have Venus in aspect to Neptune so I am going to merge with my husband but I also have his Cardinal t-square bearing down on me, relentlessly.
It’s a good thing I can deal with hardship. It’s a necessary thing but right now these outer planets are hitting that thing – his t-square and our synastric Grand Cross and it’s unspeakable. It’s like being in a room, watching someone be beaten and you can’t help. You’re just not in a position where you can interfere.
I expect we’ll get through this. He’ll survive that is…I think. And then I guess it will go back to a level of burden one can at least speak about…I guess.
This post is for other people who are not stars, or at least they are not stars that you can see. It’s also for the people who stay by them too, and feel and share their burden.
Have you ever known someone with really, truly bad luck? How do you feel when someone nearby is suffering?
Elsa you’re a rockstar. I can picture you on stage dedicating a song to the crowd…
“This is for other people who are not stars, or at least they are not stars that you can see. It’s also for the people who stay by them too, and feel and share their burden.”
(and everyone holds up their lighters)
I really try not to make it worse when someone is suffering.
Yes… me… and my youngest son. I suffer most though, with knowing about and seeing my son having to bear the hardship of monumental rejection, due to who he was born being. His Pluto is conjunct my Venus by 4 degrees, and exactly semi-sextile my sun, and exactly sextile my saturn.
Aw 🙁 What a life!
To answer Elsa’s question, I feel utterly helpless at this point with his situation. He was a beautiful child with platinum blond wavy hair and long dark eyelashes and dark thick brows… and an awesome smile. He has Aspergers and a ‘personality disorder.’ As a man, he grew up to look like a most intimidating night club bouncer. He shaves his head and has a totally blank affect, except when he is angry, which happens often anymore. I don’t even feel safe around him, alone, as he blames me for all of his circumstances… too many to list here, as he is in his early 40’s. He told me at Christmas that I was and am a terrible mother. All I ever aspired to be was a wife and mother… that’s what makes it hard.
((((norah))))
I truly know your pain…… I was in the same place for years – and just lately, it has turned around….a bit….is it enough? I still face the possibility of my daughter dying of chronic complications, and at 71, it’s now figuring into my end years. Is this what Saturn in Libra in the 5th house feels like? A combination of a wonderful life and a horrible life? I think so – with Mars in Scorpio also in the fifth house, I have to feel my power to find out what it all means….. my daughter also denounced me – I found that it was an inability to love themselves, so they blame us……at these horrible moments for mothers, we have to love ourselves and mother at they same time…..it takes great strength……
Thanks for the hug Elsa. Mothers understand best….
Elsa that is beautiful..
I mean beautifully written and the thought behind it
It’s the hardest thing to want to help free someone from their pain and to have to let them deal with it themselves. I’ve had this issue my whole life, and its just so sad knowing that I have to let people have their own pain and feelings. Yep, it sucks, but it also frees me in some ways, and it also helps me to remember that their own higher self needs to learn what they need to learn and they chose these lessons themselves. The best I can do is be supportive, and let them learn and deal the best they can. I think all empathic types have this burden… Neptunian types too. One wise woman i know put it best….she said that me being balanced and whole and healthy and healed was the best reference point for the other person to heal themselves and deal with whatever they needed to deal with. Wise woman indeed!
Amen, @barb… I totally agree! And yes, finally letting go is freeing.
My ex-fiance is the most luckless human being I have ever met. He also has no effing idea how to be different, no ambition, and no clue. I’m sure none of that helps the situation. He truly is an optimist and believes with all of his heart and yet NOTHING good happens to the dude. (People go on and on to me about The Power Of Positive Thinking, but I honestly don’t think that is something that is gonna work with everyone. This is why.) I actively don’t want to know how he is doing because he talks big and then it all turns out to be not real. It burned me out and I’ve never recovered from that burnout.
He warned me when I tried to do tarot readings for him that they never worked. True enough– his readings were nothing but happy and his life was nothing but crap.
A big hug to you Norah. My daughter has Asperger’s and unbelievably, so does my pre-teen stepson although his case is easier as he is very loving despite his social isolation. Loving and living with a person with Aspergers or high functioning autism is not easy. My daughter suffers a lot due to her disorder and it’s difficult to have to stand by now that she is an adult and eager to make her own way in the world.
My friends could not believe I would make so many sacrifices and take on so much to marry my husband. He has been very unlucky to say the least but his life turned a corner for the better when we married. I’m carrying the burden now (my Saturn in Aquarius in my fifth house exactly conjuncts his Sun in Aquarius) but I don’t feel like I’m suffering even though I know some of my former friends speak of me with pity. I feel stronger, and more capable now than I did just a few years ago.
Leoman has pretty bad luck. Though he has had brief moments of absolutely brilliant luck (like winning an all-inclusive 5 star resort holiday in Martinique, LOL). Little shards of magic from a giant smashed mirror.
I have empathy. A lot of it. I hope my empathy helps rather than harms or chaffs the other person.
Woman, you’ve brought tears to my eyes. This is the most get downest thing of yours I’ve read.
yes, myself.
faux-triple air sign.
What a post, Elsa. I can’t stand to see suffering, but lately I just don’t know anymore how far I’d go to help someone.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my Taurus ex and his bad luck/curse. He seems to share some similarities with your husband. Sometimes I wonder if things would have been different, if only he could have articulated himself clearly regarding the future he wanted for us and given me time to think it over, much like the process you and your husband seemed to have undergone.
Sometimes I think I would have walked anyway. 🙁
Sometimes I wish I could push the reset button with him. I’ve never felt that way about anyone else before.
I bring people down, with my trashed Jupiter and all my T-squares – I know I do this. My husband had pity for me – I was in all kinds of serious shit when we met: emotional, financial, and professional. He did his best with his responsible Cap Moon to bouy me up but in the end I think it dragged his Aqua Sun too far down – and his own luck was bad too, though he largely made it so.
Every time things were starting to work for us (and I mean work, after huge amounts of hard WORK) he’d shoot himself [us] in the foot somehow. So that allied to my trashed Jupiter… It ended up all going down the spout, everything we’d worked for all those seven years.
My own chart’s got eight Cardinal T-squares of which the fulcrum is my Jupiter, and there are no good aspects to it at all. It’s exactly conjunct my Juno too – go figure. It’s best I’ve mostly been on my own: who could take it?
Anna in Canada “I know some of my former friends speak of me with pity.”
I suspect the same thing, and being pitied is one of my worst fears.
Thanks for this post. I’m currently the one suffering, but it’s sure not easy on those around me either.
To carry the weight and pressure of the “4th leg” in a t-square is no easy task. As always, your grit is admirable.
Is there a way to Trickster his way out of the bad luck? I mean, wouldn’t you as an astrologer see it coming from far away and then tell him how to best work with that energy?
Triple Gemini plus Rising wants to know……..
gemster, no. He’s paying his debt for grievous sin in prior lives. The last thing he would want to do is shirk anything.
Right, I respect karma.
Thanks, gemster and Elsa, for making the point about karma. I was very comforted about my decision recently to release my son to his own choices without further ‘help’ from me. With no prompting at all, a psychic told me that I am now free of all karma and that I should not try and take on others’ karma, anymore, as I am prone to do. Talk about release and relief! More people should become aware of this tendency..to aid people from their ‘suffering’..for the reasons you have stated, Elsa. I’m sure some of the stuff I’ve suffered over the years has been karma payback.
When I met my husband to be at age 16 he was 19 and expelled from our high school for drugs. he was a lonely and angry young man who hated his father and believed what he’d been told all his life: That he is a piece of sh*t who will never succeed in anything.
But he was also an Aries, beaten black and blue by a Pisces Father, go figure. Who told him that beating him black and blue is breaking his heart but he must do it. Add to that Jehovas Witnesses and you get the picture.
He told me to leave him alone. I didn’t. He tried to commit suicide. I found him just in time. He told me that he is cursed. I laughed.
We married when I was 18 and he 21. For years he fought his demons and when he got on top of them, he looked for something or someone else to fight.
But he was honest to the core, also to himself, he owned his shit and started all over again. A loyal husband and great Dad to his kids. They got used to the fireworks at home, we always settled before sundown, somehow.
He passed at age 54, having wrecked his health, saying he doesn’t want to live beyond 40 anyway.
It was a mighty rollercoaster of an adventure with this man but I don’t regret a day. Not even the many days I felt helpless, seeing him suffering. I learned for life, life is asking a question and we have to answer, not the other way around.
Thank you so much for sharing your story, Su. I too am in love with a difficult man, or a man in difficult circumstances. People talk to me about him as if I have a choice, but I don’t feel it. There is a bond. And a kinship. I recognize some of myself in what you have shared. And I feel less alone. Thank you.
I wonder, what gave you the strength to endure? Do you have a belief system / religion?
I have some powerful aspects along with some serious whammies. I joke that I should have a warning label to people interested in me. I tend to isolate myself so others don’t have to see when the whammies are in effect and then make public appearances when I feel all right. I do try my dang hardest to own and accept them, and not blame anything.
I must say I’ve had some steadfast friends and former partners despite the warning label. I suppose they made the choice to stay by me in some way and even when they knew what they were getting. Sometimes, they helped me manage by just being themselves and without trying to fix or cure me.
I’ve always had ill luck as well and finally found an astrological correlation- the star that was rising on at the time you were born. In my case the worst, Algol.
https://darkstarastrology.com/algol-medusas-head/
It came to my mind this is a matter of a kind of karma he is not aware of or if aware, he does not want to address. Probably his parents. My girlfriend cannot make herself free from her parents wrong decisions, manipulative personality and influence. Above all, she refuses to acknowledge her parents responsibility with their own lives. She feels guilty and responsible for them. I think she gets some kind of emotional reward for her attitude here. Hope it helps
My Gemini rising Aries Sun mother taught me far more than she actually knew, and she was the first to be bewildered about that: “Oh, but it would have been too exhausting to do otherwise.” Which is what I call, listening to your gut. Gut instinct makes other options feel “exhausting,” in my experience.
My mom was also Capricorn Moon. She let all of her children large liberties of choice – mostly. She is why I understand divine forgiveness which often happens before forgiveness is required. No one is going to nominate my mother for sainthood, but I know that she rubs shoulders easily with other saints now, be they canonized or not, in heaven. I just know it.
I feel akin to what you’ve written….close to home, in a familiar way. When we met late in life, both ages 53, he lay down his horrid familial past to me, quite clearly. And, my response was as observer both to see the shocking nature of his traumas, and as well, to recognize a part of him who I trusted has had it inside to meet his incarnation’s challenge with humility and persistence. I knew I wanted to learn w/him (both Jupiter Pisces conjunct Chiron) and 9 yrs later we continue to meet the hard stuff…. deep breath. At times I imagine although the tide could permanently change for the better I’ve obviously learned not to be attached to this shift. Of course, it’s not depletion and loss always. A certain type of soul-strength is discovered on levels I never would have otherwise, or if alone. That’s the juicy part I come home to.