I continue with my presentation of Liz Greene’s article on the psychological dynamics of love triangles. This time, for people who can read their birth charts, there are astrological significators included. It is about the aspects between the planet of love, Venus, with difficult Saturn and Chiron. Aspects that point to the presence of emotional insecurity in childhood.
As will become clear from the text below, when we are young it is impossible for us to think alchemically and to see positive meaning in suffering and rejection from a parent. Then we grow up, but because the wound of deep emotional insecurity in childhood has remained, it continues to have a subversive influence on our future intimate partnerships. And, if we don’t pay close attention to this wound and heal it, it resurfaces in mid-life.
More accurately, it explodes like a ticking time bomb, trapping us in a dramatic love triangle. Then, either we or our partner lose our minds over someone else and it touches the childhood wound. It brings it to the surface along with the unlived life. The wound has a chance to be healed if only we can look at the love triangle as an occasion to look into ourselves and take care of our rejected pieces of soul. Otherwise it will continue to reproduce future love triangles in our lives…
“There is another consequence of family triangles – the potential alienation between oneself and others of one’s own sex. An unresolved Oedipal battle may result in a loss of trust in one’s own sexuality. If a situation of intense rivalry and competitiveness occurred with the same-sex parent, there will inevitably be effects in terms of our friendships and the way that we interact with our own sex later.
If a woman has a mother who is overwhelmingly competitive and in whose hands she has experienced painful and humiliating defeat in childhood, her confidence in her femininity will be undermined. And, because she will have no confidence in herself, she will have no confidence in other women. It seems that they will all have the power to take away from her those she loves.
A woman may have a wonderful friendship with another woman, and then she meets a really lovely man, and they get involved, and what does she do about introducing her friend to her partner? The undercurrent of anxiety and suspicion may make things very difficult, and unconsciously she may even set herself up for betrayal. She may unconsciously select as friends those of her own sex who act out her unresolved conflict with her mother, because they have unresolved conflicts with their mothers.
The same applies to men. If a man has experienced a situation of destructive competitiveness with his father, then, in any later relationship in which he becomes involved, the issue of rivalry will always raise its head, because other men always seem to be potential rivals. One must be on guard all the time..
This is not possessiveness in the ordinary sense. Its roots are quite different.
Placements such as Venus aspecting Saturn or Chiron can contribute to this dynamic, not because they are in themselves Oedipal, but because they reflect certain insecurities which can be compounded by the family triangle. Mars aspecting Saturn and Chiron may also reflect deep sexual insecurities which are heightened by family triangles and lead to feelings of defeat. These sets of aspects may compel a repetition of the failure later, or an attempt to heal the hurt by proving one’s sexual potency through triangles. There is no single astrological pattern which describes a propensity for triangles, but rather, many different combinations which can describe different images of and responses to the parents, and different ways of reacting to the natural and inevitable Oedipal phase of childhood.
Venus-Saturn and Venus-Chiron do not “cause” a person to be drawn into triangles, but they describe a deep and innate awareness of human limits which, in childhood, when there is no real comprehension of what this could offer in a positive sense, can lead the child into feeling inadequate and damaged.
The loss or alienation of a beloved parent will then be attributed to one’s own failings, and later in life one may feel one cannot “keep” a partner because a rival will always take him or her away.
Oedipal experiences often come out with a bang in midlife, because the planets making their cycles at that time – Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus – may trigger configurations which connect us to childhood issues. There is a great deal of unlived life clamouring for expression under the midlife group of transits, and unresolved family triangles that have managed to remain buried may finally break out because they are carrying unlived psychic life with them. But it depends on how powerful the conflict is. It may come out much earlier. There are people who experience triangles from the very beginning of their relationship lives.
Not all triangles have parental roots, and parental roots may also involve something deeper. We may well wonder what could be deeper than the Oedipal dynamic, but as Jung was reputed to have once said, even the penis is a phallic symbol. If there is a family pattern which is unresolved, such as the Venusian issues we have been looking at, it stands a good chance of erupting in one’s outer life under the appropriate transits. That, for some people, may be the only way any kind of healing or resolution becomes possible. But behind the parental issue is the archetypal issue – why do we seek the love of that particular parent, and what does the parent symbolise for our own souls? This is invariably linked with what needs to be developed in oneself – one’s own destiny.
At midlife, if important bits of oneself have remained undeveloped, they will come bursting out, especially under the Uranus opposition to its own place. And often, the first place we meet these occluded bits of ourselves is in somebody else.
It is the most characteristic way in which the psyche knocks on the door and demands integration. This need to become more of what one really is may begin with a sudden attraction.
Unlived bits of ourselves may also appear in a rival. Surprisingly, the rival may be more important psychologically than the person over whom one is fighting. But if there has been no pattern of triangles earlier, the eruption of one at midlife may not necessarily imply an unresolved family problem. And if it does, the problem needs to be seen in a larger context.
