Dear Elsa,
I am 32 years old, single, and I haven’t had a relationship with a woman in about 4 years. I have lots of friends, my family is alive and well (thank G-d) but I just can’t seem to meet a woman. I am very shy with the opposite sex and people in general until I know them well.
Can you advise me on how to become less depressed, more outgoing, and more happy with what I have?
Sincerely,
Cancer Man
Dear Man,
Ouch! Could you possibly be any meaner to yourself? The first thing you can do is ease up! With Saturn conjunct your Sun and Mercury in Cancer, I admit you’ve got a real challenge… but you have absolutely have to find a way to be nicer to yourself.
For example, quit telling yourself (and others) that you can’t meet a woman, that you are not outgoing, that you are depressed and that you lack gratitude for what you have! Yipes! Surely these friends of yours would give you a better review – and you’d be well advised to adopt their perception of you and go out and act “as if”.
Act as if you don’t suck! Because if you feel as if you do, it’s no wonder you do not meet a woman. Who is going to sign on with this kind of negativity? You are creating reality here. Seriously!
And I am not trying to be mean. I just don’t think you’re going to solve this problem without solving this problem, so you have to know what the problem is! And you can solve this by the way. You absolutely can. Because you have Pluto square your Sun and consequently you have the ability to transform yourself (and your thinking / Mercury) completely. But this will never happen without embracing Saturn, and here’s what that means:
You have to take responsibility for these things that are dogging your life and work to turn them around. This may sound stupid, but it’s like having a fear of public speaking. You either have to live with that, or do something about it. Like go to Toastmasters! You have to push the cart up the hill, or what? Or you’ll wind up lying beneath it.
Now if you need medication for your depression, then get it. But this sounds as if it could be nothing more than a case of inertia to me. And negative thinking that has manifested itself in reality. And if you can manifest this reality, you can manifest another.
And because I think it’s your negativity that is causing the bulk of the problems, I would go after that first. And the best way I can think to do this is to learn (study) a new way of thinking…
Something Zen. Watch the movie, “What The Bleep Do We Know?
” Check out Joseph Campbell. Whatever! Find something that can help you learn a new (more positive) way of structuring (Saturn) your life and the way you think about things. Because if you do this, I promise you results!
Hopefully others will leave other recommendations for Cancer Man in the comments…
Good luck.
As is our confidence, so is our capacity. – William Hazlitt
I have curmudgeon Saturn conj AC in a T-square with my Venus-Neptune opps, so I can relate. Going by his Cancer stellium he has a very emotional way of thinking tied into his ego. Saturn behaves like a grind stone seperating the wheat from the chaffe, offering meaningfullness through its hardships. I think the problem is Cancer that you are allowing your saturnine energy to run away with your emotionally driven ego and thinking. Everyone has heard the old adage about the glass being half-empty/half-full. The truth is in an 8oz glass liquid fills 4oz of volume. A trivial statement, but intrinsically is it half-full or half-empty? And there in lies the meaning and Saturn wants to teach you that in whatever area of life it touches. See, right now Cancer is thinking his glass is empty not half-full, whereas another person may think his glass is full when in fact it’s half-empty. Saturn wants you to know you have 4oz in your cup. Breaking through the brick wall of denial is where hard work associated with Saturn comes in, Saturn teaches us lessons we never forget.
And it shows cause you’re depressed. Depression (that isn’t chronic) is anger turned inward, and anger occurs when expectations aren’t met in life. Your 4oz is invaribly there it’s just that you don’t admit it to yourself due to your dreary compulsions. Honestly, you deserve the best in life as each of us do, we are not put on this planet to suffer – suffering is a humanity-thing not a God-thing. God’s like a loving parent who can’t help but want the best for his kids – that’s us. There is no fate at work here, astrology shows where in life we are inclined to be making our choices in or better said where our lessons are in life.
You don’t have a rich social and family life without having a hand in it. I mean for instance what if you chose earlier in your life to live in a cave seperated from everyone else then you certainly wouldn’t have a rich social and family life, fate be damned. And right now you are chosing not to openly approach women you have a romantic interest in, probably I suspect out of a fear of rejection which will drive you into a downward spiral fueled by your negative compulsions. Of course you probably already know all this elst you wouldn’t be reaching out for help.
I think the break through for you is to swallow your fear, bite the bullet and approach women, chances are you will most likely be rejected or things will turn soar. But that’s okay because it beats living in a cave of your own discontent. Nothing ventured nothing gains Cancer. Maybe it will be 4 out of 5, or 99 out of 100 but eventually you will meet the right lady who you will share a wonderful life with. Hell, it took Eidson a thousand tries before he invented the lightbulb, all that matters in the end is that he invented the lightbulb. You need to be pathological, daresay Plutonian, about your happiness. Breakdown those self-undoing compulsive confidence issues.
It’s funny that you’ve mentioned toastmasters Elsa! My dad’s in it. He loves public speaking being the double Leo that he is. I swear he could be an actor, only if he went for it.
Movies to watch: Adaptation, American Beauty
(warning: i cried a lot during these movies, but in the end it was all right. but they are about transformation, and thr can be no transformation without some painful soul searching….)
I have a Sun-Saturn square and Moon + Mercury + Mars in Cancer which makes me pretty Cancerian – I relate to what Cancer Man is saying and perticularly what Elsa is saying about it.
Sun-Saturn contacts, especially the “hard” ones, can be really debilitating – they might eskew one’s self-perception in subtle ways to a point beyond recognition, and the way one perceives the world in regards to oneself and how they *perceive* others are seeing them. Depression is not uncommon – I was actually diagnosed with depression, and in my case medication didn’t help and I couldn’t afford therapy.
Sun-Saturn aspects usually go back to one’s childhood and often have something to do with the father or father/authority figures. The father/father figure is somhow missing as a positive building block in one’s identity – he could be there but not provide the sense of support for you to build your own identity, your own positive identity – reject who you are in some way or set a negative example or be cold and unaffectionate and overstress material values, or sometimes he’s just weak. Or authority or discipline might have been too rigid and inflexible for you and not support your natural self-expression or criticize it.
Cancer sensitivity and insecurity can intensify it, but Sun-Saturn is probably the source.
I have a “hard” aspect and in my case I felt (and still feel, but to a lesser degree) I don’t know who I am and what I want. But at some point I realized it’s not that I don’t know who I am, but my self perception is skewed. I somehow came to see my actual Self as a fault I should somehow overcome – and seeing my actual Self not as myself, but as a bundle of faults, I couldn’t see who I am – if my actaul Self is not myself then there is no Self there. It’s very subtle and most people simply won’t get what’s happening with them.
Elsa says: “Could you possibly be any meaner to yourself?”
No, you can’t be any meaner to yourself than with a Sun-Saturn aspect. You see a large part of yourself as flawed and as a weakness you should overcome and as an obstacle in the way of reality (Saturn) and as an obstacle to functioning like you should, or think you ought to. You feel the rest of the world will see you the same way, or if they don’t then they’re wrong. You might feel the things you want are wrong or unimportant and you should want other things or be pleased with what you have. And you feel you can never be happy, the world is a bad place that will never give you what you wish for, and maybe you don’t even deserve to get what you wish for anyway. You exaggerate your flaws and exaggerate the difficulties in your way, so you’re scared, and you fail yourself.
“Act as if you don’t suck! Because if you feel as if you do, it’s no wonder you do not meet a woman. Who is going to sign on with this kind of negativity?”
The funny thing is that you can meet people of both sexes that don’t actually care that you’re “negative” or depressed or inhibited or not outgoing or whatever. They just accept you and like you the way you are. But the problem is that you don’t accept and like yourself the way you are and you’re not sure what other people may like about you. I found myself rejecting people who liked me because I was feeling inadequate myself. I felt as if they were somehow fooled into liking me – if they’ll get to know me better and know who I REALLY am and all my faults they’ll probably realize they were wrong and stop liking me. Or maybe they’re just fools or suckers that just don’t get it. It’s like that famous Groucho Marx quote: “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member”.
You think that those who like you and approve of you are wrong or their opinion is less important, and that those who don’t like you and don’t approve of you are spot on or more important. You put more emphasis or authority on negative opinions of you – your self perception is not balanced, it’s skewed in the way of the negative. And then also rejection becomes a major issue because it reaffirms the negative view you have of yourself – it’s not just one person who doesn’t like you, it’s a sentence on your entire being.
Often it’s because the first authority figure in your life, usually a parent, didn’t approve of you or had expectations you were supposed to meet that weren’t that harmonious with your true nature – and because it was an authority figure and you were a child not knowing better you unconsciously accpted the judgment of the authority to be the absolute and only truth.
Sometimes this parent just wanted you to succeed and he/she pressured you to overcome what they percieve as weaknesses and be very practical and work hard since the world is a difficult place – they just wanted your best interest but they acted negatively towards you and you got to see the world through their eyes. Or sometimes this parent provides just the opposite example – he/she is weak or irresponsible or isn’t there – and you don’t want to be like them in any way and reject or dislike whichever parts in yourself that bare any resemblance.
Sun-Satrun + Cancer might also give you some uncanny knack for perceived criticism when it’s not even there. For instance, I could read the entire response of Elsa as criticism 😀 – if it was meant for me I would show you that in details :-D. But it is your self-criticism that is your worst enemy.
The message I’d be getting from Elsa’s response is: You should change. The way you think should change, the way you act should change, you should transform etc. Even though she didn’t mean that, but that message resonates with Sun-Saturn who disapprove with the way they are. So I’ll clear the subtlety here: It’s not you that should change, you shouldn’t change, what should change is the way you percieve yourself.
Virtues and faults are very subjective – what one person regards as a fault may be a virtue to another – one’s hell is another’s paradise. For instance, like you I have a strong Cancer influence in my Chart. I’m sensitive, feeling, imaginative, I’m also shy, moody and insecure and perceive myself as weak. To my father sensitivity, feelings and imagination were totally redundant qualities that won’t get you anywhere in life – you should be practical, work hard and above all be strong. It came from his own life experience – he had a very hard life and knew what’s needed to survive. But if my sensitivity, feelings and imagination are unimportant or even weaknesses then what am I left with? My shyness, insecurities and above all my perceived weakness.
So when I meet someone what do I have to offer? My sensitivity is a weakness, me feelings are embarrassing and my imagination is over-active for my own good, and in addition I’m also shy and gloomy and not outgoing and all that, so I feel inadequate. So what should change is that I should start seeing my sensitivity and emotional capacity and imagination as sources of strength and as building blocks in my identity and not as unimportant qualities. There are a lot of creative and beautiful and interesting things you can do with your “weaknesses”, whatever they are – Woody Allen made a career out of his weaknesses and married some of the most beatiful women in Hollywood. And even if you don’t think so, there are also a lot of women out there that would appreciate a sensitive man. It’s a rare commodity.
You should find your virtues, see them for the virtues they are and rely on them, and trust that there are women out there that will appreciate them more than you know. And when you start appreciating who you are and all you have to offer and don’t see possible rejection as a final judgement on your personality then you will also be more outgoing and less shy.
God, I don’t believe how long that was… It looks insane…
I should start my own blog, fast!, with a wider space and tiny letters, so I won’t appear totally crazy 😀
But you know what? A long time ago I got me a copy of Liz Greene’s book about Saturn (Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil) and it was really helpful, to me and to other people. But this book is for people who are into astrology so I couldn’t just recommend Cancer Man to get the book and read the relevant chapters, so I tried to convey her point and how it can be relevant in a real case (that just happens to be my case). So I got a bit too in-depth, sorry…
Maybe he should get the book anyway and look at the chapters about Sun-Saturn and Mercury-Saturn aspects and just avoid the astrological terms, there aren’t too many of them there.
I always here that Sun/Saturn is such a big challenge. Is this always so? Are people with Sun/Saturn always at some disadvantage? What is the upside?
For some reason, I’m thinking about the film American Beauty, where the main character decides to do it. Decides to go after what he wants after so long not having it.
Yes, I completely agree with Elsa! Thoughts create your reality! Self-demeaning talk is the worst enemy! (I can worry my weekends away easily if I don’t do something!)
To Mr. Cancer Man
One thing I think about is… that you don’t have to “overcome” your introversion, as if it is a weakness. Yes, it IS scary. You’re so out there and you feel so damn vulnerable.
Hmm… But, one part of me thinks that… if you refrain from thinking about that fear, but start sensing and feeling the world out there, you’ll let yourself gravitate places that that feel like home and people (which may include women) who feel like family. And when you do this, you won’t be scared anymore. If you start building little pockets of home (and hope) everywhere you go, then, the best parts of you will show.
Introversion lets you concentrate and helps you notice things that others won’t… whether it’s that someone is hurting or the intricate lines in architecture. And what’s so wrong with being introverted if you know you have found trustworthy places and people to go to for help? Don’t worry. Like Elsa said, it all comes from the thought, and not only that… the belief. If you think about what you want, and not what you don’t have, it’s going to make all the difference!
Ha! I’m a Mercury-Saturn person too! =P
Saturn square Sun. Reading with avid interest.
ugh! saturn opposite sun, but in leo. i have to be a loner, then hate being alone. ahh, the irony.
ouch. lots of the longer posts from Simstim and Debbie resonated; also what circle.dot.raindrops said about finding family hit home rather hard.
getting out there and acting ‘as if’ is key; but you can’t just leave it at that… you have to really integrate that new idea of who you really are into your heart, because negative voices can send you rightback down the spiral again.
“The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron is a great book for retooling your brain (and not just for artists, despite what the title says – applies to everyone), and so is “In The Meantime” by Iyanla Vanzant.
Re Jess (#7) – don’t know if Sun-Saturn is always such a big challenge. I know a couple of other people with Sun-Satrun square or opposition and it is a challenge for them. Seeing it from the outside it’s unbelievable how much a person can sabotage himself because A. He’s very scared and doesn’t have faith in himself and in the world that he can succeed in what he really wants, B. He doesn’t exactly know who he is and what he wants and makes choices that are wrong for him because they seem more practical or rational or safer or whatever. I’m talking about a real person who actually had a great success IN SPITE of himself – he tripped himself repeatedly, but was lucky enough to have other people pick him up a couple of times when it was crucial. It was fascinating to watch.
The upside is that if you actually manage to work out all your issues you can get to a point where the Sun’s (Self’s) and Saturn’s energies can integrate. Then you are aware of who you are and what you want, your strengths and your weaknesses, you feel OK about who you are and what you want, and you have the Satrun powers at your disposal to make many of your wishes come true. When Saturn is no longer your enemy that overshadows your Self, it can actually be a great friend – Saturn can give you determination, discipline, some seriousness and a wordlview that is realistic enough to find the ways to make your wishes materialize. It’s a great gift, but to get there you should first overcome Saturn’s shadow and it’s a BIG shadow wherever it is in your chart.
I think that with Sun-Saturn you should become your own authority, your own father in a sense. What you got from authority figures in your childhood wasn’t right for you and you should break away and build it up yourself.
C.D.R (#8)
You’re right. Introversion is not a defect. Introvert and Extravert are terms that were coined by psychologist Carl Jung in his typology theory. They refer to different natural inclinations or preferences regarding where you draw your energy from and where you prefer to focus it.
The majority of people are more extravertly inclined – it’s a social reality that gives some social advantage to extraverts. Extraverts and introverts also don’t understand each other very well, so in an extravertly inclined society introversion came to be seen as a sort of a defect because it’s misunderstood – it’s simply a minority, not a small minority but still. BTW, introverts often see extraverts as more shallow, so it’s not one sided 🙂
But of course introversion has its advantages too. Most of the poeople who made great mental contributions to our culture are introverts – the majority of great scientists, artists, philosophers etc. Because it usually requires that you focus a lot of energy into subject-oriented realities – thoughts, feelings, perceptions, ideas etc. – rather than object-oriented realities – places, objects, events, social activities etc.
Socailly, not everyone prefers extraverts. Introverts are more likely to prefer introverts because they focus on similar things, they have more in common. It’s not that extraverts and introverts are better or worse, they are just different in a good way and both are needed to make a society and a culture work and prosper.
#11 silverfoot’s two recommended books worked wonders for me some years ago — wholeheartedly echo both recommendations!
Also want to recommend:
Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthough Program to End Negative Behavior… and Feel Great Again
by Jeffrey E. Young, Janet S. Klosko, Aaron T. Beck
I have Sun square Saturn too. My Sun is in Leo and I’m Cancer rising so, yes, every comment sounds like a criticism — mostly bc I’m so self-critical to begin with.
As Debby pointed out, this aspect can show that a parent figure was either absent or overly critical. In my case, it was both: my real father was absent, my step-father handed out soul-crushing criticism every step of the way. It is only now that I’m beginning to see that his perspective was completely and utterly wrong–not just toward me but toward everything and everyone!
I too self-sabotage. Opportunities fall on my lap and I think that I won’t be able to make the best of them or that I’m not the right person for the job or that I’m too old. I’ve been feeling too old since I was 25 and I can’t tell you the number of compromises that I made bc I thought that I was over the hill. (I’m not even kidding, I seriously thought that I was too old at 25. Har!)
Of course, I also surrounded myself with people who had a talent for upholding my negative delusions about myself. I kept thinking, “Well, if that many people say so, they must be right!” Not necessarily true! Just read a little book called Mass Madness and Popular Delusions. Anyway, my advice is to surround yourself with positive people. Cut ties with people who undermine you–and this can be hard bc Sun/Saturn contacts make you feel responsible for others. But really, you have to watch out for people who see what you don’t or can’t and who envy you for them: Namely, your talents and great potential. Yeah, this is dark, but sometimes people see just how great you could be and they’re jealous so they want to pull you down. And Sun/Saturn people are geniuses at detecting these kinds of folks. There are also wonderful, warm human beings who see others’ great skills and talents and want to nurture them and offer support but we Saturn/Sun folk don’t always believe them. Or we don’t trust that they’re telling us the truth.