Astrology & Amaryllis

About a year ago, I broke up with a guy.  Our relationship wasn’t long, but it touched me deeply, taught me many lessons and provided painful motivation for my own personal growth.  He was my dream guy in many ways and represented everything I thought I was looking for, until once inside the relationship I realized how wide the gap between us really was and I’d been prioritizing things all wrong.   As the anniversary of our breakup approaches, I have been reflecting on that relationship and the things I’ve processed and learned.  

Early on, we were texting and I shared with him a small piece of my astrological chart, mostly to note an interesting detail.   I am actually not well versed in Astrology or reading charts, but instead have an interest in the subject that comes from studying the works of Carl Jung.   Jung viewed Astrology not as a tool of divination but rather as a symbolic language from the collective unconscious..   He saw the horoscope as a mirror of archetypal patterns. This subject matter is dense, and I myself am still quite a novice with it but it fascinates me. I’ve come from a place of being heavily resistant to these forms of communication to one where I am comfortable with not having all of the answers and being open as an aspect of my own growth. 

When I am dating or in a relationship with a man, there are multiple things I look for that I consider to be red flags, or indications that this man will not be a healthy addition to my life and will be more likely to underestimate me, seek to undermine me and show that he effectively does not understand or respect me as a person, a woman and an intellectual.  One of these things is their reaction to the subject of Astrology.

The minute a man opens his mouth to devalue or reject Astrology, my ears perk up.   Because nine times out of ten, what’s going to happen is that he is going to very quickly express an attack on non-linear knowing.   This comes from Patriarchal structures that prioritize hyper-rationalism, linear hierarchy, empirical quantification and, importantly, control.   These things are culturally coded as masculine.   Astrology by its very nature operates on holistic, cyclical and acausal principles like synchronicity.  In this way of thinking, time is not a straight line of production but rather a qualitative rhythm.  (See: Phenomenology, Philosophy, Psychology and relationally… Quantum Physics.)

Additionally, arts like tracking seasons, working with plants and reading symbolic patterns, are all tied to feminine domains of knowledge.   Under Patriarchy, decentralized systems of finding meaning like Astrology have been marginalized, trivialized or pathologized.  This is because all things coded feminine are perceived as less valuable as Patriarchy inherently seeks to advantage men and by extension all things coded masculine. The vast majority of the time that I see a man devalue Astrology on the basis of “Science”  he is significantly less knowledgeable about the scientific disciplines he’s attempting to use like a silencing tool than I am.   And he knows next to nothing about Astrology.

And yet, he will attempt to assert dominance over me nonetheless.   This is why I test men early on the subject, in fact I now will do it by date two as a dealbreaker, because I’ve found a man’s reaction to the subject of Astrology to be an absolute predictor of who he is, how he will act when he’s out of his element and just how deeply he has inhaled Patriarchal norms.   Even though Astrology doesn’t really have a lot of meaning for me personally, I’ve found it to be a perfect tool to judge whether or not a man is worthy of a place in my life.

But back to this story, and this then-boyfriend.   A year ago I was not as firm as I am now about considering a man who attempts to devalue Astrology as a dealbreaker.  What happened with this boyfriend solidified my position and it was in retrospect that I saw there were early moments that I could have and should have nipped things in the bud, but I hesitated out of a fear of being too reactive or hasty.  That turned out to be the wrong idea, and I paid a price for not giving my own judgment more weight.   But in the moment, I noted it and decided to wait and see.

So when this boyfriend reacted to me sending him a small piece of my chart in a light manner by essentially guffawing and then sending me a Neil Degrasse Tyson video where Neil melodramatically attempts to use the laws of Science to roll his eyes at Astrology… my heart sank for a second and then I got really pissed off.  

Let me tell you about this video.  It’s quite famous, you can find it on YouTube where every douchebag with a grade school understanding of Science likes to go to make themselves feel learned.   In the video, Neil talks about Earth’s precession.   Precession is the slow wobble of the Earth on its axis, and to make a long story short the process of precession means that the Earth and celestial bodies will shift in relationship to each other over time.   Neil believes that this is “proof” that Astrology isn’t real as he believes that this means the celestial bodies that correspond to your astrological sign actually aren’t what they would have been when Astrology first was charted by the Babylonians.   In other words, Neil believes that this means - for example - that a person who is born today under the star sign “Leo” may have actually been a “Cancer” when Astrology was first mapped out.

The problem?   That’s not how Astrology works.   A fact that could be discovered by anyone curious enough to run a simple google search.

There are two major schools of Astrology - the first is called Sidereal or Vedic and it takes precession into account and always has.   In this form of Astrology, signs are mapped to actual constellations and they do shift over time with each other.  The Cancer in our example would, for instance, be a Leo in future years in this form of Astrology… and therefore be fully aligned with the concept of precession.

The second is called Tropical or Western Astrology (this is the type most of us are talking about when we reference Astrology).  And rather than pointing directly to constellations, Western Astrology instead is tied to the Sun’s position relative to the seasons.  In Western Astrology, the Sun’s trajectory through the seasons is mapped out and certain positions are named after the constellations, and these then become an astrological sign.  In Western Astrology, precession is therefore not a factor.

Do you understand what I’m getting at?  What I’m telling you is that a big star of Science, a man who by my count has published three videos attempting to use Science and precession to disprove Astrology… never even took the five minutes maximum to run a google search to validate if his understanding of Astrology was correct in the first place.  So strong is the Patriarchal desire to devalue non-linear forms of knowing that Neil Degrasse Tyson, certified nice guy, confidently films videos where he makes an ass of himself and almost no one fact checks him against how Astrology even works.  

So anyway, that’s what this boyfriend did.   He sent me that video and said “Have you ever seen this?” in response to me sending him a snippet of my astrological chart.  Because as I would discover in due course about this guy, he very much wanted to be in control and feel smarter than me, but he didn’t actually have the courage to attempt it directly.   Always passive-aggressively.  So he could deny it later.

And yes, I had seen it.   And yes, I already knew it was ridiculous.  I knew right then and there that this was a very bad sign about this guy.   First of all, a person who seeks to devalue another person’s interests is always going to be an asshole in the end.   Keep that one in your back pocket as an heuristic.  Second of all, it showed me right away that he had very little respect for me and my intelligence and that he greatly underestimated me. 

So that you understand, I am a person who has a strong education and professional background in Science and Mathematics.  I work in an industry that relies upon my education and understanding of these subjects.   He owned a bar.  He was an English major in college.   I had a better understanding of Science than him by the time I was 16 years old, and I’m not saying this to throw shade at people who don’t have deep knowledge of scientific disciplines; I am instead saying… either stay in your fucking lane or level the fuck up.   For a man to attempt to devalue a woman’s interest in a feminine discipline using scientific disciplines that he doesn’t have even half the acumen with that she does, he will have to wield culturally-accepted expressions of misogyny to feel justified in his position.  He did it so easily, so breezily, so confidently.   But I promise you, he’d never admit it because he would tell you he supports feminism. 

There he was, way out of his depth with me.    By the point of my relationship with him, I’d been heavily researching Jung (inclusive of Astrology), the collective unconscious, various mythologies, comparative religion and feminine-coded ways of knowing in order to write a book… and he knew that.   But even still, he was so cocksure that he was in a position to school me and shut me down that he sent me an idiotic video that could be disproved in thirty seconds with a google search and thought he’d done something.   The something being put me in my place.

Do you see what I mean yet about this subject being a perfect test for a dealbreaker? 

So, anyway, in the moment I was irritated because this was bad news.   But I was concerned that if I went in hard and shut him down, that his feelings would be hurt.   I knew that if I responded in a true and honest way, that revealed how out of his depth he really was that it would embarrass him and he might not recover.  So instead, what I did was politely but firmly refuse to engage.  I said, simply “Thanks, but I’m not interested.”   I figured there might be a time down the path when I could open the door to more information to him and that he might reflect and learn.

This turned out to be a mistake, one of many I made with him.   And it was me who later had to reflect and learn. 

As things progressed with us, it became abundantly clear to me that he was profoundly insecure, passive aggressive and quite toxic.   He was suspicious, always asking me doubtful questions about what I was doing when I wasn’t with him.  He would have wild emotional swings where he’d be crazy about me one second and then go stone cold and be rude the next.  He was extremely sensitive and defensive and seemed to take everything said to him as if it were intended as an attack. He did things like imagine I was rejecting him and then in a fit of anxiety unmatch me on the dating app where we met… only to deny it later and tell me a stupid lie.  Which I let go, because I figured he was embarrassed.  And then he developed a victim narrative where being asked “Did you unmatch me?” was some kind of attack on his character that he had the audacity to leverage against me as if it were a genuine complaint.  He was paranoid and reactive, imagining people texting me at night when I’d received no texts.  

Once he was at my apartment and I received a call.  I hate receiving phone calls and have my phone programmed to only ring from places associated with my son.   So when a call came through, I popped up and declared “oh, he must need me!” (referring to my son.)  But my boyfriend assumed that my eager response was actually about my ex husband (who happened to be the person on the line, calling to tell me that my son had thrown up at camp) and developed some kind of theory that we had an inappropriate relationship or that I was attached to him romantically based on this.   This led him to send me texts with pictures of his ex in them, where he claimed they were spending time together, in order  to provoke me.  And  to do things like make sarcastic air quotes while mimicking me saying “ex husband” in random conversation.   It was intolerable. 

He’d make sneaky comments about how only five people were exceptions on his phone’s “Do Not Disturb” list, just so I’d know that I wasn’t one of them.   He’d talk about wanting to spend more time with me and wanting to have me spend the night with him only for him to freak out the next morning and make me wish I was anywhere else but there.  His behavior towards me after we spent nights together was truly horrible and I still to this day have a hard time forgiving him for the hostility and coldness that eventually escalated until sex itself became a humiliating, objectifying experience as he desperately sought to protect himself from intimacy that terrified him.   He imagined I was going to reject him constantly and instead of talking to me, he’d instead make moves to reject me first and do things like fill up his calendar with activities with other people and then try to “pencil me in” so I’d feel unimportant.   He would have dysregulated reactions to normal conversations when he didn’t get enough validation and he’d switch "Do Not Disturb" on his phone repeatedly throughout the day after I texted him a response, so that I would feel rejected or shut out.  He would give me dirty looks if I’d ask him if he wanted to drive us somewhere right after he said “sure.”  Actually, he gave me dirty looks all of the time. 

He told me story after story about his past relationships - unprompted - where he represented himself as the victim.   In reality, each of these stories was a confession: the story about his marriage, which he portrayed to me as him essentially asking her to marry him because she was so insecure, only to go on to become extremely avoidant and have an emotional affair with a much younger woman who worked for him.  Of course, this is not how he told the story; in his version his wife “imagined” the emotional affair and he was spending every hour away from home because he was trying to avoid her nagging while he was building a business.  In his version, his wife tried to keep him in the marriage by promising to go to therapy for her insecurities.  I’m pretty sure that in reality, she confronted him about his behavior and told him they needed to go to therapy or get a divorce and he chose the divorce option.  And then he sold that business he was so desperate to build and ran away to a new state.   

Then there was the story about a more recent ex who he had a child with.  In this story, they stopped sleeping in the same room and did not have sex from the time she was six months pregnant and he took on all responsibility for the child and the home while she became depressed and withdrawn and volatile until eventually he asked her to move out.  Then there was another ex who he was in a relationship with for seven months even though according to him she was an alcoholic who he didn’t even like that much, who he broke up with abruptly after they took a trip together.   Then, finally, there was the relationship he had just before me with a woman he’d been friends with for years.  In this story, the relationship escalated quickly to the “I love you” stage only for her to suddenly break up with him.  He claimed that she was a narcissist who loved bombed him.   I saw in these stories a clear pattern of a man who got involved with anxious, insecure women with little to no boundaries who chased him and needed him and then as the relationships escalated in intimacy (marriage, a child, a trip together, I love yous) he would freak out and distance himself, have emotional affairs and eventually break up with them or - in the last case and probably in the case of his marriage - get broken up with.   

He was clearly an unmanaged fearful avoidant, one with many narcissistic traits.  I suspect these traits are things he mimicked, behaviors learned from being abused by a narcissist himself but I cannot prove this, of course.   I could of course be wrong about this.  It is just speculation and gut instinct.   I think he was consumed by resentment and anger and had no way to express it because against all odds he also wanted to represent himself as a super nice guy that did everything for other people.  

There was a lot going on with him and I’m saying the bad things but there was also plenty good.   I really connected with him, we had a ton in common, and in many ways he was really the perfect person for me. He was smart and genuinely kind and interesting and funny and a tender and loving father.   We had an instant attraction, could talk about anything and were on the same frequency.   I was absolutely crazy about him.  I honestly thought he was forever material.  But in the end, his profound insecurities, attachment wounds and trauma turned him into a deeply toxic man who used all kinds of passive aggressive means to help himself feel that he was better than me and therefore in control of the relationship.   And this anecdote that I’m sharing about Astrology was an early indicator.

He did things like this again and again.   Later, there was an incident where he misunderstood a comment I made about the band Sonic Youth’s lead guitarist to be a rejection of him.  Yes, I am serious.  Yes, this is a grown man.   When I asked him directly if I’d said something to upset him, he first said no and then launched into a passive aggressive rant about “cold, self-centered New Yorkers” that he was pretending was about Kim Gordon and the band but was in reality a transparent attempt to attack me personally.   He made sure to include in his derogatory rant a number of the bands I’d included in a recent playlist that I’d jokingly called my “magnum opus” just to make sure I got the message: He thought I’d rejected him and he felt worthless and so he was going to do everything possible to make me feel rejected and worthless, too.

When I was breaking up with him - which happened because eventually I could not rationalize or excuse or tolerate his toxic, passive aggressive behavior anymore - he first asserted how insulted he was that I’d asked him to hold off on saying anything negative or hurtful, because it was “not what he was all about” and then spent an hour systematically attacking every single thing about me, with special attention paid to my autistic traits.   The story he was telling himself is that I deserved the way he treated me, and that it was all my fault because I was a “know it all” and “cold.”  Two things I’d told him early on that people often said to me to wound me.   All that was missing was for him to call me a robot, and we’d have a Full House.

As we had this final breakup conversation, which started first over text as I gently confronted him about how he was treating me and then, as he became increasingly defensive and hostile - refusing a phone call with me to talk about it because he anticipated a long day at work and “wouldn’t feel like it” - I realized there was no hope here and initiated breakup proceedings.   He eventually did take a phone call with me, one where he steadfastly blameshifted, deflected, gaslit, and attacked me while failing to produce even the faintest syllable of responsibility for his actions towards me.   

“What about you?!” he asked defensively, over and over.   And I never responded, because I was perfectly aware that what he really wanted to do was air the demented stories he’d been telling himself in his head to justify his behavior and I refused to dignify a single one of them.   (He still did it anyway.)  Every word that came out of his mouth in that conversation solidified that not only was I doing the right thing, but that I should have done it much sooner.   It was tragic.  It was heartbreakingly sad.  I was devastated.   I was not sure if I’d make it through it.

As he was going through his litany of complaints about me,  I was mostly silent because as I’d promised him, if he attacked me I simply would not engage.   But when he got to the part about me “always needing to be right” I asked him what exactly he meant.   “I’m fairly certain I’ve never told you that you were wrong about anything, not even once.   What exactly are you talking about?”

And he brought up the Astrology story.   Because, in his mind, his attempt to devalue my interests using a harebrained video that was a laughable joke was completely acceptable.   But my response, where I said “thank you, but I’m not interested” instead of systematically redesigning his ego from the inside out by showing him exactly how little he knew about the subject, was an example of me being a “know it all.”  

Because, you see,  the real  issue for him  was my confidence.  The issue was my boundaries (which to be honest were not strong enough and that is part of the lesson I learned.)  The issue was how I did not validate him enough.  The issue was that he needed to feel smarter than me.  He needed to feel more in control than me.  He needed me to flip out and have emotional reactions to his bullshit.   Because then and only then would he feel that he had the upper hand with me.   And that was what he really needed most.  He needed it as a remedy to his dysregulation.  I gave him none of those things.  

I reflected on the past relationships he’d told me about and noted how in every single one he portrayed himself as the rational one, the steady one, the responsible one, the empathetic and giving one… meanwhile all of his partners were needy, and fragile and clingy and dependent and selfish and flawed.  Early in our relationship, I’d talked to my therapist about this, about how in all of his relationships he was with women who apparently needed him more than he needed them.  And I worried out loud how someone with a pattern like this would react to being in a relationship with a woman who did not have those qualities and who, in fact, leaned much more into hyper independence than was good for her.   My therapist nodded, “Yes, that’s a pattern to watch.”

Later, after we broke up, I spent a couple of months not contacting him and then I regrettably reached back out to him.  My reasons for doing this are complicated; it was one part me still having strong feelings for him and hoping against hope that time apart would have reframed things for him.  And it was one part me understanding that deep down he was extremely fragile and being left would hurt him deeply and I did not want him to feel abandoned by me.  I felt it was important to convey to him that I saw him for who he was and still wanted him in my life in some way.   And so, I reached back out and kept my mind open but my guard up.   I was willing to talk to him and open the door but he would have to acknowledge his behavior, accept accountability and walk through that open door himself.   Alternatively, I was also open to being friends.

This turned out to be a stupid idea, one that my therapist warned me strongly about but I didn’t listen.

What I got in return for my efforts with this guy was instance after instance of passive aggressive attacks.   He wanted me back badly, I knew that… and I wanted him back, too.   But my conditions had to be met and that bar was low.   But more than wanting me back, he desperately wanted me to be as hurt as he was.   And he just attacked me over and over to try to get me there.   Of course, I was hurt, but he simply did not understand - no matter how many times I explained this to him - that I did not express emotion the way he was expecting and that I communicated literally.   So I would say, simply, “I care about you deeply and this is breaking my heart” but because I did not cry or scream or act irrationally he perceived me to be uncaring. I was beyond his control.   He could not handle this. 

The last instance was one of the most ridiculous; I’d just ordered some flowers, and I shared with him that the flowers were named after a famous myth.   The myth was about love and perseverance, and this relates to the flower’s name and meaning.   I did not anticipate that this would trigger him, but it did.  I now realize that in his hypervigilance he must have thought I was trying to send some kind of derogatory message to him with the myth, but really in all honesty it’s just one of my favorite myths in general and ordering these flowers is a tradition I look forward to each year.  I genuinely just wanted to share it with him.  It is of course possible that I subconsciously did have a motive, but it definitely wasn’t my intention consciously.   The first thing he did was act critical about the myth and then insinuate that I had a simplistic understanding of love.  I rolled my eyes at the attempted condescension, and as usual, simply refused to engage.  I simply stated that I did not see it that way, and that there was deep meaning available there for those who sought it.  He came back again, this time with a profoundly stupid takedown of the Oracle of Delphi, who appeared in the myth I’d shared.   At first I was confused about what he had against the Oracle of Delphi.  Then I remembered, back when we were first dating, I told him that I was obsessed with the Oracle of Delphi and that I’d spent years on scholarly research about the Pythia for essays and the book I am writing.   So, yet again, this was a transparent attempt to devalue my interests and by extension, me.  

And I could tell that he got all of his information from Chat GPT.   It was ridiculous, the things he was saying were the equivalent of a “The French Revolution is the revolution that took place in France” response.  He was so convinced of his own prowess that he truly did not even see what an ass of himself he was making.  I was so embarrassed for him that I was taken aback.   But here we were again, same story: A man desperate to feel dominant over a woman doesn’t even realize what an idiot he is being, doesn’t even realize that he is so far out of his depth that she could crush his fragile ego like a bug.

But I didn’t.   I sometimes regret that now, but I didn’t.   Once again, I responded calmly but firmly.   I pointed out an obvious issue with his perspective and he immediately backed down but then he freaked out anyway.  I suggested that maybe we should defer the conversation to another time, when I’d happily infodump on him.  Which was me being pleasant and attempting to smooth things over, as sharing information about my key interests is a kind of love language for me.  I tried after that to address the tension, and asked him if he wanted to have a real conversation with me, to address what was happening between us with all of this indirect communication.  That conversation was intended to be a bridge, to help him take the few steps over the low bar I’d set so he could walk through the door I was holding open with one hand while I had the other outstretched to him. A contortionist, trying to make things as easy as possible for him.   He at first said yes.   And then he vaporized and never replied to me again.  A ghost, running from accountability.  A man who was so fragile that the merest glimpse in the mirror was too much.   Which is what he was all along.

So, anyway,the moral of the story:  Astrology is a great heuristic to test men in particular.  It’s a great hack to see if they are capable of something more than linear thinking that is prescribed to them.  It’s also a great test to see if they will leverage Patriarchal messaging to feel superior to you. It’s a great test to see if a man will - no matter how much more studious and knowledgeable about either Astrology or Science you are than he is - attempt to condescend to you nonetheless.  They do it not  because they even believe strongly in what they are saying but rather because Astrology has been so marginalized that it represents the lowest of low hanging fruit for a man who wants to feel smarter than a woman.

I have learned that it is the rare man who is comfortable in a relationship with a woman he does not dominate in key ways.   I’ve learned that it is the men who are attracted to me when I am in my element - like crushing the competition at a pub quiz night or watching me debate or knowing me from work or from reading my research essays - who are going to be most attracted to who I really am.   When I was dating a lot, I would see firsthand how most men would react poorly to learning what I do for a living, which is in a heavily male-dominated field.   “What do you think it’s about?” my therapist asked me once.  “They think it should be them,” I replied.   

But the trouble is that men who appreciate my acumen with Science, Math, History, or other subjects coded “masculine” is that most of the time when they learn that I am equally if not more knowledgeable and interested in subjects coded “feminine” is that, just like this boyfriend, they seize the opportunity to take me down a peg or two because Patriarchal culture makes it easy to devalue feminine-coded subject matter.  Like Astrology.   And if I put this before them, most if not all will seize upon the opportunity to belittle me and reveal how insecure and resentful they’ve been all along. 

Which is why how a man replies to you when you bring up Astrology is a rock solid predictor of how he will behave towards you down the line.  It’s like waving a red cape at a bull; the less self-aware and disciplined they are, the more they  will struggle to resist the bait.   This exercise will show you if he is willing to denigrate you, work to make you feel devalued, and if no matter what he needs to feel smarter and better than you.   And I promise you, your nicest friends will be as guilty of this as your average ex-frat boy.   The ex-frat boy, at least, will be open about this.   Meanwhile your feminism-supporting subculture buddies who make mouth sounds about supporting women will just be passive-aggressive about it.   Neither is better or worse.   They are both toxic and bad.  The best men, the keepers, might admit they don’t know much about the subject.   They might admit that they’ve never taken it seriously.  But there you are, a woman they allegedly respect so therefore… they are open to hearing what you think about it.   That man is the one to keep around.

Trust your discernment.  Give them no quarter.   Dump them right away and save yourself the exercise that I put myself through with this guy, who in the end sought to harm me in a desperate attempt to make himself feel better until eventually he realized I wouldn’t let him do that anymore.  And then he disappeared.  No doubt feeling he was victimized by me and telling everyone he knows that he learned never to date  ‘know it all’ autistic women who are so cold and self-centered that they’ll drop you for no reason.   Which is the victim narrative he is probably sticking to.

Two months after he disappeared, I sent him one final message.  My goal was simple: to let him know that I still cared about him as a person and wanted to see how he was doing.  I wouldn’t allow him to treat me badly, I held my ground with my requirements to be involved with me, but I didn’t stop caring about him.  I saw him and his flaws and I understood that who he was and how he behaved were two different things.  As a former fearful avoidant myself, one who also struggled with an aggressive persona developed as a reaction to trauma for many years, I actually knew firsthand what was happening for him and while I could not tolerate his treatment, I also knew that what he needed more than anything in the world was to have people in his life who actually saw him clearly through the bullshit.  I wanted him to understand that.  There is a long journey for many people to separate their behaviors from who they really are.  There is something critical that must happen to stop a person from feeling global shame and instead learn to feel guilt for their actions and account for them so they can grow.  I genuinely hope that I might have provided a modicum of fuel for him to begin down that path.   Because honestly, as badly as he treated me, the reality is that the life he is creating for himself is absolutely terrible and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.   

He never responded.

I’m a Scorpio Sun, Scorpio Moon, Taurus Rising with Venus in Capricorn.  And I have so much to learn.