How An Astrology Reading Narrowly Saved Me From A Toxic Relationship
How astrology predicted my future relationship.
Khaneeros, Dzhulbee, Blazenka Babic | Canva I figured out my love affair, and maybe my whole life, through an astrology reading. For this to make any sense, you need to know what "transits" and "progressions" are in astrology. According to Astrology Dictionary, the definition of transit in astrology is: “The passage of a planet or celestial body relative to the location of another celestial body or sector in an astrological chart.” And, according to Astrology Answers, the definition of a progression in astrology is: “A progression is simply the way that the planets move around your natal birth chart.”
In your natal birth chart, which tells you where all the planets were in the sky at the time and place you were born, you have a snapshot that describes you. But, the planets don't stay in the same place forever. They keep on moving. When the place a planet is in the present makes an exact angle with where a planet was at the time you were born, that planet is said to be "transiting" the natal planet.
The angle it makes, along with the houses and signs of the planets involved, all have a specific meaning. In a "progression," the astrologer moves the natal planet a specific number of degrees, which represents several years or months in life. For instance, the sun is "progressed" a degree for every year in your life, and any angles it makes reflect something that will happen in that year.
It is commonly believed that for something to happen, it needs to have both a transit and a progression reflecting it. If your natal chart report does not show the potential for it, it will not happen no matter what. Since I’m a new student of astrology, I haven’t been able to study millions of birth charts and iron out what each aspect means to me. Some folks have been doing this for twenty years, and they have done natal chart interpretation by the thousands. Why did I decide to get a whole-life astrology reading? It all started with a love triangle between me and two other people. I found myself heartbroken over this toxic relationship, and I wanted to know what was going to happen.
So, I purchased the Liz Greene Yearly Horoscope Analysis for all three members of the triangle, every three years, for about the next thirty years. This astrology chart reports, for those who haven’t bought one, pick out your 22-26 most powerful transits and progressions, with Liz Greene’s thoughts on what they mean. After much digestion and thought about these three natal charts, something emerged for me.
The contradictory nature of the aspects was confusing, and it seemed that anything positive or happy wasn’t going to happen to me. But why? My first clue had to do with my past experiences. Almost four years ago I was unceremoniously and painfully dumped. The man who dumped me (and whom I was having an affair with) decided that he wanted to go to couples counseling to work it out with his partner (the third member of the triangle.)
At this point, it was predicted that I would hear from this person in October of 2017 and that he would be coming back to me for some advice. The transits and progressions I was reading on the astrological chart were all over the map until 2019. Suddenly, my transits and progressions split between being alone or having another toxic relationship.
And the natal charts of the other two people involved were pretty dim too. The man’s chart was stuck between two women, again. The other female chart shows her becoming aware of a rival. I could only conclude from this, and from the fact that the forecasted visit in October 2017 happened, that it’s the same three people again (me, the man, and his female partner.) All these transits agree except one. There’s a great big ole’ Saturn trine Venus, that was predicted to end in November 2018. It was a very happy, stable relationship transit!
What was that doing there? I recognized it right away because, when I was in this toxic relationship, a set of very happy transits including Saturn trine Venus materialized in my natal report for the next year, along with some truly awful ones.
Both his therapist and mine reflected optimism for the relationship. He seemed to be making good progress in therapy and I saw this set of happy-happy transits and decided to stay in the relationship. But, none of the happiness happened, and he dumped me and went into counseling with the other woman.
All of those horrible transits that were predicted for the next four years happened to me. I started studying birth chart astrology, and boy, did I learn a lot. In the middle of everything going wrong in my life, a Saturn trine Venus still shows up. So what is it doing there?
I thought back to the instance where my Saturn trine Venus didn’t happen, and I thought back to what this guy told me — when he showed up again in October 2017, just as my astrologer had predicted. Fortunately for me, when he showed up again, I knew what to ask. Because I have read countless relationship and codependency books I knew that what happened in couples counseling was very important. I needed to know how he and the other woman did during their sessions.
What he told me was that, after insisting on the counseling, she had acted like she didn’t want to be there. He said that it had been very difficult to make any progress. Suddenly the entire past two and a half years popped into focus. Reeling from my broken heart, I looked at their Astro charts and saw a series of transits, especially in hers.
Liz Greene and Robert Hand, in their write-ups of these, assured me that these transits were excellent ones, and would help them make progress in therapy. Now I was being told that this wasn't the case and that a lot of horrible transits were coming up. It looked like this guy would be trying to worm his way back into my life as predicted. What happened? What was going to happen?
In my experience with astrology and natal chart reading, I’ve discovered these life lessons:
1. The choices we make matter
Every choice in a given situation in your life has a transit, and most likely also a progression, reflecting that. But who decides what happens? We do. This is true in the above love triangle scenario. In the scenario in which I got dumped, this guy had the choice to go ahead and leave the old relationship. If he had, my happy relationship transits could have happened, but he elected not to do so.
The possibility for me to live the Saturn-Venus trine was there, but someone elected to do something else instead. And, reflective of that, the happy relationship transits only went on for a couple of years. Now, the natal chart says I’m doomed to be alone or end up in the same kind of toxic relationship.
It’s almost as if the planets in the cosmos are placing bets on what the people will do. There’s still time for you to notice, and do something about this though. In my rival’s case, she was presented with the opportunity to apply herself in couples counseling, or enter individual counseling, and make progress on her childhood issues.
What hit me here was, if she had, that Saturn trine Venus would have been a reality for her. And I might not have heard from him again in October 2017. That Saturn trine marked the place where a turn for the better might have happened if she had chosen to do the right thing. For me, it appears I have a choice to either slide downward into depression or refocus and go after new life ventures like publishing a book.
2. Both a happy and sad life are possible, but a happy life requires work
In summarizing every important transit for each person over this long period, I noticed that some sounded like very happy transits, and some did sound gloom and doom. I tried sorting the happy ones from the sad ones and putting them all together for each person year by year in a grid. Each year, each person is good vs. bad.
And what I found was that all the transits, summarized and strung together end-to-end like this for decades, told two stories for each person: a happy, triumphant one and a very sad, tragic one. The difference between which story we live and which story we don’t hinges on whether each person does the emotional and psychological work to recover from their childhood. In a good situation, the person does the work and receives a positive outcome.
In a bad situation, we make the same mistakes over and over again, and the result is tragedy and suffering. For these three people, all wounded from a bad childhood, the issues that make or break success and happiness in life are very clear. It’s obvious that healing emotionally is a crucial factor in each life, and it’s obvious where all the choice points are.
3. Actions have consequences
In every case, the natal chart, whether it be the Davison (the natal chart of the relationship) or the natal chart of a person, spells out the highest potential of that couple or person. I noticed that some reports say that the relationship should end well when in reality, it’s the opposite and vice versa. I found that when a relationship was predicted to end well but didn’t, it’s usually because the individuals didn’t put in the work.
In cases where the highest potential of the relationship did manifest, it was because both people were serious about doing their emotional work to make the relationship successful. So, while the natal relationship chart lays out the potential of a relationship, the transit and progressions predict how each person might mess up, and what will happen if they do. The natal relationship chart is like a beacon of light that we need to get to without falling into actions that may sabotage it.
And, since, likely, many things have already gone wrong, people are driven onward by pain, suffering, and unhealed wounds. Finding the courage to work on themselves and look at the situation with a new perspective becomes difficult. The fact is, if I had not looked this far ahead, I would have misunderstood what it meant when this person made the forecasted reappearance in October 2017.
I could have made a very serious wrong decision. If the charts are right again and this person makes another reappearance—any time between January 1, 2019, and the end of May, I could have misunderstood once again and made another serious mistake. Since I read so far ahead, I see that my transits are cautioning me not to engage with this person, and I can save myself from making a mistake that would land me in a toxic relationship once again.
P. D. Reader edits and writes for the Medium publication Unfaithful: Perspectives on the Third Party Relationship and is the author of Struggling In or With An Affair? A Guidebook.