choctawdreams writes in, The Word “Relationship” and Why It Scares Most People…
“So my question is, why does the word “relationship” scare the beejibees out of people so much especially in this generation? And why are so many afraid to lose who they are as an individual in a relationship?”
The man he was discussing this with, felt he was in his prime, yet alone as an individual. “I’m an individual, but I’m not too individualistic that I don’t want to be tied down to another individual,” he explained.
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Most of the responses to this query favored forming a relationship. But with Uranus in the 7th house, I have contrary view on this. What seems to be lacking is a reason to be in a relationship. I wouldn’t assume that fear is part of the equation!
Relationships are a lot of work. You have to have a compelling reason to get in one. Personally speaking, I avoided partnering for years. Fear had nothing to do with it. I just didn’t want to be hindered.
So what constitutes a compelling reason to partner? I can think of three things.
1. You want a family. You want to have kids.
2. It’s beneficial for both parties. You’re better together than apart. It’s easier to pay the bills.
3. The person makes you inordinately happy.
It’s a short list!
Speaking as a person who avoided commitment for most her life, I don’t think anything else is motivating enough to make a person truly opt in.
For example, sex is not enough. Just because you want to have sex with me and I with you, is not enough of a reason to join our lives together, other than momentarily.
I don’t think it’s right to assign some kind of pathology to people who don’t want to partner. If a person does want to partner, but constantly thwarts themselves, that’s a different story.
It would be more productive to figure out why you want to partner. Then look for someone who wants what you want. But in real life, no one partners just for the sake of it. Why would they?
Well said. At this stage in my life the only time I ever feel the need of a partner is when the shit hits the fan and I really want some support, just someone to have my back,share the load. But that seems selfish, so I figure I’m probably best to stay single. It would take someone who really makes me happy, who’s fun and interesting and capable, to change my mind. My moon just progressed into Libra and I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently.
Agree- that’s why many women at a certain point no longer want a man, after divorce or being widowed. They have friends, already raised kids, and it’s easier to fly solo. Less cooking, cleaning, laundry.
I honestly think it’s mostly about raising kids and with sex, not a question of getting it consistently (since any woman can find sex) but getting it without having to sleep around and that stigma.
I have the moon in the seventh so i want to be partnered in fact i need it but with Saturn sharing the same house it always seems to evade me. SO i have decided that rather than bang my head against a wall trying to give my moon what it needs to just transcend that need altogether and just “fo-get about it”
As someone with sun and Venus in seventh but having a Saturn square, I hear ya! Sometimes you just need to move on and accept that you’re not going to get what you want/need in life, especially if others have to provide it for you and god knows they can’t be counted on.
Maybe the point of our lives is to want what we can’t have and learn to not want it any more. I really think that’s probably it–that you’re supposed to channel that into something else or learn a lesson or something.
Makes sense to me… and i have the 1st and 7th intercepted as well so there has to be past life issues there that i am dealing with in the here and now… it’s really too bad as a leo moon not being partnered makes me a shadow of what i could be but if that’s how it’s supposed to be then who i am to say otherwise.
And I thought it was just me. I Aldo have the moon conjunct Saturn in the 7th. Relationships are at the very bottom if my list of things to care about.
Lousy phone. Sorry for the typos. As a Virgo, I find them quite troubling.
I don’t think our culture offers enough options. as a consequence people keep trying to pound the same round pegs into various mismatched holes. not much original thinking here. why not ask for Higher input and see what happens? the picture that emerges is startling, authentic, amazingly satisfying in all the ways that matter. you’ve just entered your own life school with a little more specificity. it beats being bounced around like a little kid playing in heavy traffic. Write down what you want no matter how strange your laundry list and open up a rapport between you and the intelligent universe. Learn to wait for answers. Your answers may or may not involve the common structures we think are important. a whole new understanding and set of experiences emerges…we can drop a lot of judgment, expectations and cultural nonsense and live from our true selves and support that same thing in those we love… You can’t have a foot in both worlds, though. you have to choose. into the void…lol
It’s a great question.
I was definitely commitment phobic for years and believed I was better on my own. I also knew early on in life that I didn’t want to have children and I did not want, therefore, to be married. There was no need. But I also craved a deep connection, which I couldn’t seem to find dating, so I had a mixed turn of events while I was unclear about what it was I was looking for. I now know that I confused others, and that I was very confused myself.
However, years later in my forties, I made a decision that I would just stick to dating, and then I met my now husband!!! But our reason for marrying was for the being inordinately happy, creating a family of two, we are great alone but even better as a team and we are committed to each other. He is also 20 years older than me, and I wanted to be able to take care of him, legally, should the need arise. There are lots of rules about what decisions can be made regarding health, domestic matters etc if you are not married in the UK.
The ‘committed to each other’ thing was brand new to me, and it is the best thing I have done in my life.
I know of many females who got, or want to get married because they truly believe in ‘the one’; that it’s what women do, that women stay at home while the man earns the money, that women do not , must not, break wind, burp, have any intelligence (or if they have show it), keep the conversation tied to curtains and kittens, have no physical faults whatsoever and must be beautiful fragrant angels at all times. I do believe that is changing but there are still some weird beliefs on both sides of gender about what marriage is all about. And about what men and women are all about.
reason 3 would be just fine for me 🙂
Would like to partner up for the sake of loving each other. That would make reason 3, I guess. Than I take reason 1, for you want family if you found someone to live with. Than I take reason 2 since it is rational to have shared finances as partners. That would be ideal. But without reason 3 – No, thank you!
I have Venus conjunct my Sun in the Seventh House, conjunct the Descendant. My Venus is in the Seventh house also. For me, no relationship is better than one that is not fulfilling for both partners.
I think choctawdreams was inquiring about relationship fear, specifically, as opposed to a lack of interest in a relationship. However, I do agree that it is a mistake to assume everyone who isn’t partnered is afraid; they may simply have high on their priority list things that don’t require a partner, or that being partnered may actually prevent them from doing.
When I was getting a divorce 10 years ago, I started getting therapy because I wanted help figuring out where I had gone wrong and what I could do to make sure this didn’t happen again. My therapist was in her 70s and was newly married for the second time. Her first husband was an alcoholic. Her second had a gambling problem. I asked her “why bother?” At the time, I questioned partnering at all. I was having a fine time building myself a little harem. (Scorpio stellium, sun conjunct uranus, Venus and neptune conjunct in Sagittarius.) She told me it was because when you are on your own, it is easy to be right all the time. Having someone else there gives you a mirror to be able to see yourself more clearly. It is an opportunity for spiritual development.
I want that. Now that I am over 30 and having a harem is no longer biologically sound, I do want just one man to share my life and bed with. For the last 7 years, I have wanted this but have not found it. I watch my peers who did choose to partner young and stay married enjoy the ups and downs of growing with someone they love.
I don’t regret my choices. Things always work out the way they are suppose to. I have joy in my life no matter what the path.
I used to think it was just for the sex. That I preferred monogamy now. But, in reality, I have rituals that I do that transform that sexual energy into a sensation of merging with Higher Power. This brings me so much satisfaction, that I am also okay with living out my life as a non denominational nun.
I do not agree with “momentary partnering” for mutual pleasure seeking once you are old enough to know better about the laws of the heart (over 30yo.). Sex is sacred. People really need to stop screwing with that. (Pun intended)
I could not agree with this less. Sex is not sacred (although it can be) — it is joy and fun (use a condom).
Of course everybody’s entitled to their opinion, but I find this attitude restrictive and judgmental.
Sex is all of the above: fun, joyful and sacred. Picking apart the fun without respecting the sacred is asking for saturnine consequences.
Condoms do not protect against the consequences of depleted heart energy from connecting intimately without caution. My perspective is not from a judgemental religious standard, but from personal experience working through having Mercury, Uranus, north node, Sun and Mars all conjunct in Scorpio (which Pluto transitted in my teen years) AND having Saturn Conjunct my ascendant. Seriously, there isn’t anything that comes out of my mouth that other people do not hear as judgemental! But, I also do not speak unless I know what I’m talking about. 😉
Sex is sacred, true. Maybe that’s why I waited over 30 years for it. Right after my first time, ST told me that we now have a bond. He knew it in his bones!
In my experiences, the reason “relationship” scares people is because looking in the mirror IS scary. You are forced to look at yourself, flaws and all. The attempts I have made to partner came down to this: He was too afraid of what it felt like to be with me in our intimate space. I showed him his soul as I bared my own and he had not done the work yet to love himself for who he truly is and what he had done. He wanted to BE me, not be with me.
“He wanted to BE me, not be with me.”
Oh, my, AMarie! This hits a zillion buttons and bells. Thank you for saying it.
I think I have the same viewpoint as you in that in order for me to be in a relationship they really have to wow me. I have uranus in my 8th house conjunct jupiter in sag and also opposite my venus conjunct mars in virgo which is in my 5th house. I’m an only child and have a prominent aries moon conjunct ascendent in the 12th house that opposes my stellium in libra(6th house) which contains the rest of my planets minus neptune in late Sag. I NEED my alone time. It has been a problem in the past for me. I have had an ex call me mysterious and very hot and cold… I also have saturn in the 7th soo I’m sure that has something to do with it…like KateM I also don’t really want children or to get married.. I just recently turned 30 so I’m starting to feel the pressure to conform to norms and partner up..but I won’t settle.. I think the virgo in me won’t let me do that.. Great post!!
I agree with the 3 reasons but there is one more that I have seen that is rather rare or odd may be.
1. You want a family. You want to have kids.
2. It’s beneficial for both parties. You’re better together than apart. It’s easier to pay the bills.
3. The person makes you inordinately happy.
4. One or the other of the partnership needs a tether. They can not navigate life with out someone to guide them.
I think if you can agree to any one of the a fore listed reasons then you need to partner for sure. I also think there are times when people need to be on their own to be resilient to know they are able to handle whatever comes their way. One of these times is when you leave home for the first time. I think both young men and women should live on their own for at least a year or more to know how far their money will go. To be responsible for their own lives. That way when they partner they know who they are as a person.
I think I fall into the ‘wants to partner, but constantly thwarts themselves in this goal’, UGH!! I need to get out of my own way,
Angie
This is a complicated topic, especially since developments in birth-control and venereal disease prevention have begun to produces changes in why/how we partner. Uranus/Aquarian energy is always ahead of its time and a little brutal/idealistic. Although I have a pretty serious Uranian dimension (mars & venus in Aquarius, mars opposed uranus, Aries Sun trine uranus) I also have a Taurus moon. From the Taurus moon side, I find myself thinking “Let’s face it, to be a person is to be entangled. Its all well and good to imagine an ideal field in which you have some perfect balance of sharing and freedom, but many people experience things as more than ideas, experience entanglement physically and emotionally, and in relation to very basic psychological structures.”
I liked the comment about partnering to get feedback/grounding. I think that is right. There is no ‘individual’ except in principle, and the emphasis given the individual in US culture is extreme—perhaps not realistic. We are relational creatures.
There is definitely an emerging trope about the necessity of partnership and even sex post-menopause. What I see is that people/women are differing with respect to how comfortable they are leaving decades-long relationships that have become static. The degree to which sex need be or need not be part of a partnership seems to be more fluid for women. There definitely is an emerging social thought that relationships might be more episodic/related to specific life phases (having children/after having children)—what worries me about this discourse is that it is too close to the consumer ethos of replacement/disposibility for my comfort. Relationships as lifestyle choice–mostly we can only do this if we are wealthy, so it becomes part of class structure by which we represent ideals to each other. I don’t think of relationships as lifestyle choices; I would only be able to do this if I were to despiritualize my sense of the way my desire leads me into relationships. I am unwilling to do that; I think this does a violence to the nature of our desires and hopes.
So while I agree with the basic analysis of “why have partnerships” with the added spiritual practice kicker, I think we really need to take the last part seriously, and we need to check the thought that there is one way to do things.
My chart has some Aquarius/Uranus going on. I’ve never been super happy in a relationship, until recently. Now happily partnered with a very Aquarius-esque person myself (his chart bears this out). It may not only be a matter of wanting to be free or be yourself — though for me that was always a big part of it — but also a matter of not being able to feel that kind of romantic attachment and dedication to the relationship until you end up with someone who really understands you. Overall, whether it’s our culture or a deep-seated human need (I don’t know which), what lends itself to commitment is understanding and that “you complete me” mythos. For some, that’s having the wine and roses, etc. For others, that’s finding someone who totally gets you, and whom you totally get, when everyone else thinks you’re a unconventional (to put it kindly). I would always try to explain to people when things weren’t working out with, I’ve never felt so lonely as when in a relationship. When you experience that enough, your own company becomes preferable. On the other hand, when yourself in a situation where you understand each other, it’s easier to make a go of it than you would have ever dreamed.
Just to clarify, I wasn’t stating that everyone who doesn’t want to be in a relationship is commitment-phobic. I just wanted to hear what people thought about this; commitment-phobic or not. A lot of people in my generation are afraid to be tied down. Yes, it’s scary, but I know that I want to be with someone ultimately. I want someone I can grow with, love, build with, help, experience and share things with. Ultimately, I want someone to share my life with. I know I may not find this now, but it is my goal. I am more traditional minded even though I am gay. I want marriage and a life partner, and a family in the future. I am hard to pin down though. I’ve only had 1 real relationship as I have refused to just settle with anyone. For me, it has to feel fated or feel like I can grow and accomplish with them. I’m not going to tie myself down just for sex. If that was the case, I would let myself get banged out all the time!!
I understand. I was writing in response to the bulk of the remarks, and due to my general observations here and there. It was just your post that brought the topic to mind. 🙂
I totally understand Elsa!! It’s a really great topic and I like reading all of the responses. It was inspired by all of your posts about commitment-phobia and with this Mars in Libra transit and dating. I need to get another consult with you for help because Neptune is in my 5H right now and I don’t wanna be all Venus-Neptune captain save-a-hoe anymore.
But I don’t because I’m celibate and waiting for something long term to give myself too. I agree with a comment above, I believe sex is sacred. It used to be fun and games when I was experimenting although deep in my heart I wanted to wait until that special person–but ya know, hormones. Now I’m more mature and wanting a deeper connection with sex therefore it’s sacred to me. My Cancer sister used to tell us, “having sex with someone is like giving them a piece of your soul. Don’t give it to everyone.” And I’ve always believed that. I want someone I can connect to on that soul level with. I really don’t think it’s too much to want, but I’m coming more in terms with the fact that because i’m young, it may take awhile for me to find that person who is willing to be long term that I want to be with. Especially since I’m gay. It’s hard out here for us, ya’ll. But it seems like it’s hard for everyone. With so many people on the planet, I just don’t see why it’s that way!! And that’s why I asked that question. So the answer would be #4 for me, someone I can journey in this life with because doing it by myself all the time would seriously bore me. I get tired of talking to myself!! 9H Venus, Libra Asc 🙂
I think there are two more reasons to be partnered:
4. Spiritual development
5. I am a better person with this person than without ie they bring out the best in me or they help me hold to a higher standard of behavior
(that’s all I got off the top of my head 😉
I think the more difficult thing is the judgments made if someone is not partnered for whatever reason or choice. I see both forms of life as viable as not everyone walks my path in life and I don’t walk your path in life.
Great post. I find myself thinking of this and reading the replies.
I find partnering really hard work as there is lots of maturing going on now in my life around having realistic ideas of love and what a relationship is like (impergect) and learning about compromise. Hard work yet worth it And needed as I want a family and I’m in my late 30s.
Reasons 1, 2 and 3 are key. I don’t expect to be crazy happy in love, at least that what my saturn is tellingmy neptune aspects, lol.
Choosing well considering the three reasons but especially the two first is key for me now. Spiritual growth and personal development and awareness are nice extras that relationships provide.