Most of us, myself included, have spent much of our lives searching for our missing piece, in the form of a Special Relationship. I’m going to capitalize that term, because it’s a direct reference to a concept introduced by A Course in Miracles. Without giving a wholesale endorsement of that work, I think this is a valuable concept to understand if you’re working toward growth and better relationships; it seems to be the main thing standing in the way.
Basically, the Special Relationship is something that is embarked on from a sense of incompletion. It should be no great surprise that it often leads precisely back to that place, because we cannot find completion in another person. Yet nearly all of us remain obsessed with precisely this.
This psychic ecosystem is perfect for marketing culture, and I think it’s perpetuated, in part, for that reason. There is so much unfulfillment—emotional, sexual, social, and otherwise—that we live in a sea of spiritual hunger; and that hunger we attempt to fulfill either with products, ranging from stuff to make us more desirable, to stuff for its own sake, to stuff to kill others (our economy is still based on military spending). The constant search for this elusive missing thing creates a society based on attempting to find fulfillment where it is not. Have you ever considered the paradox of why we live on such a lonely planet, when people abound everywhere? How can everyone be looking for love at the same time and not finding it? Well, maybe because many people want something they are not willing to give. That would surely create a shortage.
Of course, there are relationships that do succeed; that is, the people get together and actually keep growing. They honor one another as individuals and not halves of a whole. Yet the substitute is far more common than the authentic thing, and rarely distinguished from the real thing. The repetitive problems that most people face in their relationships tend to compound over time and create an abiding cynicism about love. You don’t need to look too far to find this attitude.
This is not true of everyone, but I can tell you that most people who are in relationships that they find satisfying, and that are based on truth, do not look forward to the day when they might have to find someone else they actually get along with. Most of these qualify as Special Relationships because there are two entirely different standards for how to treat humanity: one for the special partner, and one for the rest of us. In that double standard, we’ve played divide and conquer with ourselves. The special partner gets special treatment, and they often get a special version of the truth that excludes anything that might threaten the relationship.
Untold millions of people live in relationships that they cannot really abide because the notion of living without a partner is so terrifying that they feel they have no other choice. It is astonishing to me how often we sacrifice who we are for the sake of having someone else, who is there allegedly to make us feel complete.
Many people are evolving past this game of seek-and-not-find, and as a result they are having a hard time connecting in fulfilling partnerships. Many have given up relationships outright. One problem compounding this situation is that we lack new models of relationship that allow us to conceive of coexisting as individuals in an atmosphere of truth. For many, the old models don’t work. New models exist but for most people they are not developed well enough to understand; or they are still too controversial to be considered socially acceptable, even though many are longing for some new ideas. I know that a lot of people who have those new ideas are afraid to utter a peep, fearing that they will be rendered ineligible for partnership at all; but that’s no way to have a revolution—or a little fun, for that matter.
The Ruler of Libra, Retrograde in Aries
Any concept of relationship must be based on a corresponding concept of the self that has that relationship, and I do believe the problem begins here, as does the solution. Let’s see what astrology has to offer if we look through it like a lens.
Venus is currently retrograde in Aries. This began Friday, March 6 and extends through Friday, April 17. This is a rare event; Venus is retrograde less than any other planet (six weeks out of every 18 months, or about 8 percent of the time). The most recent Venus retrogrades in Aries were in March/April of 1977, 1985, 1993, and 2001 (when the retrograde is in Aries, it’s always in March and April because Venus never strays far from the Sun).
