Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I'm an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I'm going to give you your weekly horoscope and no-bullshit mystical advice for living your very best life.

Jessica: So, this week, I am really excited to be joined by Happy Bunny and Sugar⁠—yes, it's as cute as it sounds⁠—for a couple's reading. And so I want to welcome you, Happy Bunny and Sugar, to the podcast. Tell me what you would like to talk about.

Happy Bunny: Hello. Thank you so much for having us here, Jessica. It's a pleasure to be here. And I guess the question that we both have for our reading today is⁠—it's about our sex life, if you could give some insight on that, just a little background information. We've been together for quite some time. It's about 15 years.

Jessica: Wow. Congratulations.

Happy Bunny: Thank you. Yeah, we met when I was 14 and he was 15 in high school.

Jessica: Damn.

Happy Bunny: Yeah. So we dated for eight years and married for seven. And the interesting part is that when we got married, literally even on the wedding day, our sex life just kind of took a left turn. It was really bizarre. And ever since then, it's just never been the same as it was while we were dating. So yeah. I'm just wondering kind of what happened there. I mean, we obviously did our own work to kind of sort out maybe what's affecting that, but still, I think there is some insight that we would love to have from you.

Jessica: Okay. Great. And just checking in. Sugar, do you sign off on this question? Do you have anything to add to it?

Sugar: Nothing other than yes and please.

Jessica: Okay. Okay. First, I should say congratulations. That's a long time. You're both young, so it is a long time to be together. And the contextualizing question is were you living together before you got married?

Happy Bunny: No.

Jessica: Okay.

Happy Bunny: We moved in right when we got married.

Sugar: Yeah.

Jessica: So, in a way, yes, it's about sex really taking a left turn after getting married, but it's also after moving in together. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. So, before I get going⁠—because you know I'm going to get going⁠—I want to share, Sugar, you were born October 16th, 1991, at 5:30 p.m. in Seoul, South Korea, yes?

Sugar: Correct.

Jessica: Okay. And then, Happy Bunny, you were born June 17th, 1992, in New York, New York, at 9:36 a.m.

Happy Bunny: Yes.

Jessica: Okay. Great. And for a relationship chart, I personally use something called composite charts. Essentially, what it is is it's the midpoint between your Sun and your Sun becomes our Sun. The midpoint between your Rising sign and the other person's Rising sign becomes the shared Rising sign. So it's a midpoint chart, basically, and I find it to be the most effective way of looking at relationships. And that's what we're going to start with here. And I should say that when you cast a composite chart, a.k.a. a relationship chart, you do need to cast it for the location that the relationship is occurring in. And so your relationship is occurring in Brooklyn, New York, yeah?

Happy Bunny: Yes.

Jessica: Excellent. Okay. So, I mean, I can jump straight to the answer, and a part of me wants to because there's actually an answer, which is kind of cool. But before I do, you mentioned that you've worked on it. What does that mean?

Happy Bunny: Like at one point, when our sex life was low⁠—this was in the beginning, and were in our young 20s⁠—I started feeling kind of insecure about, "Oh, maybe⁠ is he not being attracted to me anymore? Am I not attractive enough? I did gain some weight"⁠—whatever it is. And I asked him that question, and he was saying, "No, that's not the case. I'm still very much attracted to you, but there is a blockage of some sort." But he doesn't know what it is.

And this is something that we've kind of been going through for the last seven years. And I would say the first few years, we just kind of accepted it for what it is but not really did anything about it because I don't think we had the resources to. It's not like we were in therapy or anything like that. But I think as we got older towards our late 20s, I personally started thinking about what I want my sex life to be like and how I had to kind of ask that question to myself, if I was happy with the sex life that we had. 

And that's kind of what prompted that question and that journey to figure out what's going on, because I was so displeased by our sex life. It was very heartbreaking, almost, because sex really means a lot to me, even physically, actually. It even regulates my menstrual cycles and everything. I notice a difference in that. And just speaking for myself, it was a little bit frustrating because Sugar didn't know what the answer was, like what was going on, as well.

So we've gone through stuff. There is a power dynamic in our relationship that's also affecting our sex life, we feel like. Like maybe I can be very controlling in certain areas of our life, and then he kind of starts to withhold sex as well. This is subconsciously. This is something that we just started kind of exploring. But yeah, that's what we have so far.

Jessica: Okay. And then, Sugar, let me just ask you really directly, do you want to be having more sex?

Sugar: Yeah, I do. I mean, it's something that I look naturally inwardly first to see what my problems be. But maybe there's more to it than that, you know?

Jessica: Yeah. Before you guys moved in together, sex was a non-issue; it was fun, chill, frequently enough for both of you to not think about it too much?

Happy Bunny: Yeah. Totally. It was totally natural. It was no⁠—yeah. It was so easy. It's just like, when we met up, that's it. You know?

Jessica: Yeah.

Sugar: Even beyond that, it's like sometimes we would be thinking about it a lot even before we met up.

Jessica: Okay. So let me ask you this, Sugar. Is it that you're not really thinking about sex? Is that part of what changed? Your internal relationship to the idea of sex has shifted?

Sugar: Yeah, for sure. That void to fill was kind of filled by sex before, but now I'm starting to lose more and more of that⁠—I don't know, insecurity, or what you think is⁠—like lack of love or exploring love or whatever.

Happy Bunny: And we keep on going back to our wedding day because that's literally when it all happened. And when Sugar was telling me about what happened, there was a mental shift for him that happened where when I was walking down the aisle in my wedding dress, it's like something just happened. He kind of looked at me differently and changed that point of view, and ever since then, it's been different. I don't know if that detail would be helpful, but⁠—

Jessica: It is. There are several places we can look in the birth chart or in a relationship chart to understand sex. But the first two places I look are the fifth house and the eighth house. And for anyone who's pulled up a composite chart for the two of you, I just want to acknowledge that the zodiac signs⁠—they're very, very small, their importance in a composite chart. It's really about the planetary aspects and the house placement. Okay? And so I look to the fifth house, and I look to the eighth house. And in your relationship chart, you have Saturn in the eighth house.

There's a lot to say about that, but the first thing I can validate is that this placement honestly can be a boner killer. It can kind of dampen sex drive. It can squash spontaneous sexual dynamics. And so the fact that you were together for seven or eight years having great, easy sex is amazing to me. It's very impressive. There are several things in your relationship chart that describe your chemistry and describe that the two of you have fun together. When you're hooking up, it is fun. I imagine you also just have fun together. Is that still happening in the marriage?

Happy Bunny: Yeah.

Sugar: Yeah. There is hope. But yeah, we have a lot of fun together still.

Jessica: A ton of fun. This brings us to the -ish with Saturn in the eighth house and also, in my view, the -ish with marriage. And there's a lot of things that are fantastic about marriage. Here's something that I'm not a huge fan of about marriage: it turns the person that you're in love with/crushed out on/dating/having fun with into your family. And this is very Saturnian. It's a very Saturnian take, what I'm sharing, and of course, it's a bit my take as a person.

But also, Sugar, when you're like, "Yeah, I saw her in a wedding dress, and something shifted," it's this moment when your girlfriend or your fiancé, both of which are very like "I choose you. It's easy. What are we doing? What's going to happen next?" becomes your family member. And for a lot of people, family are not people you have sex with. Family is not hot. Family is forever, and so there's less choice. And the little things can quickly build up in that situation because you're just like, "Oh. I have to be with this forever? Wait a second. Is it hot in here?" People panic a little bit.

And I think the same thing can happen when we move in together. It's like all of a sudden, you can't just go home. Maybe if you were dating, you wouldn't go home anyways, but you knew you could, so there's some mental space there. Something shifts when you're like, "I am home. There's nowhere for me to go." And so, unfortunately⁠—maybe this is validating, but it's still unfortunate⁠—this is written in your relationship chart, this feeling of family not being sexy and spontaneous and fun. So, first of all, does that make sense?

Sugar: Yeah. It makes sense to me.

Happy Bunny: Yeah. It's interesting because I think for me, the concept of viewing Sugar as family didn't happen until a couple years later into our marriage. But I do see that where, for Sugar, he could view it that way immediately. Even the choice that led us up to choosing to get married was just almost situational. We both had to move out of our parents' home, and then instead of looking for roommates, we looked to each other, and we were like, "Hey. You know, we've been together for eight years dating." So we always wanted⁠—marriage was kind of there, but we were also young. It just kind of happened that way.

And also, we had a Christian aspect, as well, to it. I mean, Sugar grew up as a Christian. But we're not Christians anymore in that way, but back then, it was like an emphasis of getting married before you move in together and all that kind of stuff. So it kind of just became that way. But it is very interesting that Saturn is right there.

Jessica: It's right there.

Happy Bunny: Yeah.

Jessica: Let's add a little complexity to the mix. So, for Sugar⁠—I'm now looking at your birth chart⁠—you have a Moon/Saturn conjunction in your birth chart, and it forms a square to your Sun/Mars conjunction. This means a lot of things, but a big one is in your home life, in your family of origin, you weren't really supposed to express your preferences. It's not that you don't have them; you very much do, very much⁠—strongly opinionated, very strong reactions to things. But it looks like it was kind of an emotionally restrictive environment where it wasn't safe or appropriate for you to be like, "Yeah, I don't like this," or, "No, I don't want this."

And so that pressure from family, whether it was spoken or unspoken, that you have to move in and you have to get married if you're going to keep on going in this direction⁠— honestly, not hot for you. And I don't mean hot in your relationship, but just⁠—it's obligation. It's Saturnian. And it's not you choosing a thing. So, even if you would choose the thing that you felt pressured around⁠—and this is a theme that shows up in your relationship with each other. Even if you would choose the thing that you feel pressured around, the fact that you feel pressured makes you do the one thing that you were allowed to do in your home life, which is dig in your heels, cross your arms across your chest, and do nothing. Does this make sense?

Sugar: Yeah. It actually does make sense.

Jessica: This is complicated because when I look at your birth chart, Sugar, I'm like, "Oh. You like sex." Actually, you really like sex. And you like snuggling. You guys snuggle still?

Happy Bunny: We do, but it's hard. There's an aspect where our sleeping cycles don't match. They don't align. So we're not naturally in bed together. So it takes a lot more effort for us to be like, "Let's go to bed."

Jessica: I see.

Happy Bunny: Well, I feel like for me, it's like I have to kind of pull him and do that, like I have to be the one initiating. He's playing video games, and I'll be like, "Hey. Let's snuggle." But it has to be me doing that, or else it just doesn't happen.

Sugar: When I come to the bed, I make sure to hug you and snuggle at nighttime and before I sleep. And I know⁠—even though you're sleeping, I know you can feel it. And also, I do like that I feel like you snuggle me because you're getting up first. So I feel like, in that way, we do have times where we do snuggle and still find a time to do that, I think.

Happy Bunny: That is true. That is true.

Jessica: Okay, because it does look like snuggling is actually really important for both of you, not even like sexual intimacy, but sensual intimacy where you're just goofing off with each other or snuggling or whatever. That does look important. But here's the thing. Sugar, the second that somebody in your family says, "I need you to go grab a glass of water," there is a part of you that's like, "Why aren't you grabbing the water? Why is it me that has to grab the water?" even if you really don't care and you were on your way to get water anyways. This is just a thing that happens for you, and it doesn't have to.

This is like a childhood wound, right? Because you were controlled as a kid, it looks like. And you were controlled not just around what you did, but there was some sort of control around how you felt and what you thought. It looks like it was pretty intense. And so, when you shifted from living with your family of origin to, "I'm getting married and moving in with this woman that I really love," it kind of got transferred because when she said, "Hey. I'm going to bed now. Let's go to bed so we can snuggle and be cute together"⁠—super normal, right? Super normal. But there's a part of you that's like, "Oh, wait. You're fucking telling me what to do. Why are you telling me what to do?" And it's like a natural instinct to dig in your heels and cross your arms across your chest.

Sugar: Yeah.

Happy Bunny: Oh my God. This is our dynamic.

Sugar: I know this is just the beginning, but man. I feel like we're getting somewhere.

Jessica: Okay. Good. The goal is to get somewhere. So I'm going to give you, Sugar, some specific advice to work on for yourself. Something I want to encourage you to do when you start to feel that feeling⁠—it looks like the feeling is either like a complete shutdown or irritated, but the way that you respond to irritation is by getting shut down or frustrated⁠—is to try to first of all, just notice it. Just notice, "Oh, I feel triggered." And I don't know if you like the word "triggered." Whatever word works for you. Just notice that you're feeling that way.

And I would encourage you, if you're into simple mantras, to say to yourself or to practice remembering to say to yourself, "This person is actually not trying to control me right now. I can do whatever I want." The truth is Happy does sometimes want to tell you what the fuck to do because (a) she's a person and that's just how people are in relationships, and (b) we'll get to Happy in a minute.

But what you have somehow lost sight of or not fully ever taken ownership of is that you can say no. Instead, what you feel like is, "I can't say no, so I have to say no." That's the feeling. And so, if you felt like, oh, you could just say no sometimes, yes sometimes, "I don't know" sometimes, it would be easier for you to not feel as shut down as consistently because you'd feel like you had more of an option. Does that make sense, Sugar?

Sugar: Yeah. I can see that it's an important shift in perspective to have.

Jessica: Yeah.

Sugar: That's the first step you gotta do.

Jessica: It is, and this is the shit that is so hard in relationships because there's a way that you could be unintentionally creating your family dynamic with your wife by treating her essentially like you treated your mom because you're so scared that she's acting like your mom or your dad or whatever.

Now, no one gets off the hook. Everyone gets read. Hold on. Let me pull up your chart here. Here we go, Happy Bunny. Okay. So you have a Sun/Venus conjunction. You're easygoing. You've got a Moon/Neptune conjunction. You're easygoing. But then you have a Saturn opposition to your Ascendant, which means with Sugar, you're not as easygoing. I mean, you are, but you're not. You are Saturnian. You do say to him, "I need you to get me a glass of water," and if he's like, "Okay, in ten minutes," you're like, "Could you just get the fucking glass of water?" Now, you probably don't say it that aggressively because you've got that Sun/Venus conjunction and that Moon/Neptune conjunction, but that's how you mean it.

Saturn functions like a hammer when it's conjunct the Descendant. And you can be a little bit of a hammer. Now, from one hammer to another, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I mean, seriously, big hammer over here. But I will say it is a perfect storm for the two of you because on the one hand, I don't think that Sugar would have chosen to marry you if you weren't like this, because you are really directive. You do make things happen in the relationship. You are incredibly loyal and consistent. You know how to prioritize. You're just so loyal to the relationship, you prioritize it in really deep ways.

And that's something, Sugar, that you really value and I think you need because you're not always going to be the one to do something like that. But on the other hand, when you're just moving through your life, Happy, and you're just like, "Hey, grab me a glass of water," or, "We need to do this," there is a way that it can have sharp edges to it. And the more insecure you are, the less that Sugar shows up and gives you love or initiates things, the sharper your edges get, which honestly is fair and also completely antithetical to all of your goals. Super frustrating. So sorry.

My guess is that before you did anything terribly heavy-handed, Sugar got triggered around family stuff. It just, again, was a perfect storm as opposed to, "This is on you." It's not on either of you; it's your dynamic. And both of you have individual things that you can do to support this dynamic. For you, Happy Bunny, it's about really exploring for yourself how you express your boundaries and becoming a little bit more aware of how you're uncomfortable, it looks like, with expressing boundaries. So, sometimes, you don't until you're up to here. And then sometimes, when you do, it's kind of spontaneous, so you don't really think it through, and it comes across harsher or sharper than you meant.

Happy Bunny: That totally makes sense. We actually just talked about this last week. Literally a few days ago, Sugar was mentioning how, yeah, my delivery or things can be a lot better. He gave me the analogy of⁠—we just had an AC delivered to our home, and it was all beat up and everything. It got there. It got to us, and the AC is perfectly in great condition. But the packaging⁠—the bottom part was torn up. It went through some rough time, rough handling. So he was kind of comparing my deliveries to that.

Jessica: Oh. I see. That makes sense. Sugar, to your end, you're right, for sure. You've got a Mercury opposition to Uranus, Saturn on the Descendant. Both of those things⁠—yeah, you can come off real sharp. You're just like, "Needs to get done." And then it's in contrast to the whole entire rest of your personality, which is genuinely gregarious, easygoing, supportive. And so I imagine it stands out way more aggressively because you probably only do this within your partnership or with your besties and your family of origin. It's not how you are across the board in your life. It's how you are when you're really comfortable.

And then, Sugar, you're really comfortable, and so you kind of shut down and get a little more passive. And again, perfect storm because he shuts down or gets passive, and you're like, "Okay. I'll be a little clearer. I'll be a little bit more forceful. I'll let him fucking know." And then he's like, "She keeps on fucking letting me know. I need space. I need to figure it out for myself." And now no one's fucking, and now no one is happy. Happy Bunny, were your parents⁠—did they stay married?

Happy Bunny: They did stay married, but they're by no means in a love marriage. It was just more of [crosstalk].

Jessica: Correct.

Happy Bunny: They're just old together now, and they're just kind of stuck together.

Jessica: Yeah. This is, for you, I would say one of your biggest fears because I do see your parents' relationship⁠—yeah, ⁠they could've gotten separated/divorced when you were very little and both been better for it. They made the choice because of convention, because of having a family, all that kind of stuff. And what you grew up around and what you saw was that unhappy marriages get worse over time. They make both parties less happy. You have a lot of fears around that, is what it looks like.

And so I want, Sugar, you to hear this, that this dynamic is truly fucking terrifying for Happy Bunny because she wants to be happy. She wants to feel like there's a sense of growth and collaboration in the relationship. And she's scared of ending up in a situation where neither party is happy or things become irreconcilable. And, Sugar, when you kind of shut down and don't express what's actually going on for you or the only thing you know how to express is what isn't working and what you're saying no to instead of what is working and what you would like—which it looks like is a bit of your habit—it strikes a level of fear in her that is hard to express.

And so, therefore, from that place, asking her to be softer with her delivery, in a way, doesn't make any sense because she's freaking out. If this has been going on for so many years, then we have an incredibly tender dynamic where both of you are in survival mode; you're not in teammate mode. Does this make sense to both of you?

Happy Bunny: Yeah. It does make sense. I mean, we've been together for 15 years, and I feel like we're kind of closing this chapter. I don't know why the 15 just keeps on⁠—it's just so strong.

Jessica: It is.

Happy Bunny: I can't help but feel like we're entering the next 15 years. And this is what I keep on saying to Sugar, like, "Hey"⁠—there's times where I ask him, "Are you happy in this marriage? Is this really what you want for the rest of your life?" But that's what the idea⁠—at least that's what we agreed on as the idea of marriage. We're not people that will half-ass it. We're not people that will waste each other's time. It's either really, we deeply love each other and want to be with each other, or there's just no other option.

So yeah. There's many conversations we've had about just being very clear with that intention. And I know we're kind of approaching the end of our Saturn Return, so I feel like there is a big shift in our transformation. And we're totally different people than we were when we decided to get married. So I just want to better prepare us, I guess, for the next 15 years or even just be more intentional what we want from this relationship.

Jessica: Yeah. I'm glad to hear that. So Saturn moves in seven-year cycles. You were together seven years; you got married. Now you're at 14, 15 years, and you're like, "Oh shit. Does this work? Can we grow old into this?" In your 20s, it's very easy to be like, "I want this, because when I'm 30, life will be over. I'll be old." And then you start to hit 30, and you're like, "Oh my God. 30 is just older than 20. That's all it is. It's just time." I do firmly believe in cycles of seven. And there's something called the seven-year itch.

When people are together for seven years, a lot of couples start to get itchy, like, "Am I making the right choice? What am I doing?" Also, a lot of couples tend to commit more intensely. And when you commit more intensely without acknowledging that restlessness, the itchiness⁠—which can be around looking at other people but I do not think is inherently about that. It's more about, "What am I doing with my life? Am I actually hitching my star to your ride? Is that what we're doing here?" It's scary, and when we don't share that shit with our partner in order to protect their feelings, then we do it alone. And when you do it alone, you're no longer in a team.

Okay. Let's go back to your relationship chart. So 2021, 2020, 2022⁠—ouch. Just ouch. It's been a rough time because your relationship has been going through an identity crisis, and this identity crisis has played out in many places, but for sure around sex because you have Saturn in the eighth house. I am going to give you a bunch of advice around sex. But before I do, I want to just acknowledge that the problem underlying the frequency of sex⁠—because when you're having sex, it is still fun?

Happy Bunny: Yes.

Sugar: Yes.

Happy Bunny: Yes.

Jessica: Okay.

Happy Bunny: But I feel like it could be better. Just personally, I feel like⁠—it's weird because we've been together for so long, and he's honestly been my only sexual partner. It kind of became like a routine, but I personally would love to spice it up more. And I just feel like because we had all those hiccups for the last seven years that obviously, with sex, it's like because the sex is not really there, our intimacy kind of went down as well. So it's like, in a way, it was almost kind of backtracking.

I view sex as very essential, almost connect⁠—I want to create that soul-level connection. That's what I love about it. But I feel like, yeah, when we have sex, it's there, but I kind of crave something deeper, and I feel like it can be deeper. It can totally be something deeper.

Jessica: Yeah. That makes perfect sense. And how do you feel, Sugar, about that?

Sugar: Yeah. I do feel like it's mutual when we say that there is a want and desire to improve our sex life, and every time we do have sex, I do see the potential, too, like, "Oh, there could be so much more."

Jessica: Okay. I got lots to say here. I got lots to say. So, first, very briefly, Sugar, on your eighth-house cusp in your birth chart, you've got Sagittarius. So, for you, it looks like sex is something that you really enjoy. You prefer it to be spontaneous as opposed to planned. And it does not have to be a very long experience. It doesn't have to be like a marathon. You're down for a sprint. Does that make sense?

Sugar: Yeah, it does.

Jessica: Okay. Okay. Here we go. Okay. Hold, please. Hold, please, Happy Bunny. You have Pisces on the eighth-house cusp. And for you, sex is less about sprinting and more about taking a walk in the forest. "What did you find? Is that a bird over there?" For you, it's a journey. It's a connection.

Happy Bunny: That totally [indiscernible 00:27:59].

Jessica: Yeah. Okay. So, straight out of the gate, this is not incompatible at all. However, it's not the same, is it? There's an issue of pacing here because Sagittarius on the eighth-house cusp⁠—"Let's get in there. Let's get it done. Let's keep on moving." Pisces on that eighth-house cusp⁠—"Let's get in there. Let's see what could happen. Let's explore getting it done, and afterwards, let's snuggle and sleep." It's a very different approach in that way. And because you've been together for so long and you have habits around everything, this is a little bit interruptive for both of your natural sexual cycles and styles.

That's why I'm going to start with this advice that I'm going to give you here, okay? My advice is to take intercourse⁠—it's the hottest word in the English language⁠—intercourse off the table for x amount of months. Make a decision as a team. And when I say make a decision as a team, Sugar, you're part of the team. You have to be assertive here, okay? So, if you would prefer to take intercourse off the table for six months and Happy Bunny's like, "Let's take it off the table for three months," negotiate. Say, "I would prefer six months, but let's do four and a half."

I really want to task you with sharing what you're actually feeling because I know that you don't want to hurt her feelings, or you're just not accustomed to being assertive when you have a no. So I'm going to task you with that. That's part of this dynamic. If it's going to change, you're going to be a little bit more forthright, okay?

Sugar: Okay.

Jessica: So we're taking intercourse off the table, but we're not taking sex off the table. Yeah, intercourse, sex, different. We all agree. Sugar, do we all agree?

Sugar: Yes.

Jessica: Okay.

Happy Bunny: I knew you would say that, though. I knew you would say something like this for us.

Jessica: The issue of obligation is, I think, the least sexy thing in the world. Like, "We really need to work on sex? Ew." Who wants to work on sex? I mean, we have to. In most marriages, eventually, you're going to have to work on sex because sex is a part of a relationship, and all parts of relationships need work.

So taking intercourse off the table, but committing to goofing around more physically⁠—so that might mean dancing together. That might mean wrestling. I mean, I don't know how you roll. It might mean any kind of thing that is physical contact and that's playful and stupid. So stupid has to be in there because both Sagittarius and Pisces on the eighth-house cusp has kind of got to be playful and silly and not that deep.

Now, this is a personal question, but we're having a personal conversation. Do either of you as individuals or both of you as a couple watch or enjoy or read or enjoy any kind of porn?

Happy Bunny: Yes. I do. Yeah.

Jessica: Sugar?

Sugar: I do as well. Yeah.

Jessica: And do you do as a team or just as solo fliers?

Happy Bunny: Solo.

Sugar: Yeah. It's a parallel experience, I'd say.

Jessica: Okay. So what you watch on your own is your own fucking business. I actually am a big fan of having a private fantasy landscape. We need to have our own sexualities. So I'm not saying don't watch porn alone. No, please, watch porn alone. But I'm curious what would happen if you watched it together or if you sexted each other a link to something that you've enjoyed watching. So it could be done solo, or it could be done as a team, because⁠—you've kind of mentioned this, Happy Bunny. It's like you've been together since you were little kids. You were kids together, I'm assuming having kid-like sex, which is generally pretty mediocre. It's not a thing. You don't know yourself yet.

As you age, as you grow, you change. Your preferences change. Your physical body changes. And so I think exploring what seems hot in a fantasy way versus what seems hot like "I would enjoy trying this" way would be interesting, and also just being like, "Wow, this person is weird in a way I didn't expect," or, "I would never have thought that was a thing that they were into." That's good information. It's dating. It's more like dating and less like being married. Does that seem like something both of you would feel comfortable doing or interested in doing?

Sugar: Yeah. I always like having more team experiences, so I think it sounds fun for me.

Happy Bunny: Yeah. It's interesting because I'm just very shy as a person, actually. There are things⁠—I actually have a letter that I kind of wrote to him. Just one night, I was just like, "Oh my God. I'm too shy to say this," and I'm just writing my thoughts out. Yeah. I haven't sent it to him, though. I never shared it. It's something that I obviously want to share with him, but I feel so shy about it, and I don't know how to, I guess, not be shy about it.

Jessica: Being shy about sex is super normal and fine. But what is happening is you're not⁠—your sex life isn't like a thing the two of you do together. When I look energetically, when I look astrologically at the two of you as a couple, there's lots of things you do together where you're exploring things in your life, in the world, in your relationship, and it's normal. Maybe one of you is awkward. Maybe it's not perfect, but it's normal. You're exploring. Sex isn't one of those things anymore. And maybe it never was, honestly.

But you don't have trust and comfort in this place. I mean, I've seen couples with distrust around sex. I don't see that for the two of you. But you don't have⁠—knowing how to hook up as somebody in their early 20s is a completely different thing than somebody in their early 30s. It's like night and day. And so being able to, I would say, share visual content, which is porn in this conversation, and then maybe being able to watch it together⁠—if either of you is like, "You know, that didn't actually do it for me," don't watch it together. Keep on sharing. And if it does work and you're like, "Oh shit. I did like that," watch that shit together.

And then starting to have those conversations and sharing what's in that letter is going to start to feel more organic. And honestly, I don't mean the first month, necessarily, because there's like a stiffness that Saturn brings, and not a fun stiffness⁠—like a rigidity that is uncomfortable. It's like, "I don't want to do the wrong thing. I don't know what I'm supposed to do"⁠—that kind of a stiffness in your relationship chart around sex. And so having a third party⁠—porn is like a third party in this situation⁠—that kind of does the communicating for you can be very effective.

So, even, Happy Bunny, if you're like, "Okay. I know what's in the letter that I want to communicate, and I don't know that I want to communicate it," you can spend some time on the World Wide Web looking for something that visually communicates that thing, and boop, send it his way. And that might be a lot easier and also less heavy-handed feeling, like less processy. I think it's important to process about sex, and I also think there comes a point at which processing about sex is antithetical to having sex. And it's hard to know when you cross that line, especially because it's a different place for both of you. So does that seem doable, like you kind of understand the assignment and you could do it?

Happy Bunny: Yeah. I think so.

Jessica: Okay.

Sugar: Yeah. It's reminding me it's okay to be humble, and the sooner you drop your insecurity, the sooner you can work on your want for improvement.

Jessica: Yes. And let me say you guys like each other. You are attracted to each other, and you like each other. And neither of you is excellent at letting go of the day and being super in your body. Neither of you have a super easy time around that, and in very different ways. For you, Happy Bunny, it's kind of like you're like, "Okay, well⁠—but sex can help me do that." And for you, Sugar, it's like, "I can't have sex until I've relaxed. I have to relax first and then have sex."

Sugar: Yeah.

Happy Bunny: That is so correct. That is very correct. Yeah.

Jessica: So, Sugar, video games, TV⁠—those are your two favorite checkout ways, ways of relaxing?

Sugar: Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. So I have a really annoying thing to say to you, which is that TV and video games⁠—fun, fun. They help you disassociate, not relax. So, after having a really fun time watching a show that you love or winning a game, like actually having a great time playing a game, it's not like you're like, "Okay. Now I'm done, and I'm relaxed in my body. Let's hook up." It doesn't do that for any person. It checks us out. And so I want to kind of encourage you to think about what you're doing. I'm not saying stop watching TV and start having sex. That's⁠—again, it feels like a restrictive prescription, so that's not what I'm saying.

But I am saying do you need a little shoulder rub from your partner to get you to transition from what you do to come down from the world and into your body so that you can then be like, "Okay. You scratched my back; let me scratch yours"? Do you need something like that? Do you need to do something like a playful, physical game to get into your body so that then you can feel like, "Oh, right. Oh, right. I actually really like having sex"? It's like you get disconnected from it. Does this make sense, what I'm saying?

Sugar: Yeah. I see what you mean. Like when you start to feel sensation of touch, that's when it sparks, for me, I guess a new sensation where I feel it more in my body and I am more in that moment.

Jessica: Yep. That's exactly it. And your dynamic is that, Happy, you're more of the initiator of everything, eh? That's kind of your role. So I get it why that would happen with sex, and also, I get it why you'd be like, "Yeah, that doesn't work for me. I need my partner to initiate," because having Pisces on the eighth-house cusp means you want your partner to initiate sex. Super bad news for you, Sugar, because you're so rusty at initiating things, not just sex. It's like it was kind of forced out of you as a child, and you as an adult haven't prioritized changing it because you don't want to be mean, and you don't want to be aggressive, and you've spent your lifetime so far pushing down your anger. So, when you do initiate things or try to make something happen, you can be a little clumsy and a little aggressive about it.

Sugar: Yeah. It does take a lot of, I guess, stress for me to start things. Yeah.

Jessica: And it's tricky. Porn is complicated and tricky, and it can get complicated and tricky in a relationship for a variety of reasons. So I don't want to over-lean on porn. That said, it's such an easy way in for the two of you because neither of you has to do anything or say anything. You can just be like, "Let's watch something in bed," or whatever. But speaking of bed, I actually don't know that you should be fucking in bed or hooking up in bed so much, because it's too routine. I would recommend exploring sex⁠—and not just intercourse, but hooking up⁠—in locations outside of the bed. Does that seem doable to both of you or interesting to both of you?

Happy Bunny: I actually find that super interesting, but I feel like in the past, Sugar was uncomfortable doing stuff⁠—actually, I kind of like doing a little kinky stuff like hooking up in the movie theater, even though it's not supposed to be a thing. But I think about it. But I think I have expressed that⁠—this was years back⁠—and Sugar was like, "Oh, no. This is just not my thing." So I don't know. How do you feel about it now?

Sugar: Well, actually, I was thinking about how in the beginning, you mentioned that it wasn't just marriage, but it was like the change of moving in together. And I feel like ever since we did move in together, it became a thing where, yeah, we would find ourselves going more to the bed to have sex, rather than before marriage, we never cared about where it was. It was just then and there, you know?

Jessica: Yeah. Then and there. Okay. So it sounds like you're both down to hook up inside the home, not always in the bed. Is that correct?

Sugar: Yes.

Happy Bunny: Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. And Happy Bunny is like, "Yeah, but not always even in the house. I'm thinking bathroom of a bar. I'm thinking a movie theater. I'm thinking about a car." And you, Sugar, did not respond to that, even though she asked you⁠—not the most direct ask, by the way, Happy Bunny, but you did ask Sugar if he was into that. And you just deftly worked around the question. And then, Happy Bunny, you let him. Sugar, what do you feel⁠—and you don't have to like it, but what do you feel about the idea of hooking up outside of the house in protected but public spaces?

Sugar: Well, actually, before marriage, we've done that multiple times. And I feel like after marriage is when it stopped. And I guess it was the idea of, I guess, what we mentioned, like family.

Jessica: Yeah.

Sugar: [crosstalk] family. And I feel like that's where it kind of got twisted around, I guess. But before we got married, all those things that you mentioned there, we did do.

Jessica: Okay.

Happy Bunny: That's true. We had a very⁠—that's why it's so interesting. I feel like after we got married⁠—because we had, really, such a dynamic, really great sex life while we were dating. But really, something just turned where it wasn't like that anymore when we got married. And it was so difficult to get out of that, and we don't even know how to get out of that. We started kind of pointing fingers at each other. "Own it." A lot of it was more towards Sugar, like saying, "What's wrong? What's happening? Let me fix this."

Jessica: It's just a perfect storm. Honestly, if I saw this relationship chart and you guys were like, "Should would get married?" I would have been like, "No. Live together. See how it works. Then decide," because you're both way too easily triggered around what it means to be family with someone. You've both experienced your family of origin as having family situations and marriages that you do not want to reproduce, and neither of you were old enough to have fully processed through that when you got married. So you both kind of started to project it onto the other unconsciously, and some of it was probably a little conscious.

This is where I come back to intercourse is off the table, but you all need dates. You need to go out and set the intention that you're going to be amorous. And that might literally look like, for the first month or two, holding hands. Find something weird that you haven't socially done before, and just be a little adventurous. And part of when I say this, it means, Sugar, you initiating. And that might mean you simply initiating putting your arm around her. You don't have to initiate sex or hooking up or making out if it's not flowing for you.

There's no pressure in this. It's more about remembering that the two of you are on the same team, and you both want to have sex, and you both want to have fun with each other, and you both want to feel desired and like life is kind of an adventure together and that the two of you can, over the course of your relationship, over the course of time, introduce new preferences and try new shit together and get weird together, which brings me to something else, which is Saturn in the eighth house can get real fucking weird.

So, if you were to read the conventional heterotypical astrology about relationship charts, I don't recommend it with your relationship chart because Saturn in the eighth house⁠—they'll be like, "Sex is bad. Sex doesn't work. Sex is hard to come by." It can be a little scary. But that's only because of control issues. I believe that we can turn control issues into fun kinks. You can turn those into games. It just takes communication and consent and the willingness and the reality of working on your relationship control issues and resentments outside of the bedroom, outside of sex. Right?

But Saturn in the eighth house can be really fun with playing with power, playing with control⁠—it can get real kinky. And so I think, personally⁠— and again, I don't know what both or either of you feel, but I think this relationship is destined for some kinky shit over the course of time. So it doesn't have to be in 2022 or 2023, but you all are married. You're going to be together hopefully until you're old, really old. And so that means there's a lot of time to grow into some weird consensual shit. And I don't know what weird means for either of you or both of you.

But the downside of Saturn is it's restrictive and it smooshes sex. The fun part of Saturn is you can really get into taking some of the heaviness of the relationship dynamic and kind of turning it on its ass and playing with it. So it just means not being scared of the control stuff and the difficult parts of the relationship, but instead being like, "Let's just lean into it." So, if one of you is more controlling on the day-to-day dynamic, yeah, probably you're not going to be the one who is super controlling in bed. We're going to flip that shit.

So I want to encourage the two of you, when you're sharing your porn clips or whatever, don't just send out soft pitches. Again, that was a baseball metaphor. It could have been a weird sex metaphor, but it was just baseball. Try to throw in some weird left fielders, if you can, because I think that'll work for the two of you. And whether that means you end up being weird in random locations or you end up being weird in the kitchen, great. But I don't think it has to end there. I think you guys can kind of⁠—you can be weird together. And I'm using the word "weird." I don't have a negative connotation with the word "weird." I don't know if either of you do.

Happy Bunny: No.

Sugar: No. I actually find it comforting hearing "weird."

Jessica: Good. Okay. Good, because you can get weird, real weird. This brings me to something else that's happening in your relationship right now. In your relationship chart, you've got Pluto conjoining your composite Moon, which means that in 2022, shit has gotten very real for the two of you as a couple. And it will stay very real through '24. Pluto conjunct your composite Moon is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. So this is the only time in your relationship that it's going to occur. And what this transit is doing is it's bringing all these emotional issues, all these resentments, all this anger, but also passion and desire to bone, up to the surface.

And unfortunately, if sex hasn't been super active in recent years, that means it's likely to be bringing up frustrations and resentments around, "Why isn't this happening? Why don't you like me? Why aren't you choosing me?" or, "Why are you trying to force it? Why do I have to feel bad about it?" Pluto conjunct the Moon is a very difficult transit for a relationship chart, and it can be incredibly destructive, not because it comes in and creates a problem, but because it brings the preexisting problems to the surface.

So, when I started to study your relationship chart, I was like, "Well, you all called me at the right minute," because you do need to deal with this, not because you need to be having sex, but⁠—I mean, I think you both want to be having sex, but you need to deal with this because of the emotional implications of how you connect, how you don't connect, how you experience and express your feelings to each other, and sex is a part of it. The reason why sex kind of dries up in relationships in general is because other things aren't being dealt with.

And so the Pluto conjunction to the Moon is bringing that shit up. And so the fact that things are hard right now is healthy and good. I don't want either of you to suffer, but as an astrologer, I do actually want the two of you to be struggling with this because it's the struggle that's bringing shit to the surface, and the only way that you can heal it is to feel it. The only way that you can work through it is to literally work through it.

And this is the second part of the reason why I say let's take intercourse off the table for a minute here, because Pluto conjunct the Moon can bring up really fun, athletic sex, but what it usually brings up first and foremost is the resentments that have been hiding in the corners of your relationship. And it brings up a sense of desperation and frustration.

Those are the foundational things to work on while cultivating more physical and sensual connection so that you can get to a place where you're already working on the emotional stuff outside of the bedroom⁠—I keep on calling it the bedroom, even though I want you to hook up in the kitchen⁠, but whatever⁠—outside of the bedroom so that there's more room for spontaneous desire and playfulness to emerge in your relationship. Does this make sense?

Happy Bunny: Yeah. Yeah, it totally makes sense.

Sugar: Yeah. It makes sense.

Jessica: And bear with me for a second here. Bear with me. I'm going to ask you to both say your full names, and use your maiden name, Happy.

Happy Bunny: Okay. It's [redacted].

Jessica: You're missing a name.

Sugar: Oh. [redacted]

Jessica: Thank you. Okay. Good. Okay. So I just want to share what I'm seeing is you're both a little shy with each other at this point, but you actually really both want to make this work. And I do see that you have good chemistry. I do think this is very, very workable. I do. And you guys can get through this. I just wanted to look at you energetically before I assured you because I don't want to blow smoke up your ass. But I will say Pluto conjunct the Moon⁠—you have more than a year of this transit left. This is not going to be an easy, quick fix.

I do see that the act of taking intercourse off the table for a period of time will be really good for Sugar because then there's no pressure on you. It will be fun to let desire build up a little and to take pressure off the table. If you're like, "That was great advice, but it's been three weeks. Fuck Jessica. We're not doing this," great. You know what I mean? It's your relationship. Do what works. I do see this being some choppy waters. This doesn't look like a quick-fix situation, and that's okay. I just want to say this to both of you. It's okay.

There's a way that, Happy, you can feel like, "Well, if things aren't working now, they're never going to work. And if there's not progress today, there's never going to be progress." And from one hammer to another, I feel you. I totally get that. But Sugar is confusing because, Sugar, you both make huge strides of progress all of a sudden, and also, you're very fucking slow. You're both of those things.

Sugar: Yeah.

Happy Bunny: Yes.

Jessica: It's unpredictable. It's hard to know what's going to happen. And it's not like, Sugar, you're sitting around like, "I've got this evil plan. I'm going to move slow." It's just you have a lot of emotional repression, honestly, that, again, comes from your childhood, that you haven't fully worked on. And if I was queen of the world, I would get you a therapist, my friend. Yes, a therapist, ideally a therapist from your same background, somebody who can really understand your own cultural and familial experience and the context of it so you don't have to waste your fucking time in therapy explaining that shit.

Sugar: I see. Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. It would be really helpful for you because a lot of what you struggle with is not about sex at all. It just becomes about sex. It's really about how you experience and regulate your emotions and your feeling of having a right to take up space with anything other than, "Okay. Sure." You're very comfortable saying, "Okay. Sure," but you're not as comfortable saying, "Not really," or, "No." And so you repress those things.

And this is something that you can't work on for Happy Bunny, you can't fix for Happy Bunny. You've got to work on it for yourself because if you do it for her, then it's just a reiteration of the very fucking problem. It's like, "I have to do it for this person." The other reason to do this kind of work on yourself is because you'll be happier, period. This issue, I'm sure you've noticed now that you're almost 31⁠— it's not aging great. It's making you feel depressive and not know why, but it's because you're not giving yourself the freedom to fully be in your life. And that is something that you deserve to work on for yourself, and it will have the very lovely benefit of helping your relationship and your sex life.

And then, Happy, for you, there's this thing around self-regulation around how you tolerate your impatience and your desire for perfection. The way that I would point you towards is progress, having a way of assessing, "Okay. Have I seen him try?" Let's say you wake up Saturday morning and you're like, "I'm dissatisfied with this. This is not fucking making me happy. We have not had any kind of anything for three weeks or for five days"⁠—whatever it is. The way to check in with yourself is, "Okay. Has there been progress? Have I seen him making an effort?"

And if the answer is "No, he's not made any efforts," "No, there's no progress here," okay. I'm going to give you some tools for communicating about it. And, Sugar, you tell me if these seem like they would not work or they would. Okay? What I think both of you prize as individuals is being a reliable, honest person. Is that true? Are you both kind of serious about that?

Happy Bunny: Yeah.

Sugar: Yeah.

Happy Bunny: Yeah. Totally. There was a point in our relationship that⁠—I mean, both of us have done this where we kind of⁠—was not honest with each other, and that really did put a fork in our relationship for sure.

Jessica: Yeah. Both of you are very, very serious about being with somebody who's honest and being honest. So, if the two of you make an agreement, "Okay. We're not intercoursing, but we are being more sensual. We are being more playful. We're being more physical. We can make out. We can hook up. But we're not crossing that particular line, but we're both going to make an effort"⁠—let's say you make that verbal agreement, and then I would say nine days or more passes. So you gotta give him a little space, Happy. Nine days or more passes, and he has done nothing. He has made no effort. Sure, he's been a little responsive when you've made the effort, but he actually hasn't put his arm around you without prompting. He hasn't snuggled you without prompting. He hasn't held hands without prompting. You can see that he hasn't honored his word.

Then what you're going to do⁠—I have this theory for couples, and I call it blow jobs and pizza. You're not going to sit him down and be like, "Sugar, you said you were going to do x. You're not doing x." Again, that's the hammer way, but it doesn't work on Sugar. What you're going to instead do is the blow-jobs-and-pizza approach, which is literally order a food or have a food or something that is a treat that everybody in the house likes. Have something fun present so that you're being like, "Hey, teammate. Hey, person I genuinely like and want to enjoy more. You gave me your word, and I trust you. And I'm starting to feel like trusting you is not working because you're not following up on your word. What's going on?"

And make it about that, not about what he is or isn't doing, but about he said something and you trusted him, and it's not happening. And then you ask him what's happening for him. So, first of all, Happy Bunny, does that seem like something you could do?

Happy Bunny: I think so. Yeah. I'll admit it'll be a little bit of a challenge because I feel like I actually give him that kind of time, actually, because I have been with him for a while, so I know he moves slow and everything. But in the past, it's just that frustration builds up, and it's like we have a history of that happening. I could already know I will be impatient with it, but I think because of your advice and everything that we talked about, I'm willing to try to change that approach a little bit and just do a fresh, new start and see how that turns out.

Jessica: And I'll say listen. This is not your nature. I am telling a hammer to be a cotton ball. I understand that. And, Sugar, you need to understand that the advice I'm giving her is completely not her nature. This will take feats of strength. This will take serious fucking effort for her to do. I agree this is not your nature. And you're probably going to be pretty terrible at it, which is to say 50 percent of the time, you won't do this. But it's the effort because you want him to change something that's really essential to his nature. It's this passivity. It's like this shutting down.

So I am encouraging you to meet him halfway. The other thing that I'm encouraging you to do is to ask him, "What's going on? You gave me your word. What is that about?" which puts it back on him and is not putting on him what he is or isn't doing, but it's asking him to be accountable for what he promised, which⁠—now I turn to you, Sugar. Does that make sense, why I would advise her to do that?

Sugar: Yeah. And that's making sense for me, as well, because I'm realizing I'm more challenge-oriented. And I feel like when there is a challenge for me, that's when I'm motivated to do things. And I know she has that same drive in her, too.

Jessica: Again, you guys are a great couple. To be honest, I've done a lot of relationship readings, and lots of couples⁠—they don't have the things that are necessary to stay the course. You guys do. And also, this issue, it's not going to magically go away. This is your challenge. It's one of your core challenges, and that's okay because you can work with it.

And I think that, Sugar, when she comes to you and she's being like, "Here's a pony. Here's a rainbow. Hey, man, what's going on? You made me a promise," I want you to understand that she's really struggling if she's taking all those steps, and not for you to feel guilty, but to be like, "Oh shit. She's trying. She's not trying to control me; she's trying to meet me where I'm at so that she can get her needs met, which are being closer to me."

Just so you know, Sugar, all of this is because she wants more of you because she likes you. And that's the part that gets lost when you feel pressured. You're like, "She's trying to make me do something," instead of, "This woman is super into me, and she wants to be happy with me and she wants to make me happy," because that is what's happening. It doesn't feel like it because of the way that shit goes down. So this is my worry. Let's say she does all those steps. Sugar, my worry is that you'll be like, "I don't know. I don't know why I haven't done anything."

Happy Bunny: I want to pause you right there. That's—

Jessica: Yes.

Happy Bunny: ⁠—[crosstalk] happens. That is what happens. And this is my⁠—we've been together for so long, and this advice that you⁠—we've talked about this. He has⁠⁠—or for example, it will be more like I tend to have a lot of things to say, and right straight up in the morning. And for him, he's not awake yet. He has his own morning routine. He needs to have two hours to get ready in order to have serious conversations. And I try to honor that, and the times that I try to do that, it still is the same, almost.

Jessica: That's real. Again, hammer to hammer, I'm with you 100 percent. I'm like, "Wake up. Let's process. Wake up. Let's get real." And yeah, most people are not like us that way. Okay. Cool. But this brings us to the Sugar part because, yeah, you saying, "I'm not really sure. I don't know," is the truth, right? You don't know, and that's why you're saying you don't know. And it's also a huge copout. And no disrespect, Sugar, but this is what you did with your family. The way that you got out of conflicts at home was being like, "I don't know. I don't know. I didn't do it. Not my fault." Right? Is this correct?

Sugar: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I feel like what you're saying now is like⁠—it's like the missing link because we would only get so far talking to each other the same way all the time. This is good advice to hear.

Jessica: Yay. Also, I'm not done with you. So okay. Sugar, here's the thing. Let's say the answer is genuinely, "I don't know why I haven't done it. I don't know why I haven't shown up." The missing piece from you is, "I need to take responsibility for the fact that I made you a promise, and I haven't followed through." That's the missing link because not only is that just the fucking adult, loving, responsible thing to do, which⁠—I know you're a loving adult. It's just the family trauma shit for you. So not only is that the adult thing to do, but also, it will make her feel heard so she won't need to keep on repeating herself, which shuts you down.

So she repeats herself because she's like, "If I explain it this way, if I explain it with a hat on, if I explain it holding a cat, then maybe you'll hear me." And you're just like, "Yeah, I hear you, but I don't know." And that just makes her think, "Well, if I really explained it, he would know because he's a grown-ass adult and he knows." So we have a fight. Now we have a fight, and it's a never-ending fight with no progress.

So just interrupting that fight by being like, "You're right. I do want this to change. I did make you a promise, and then I did nothing. I did not follow through"⁠—which I completely expect is what's going to happen some of the time, just to be⁠—again, this is not going to just magically go away just because we had a cool conversation. That will immediately make a change. And then this is where, Sugar, you've got to do your own investigation into how you have developed coping tools in your adult life that help you to disassociate from difficult things, but you haven't developed coping tools for being uncomfortable and staying with it and finding your own voice and your own needs and your own preferences.

And you actually genuinely want to have sex. I see that. You're disassociated from that part of you because that same part of you is also a part of you that gets angry and that is frustrated with life. It's like Mars in astrology governs all of those things. So, when we disassociate from ambition or anger or passion, sex falls away, or it becomes the only thing. It's like either/or, generally.

And so, for you, this is just going to be real rough because you've developed⁠—your primary coping mechanism is to leave your body. My guess is in that nine days that I'm pointing Happy to give you nine days to follow through on a promise, you'll forget. You'll forget. You won't notice that it's been nine days. And that's not about you, Happy. That's not about your sexual desire for your partner, Sugar. It's about your coping mechanism.

Happy Bunny: It's funny that you mentioned that, because I think one recent thing through our work⁠—I mean just through our conversations and stuff like that⁠—Sugar has expressed that he is uncomfortable with his anger, multiple times where⁠—I mean, he can get super angry, but he is so afraid to let that out, and he doesn't have the coping mechanisms to let that out, because he told me he just becomes like a Hulk, and he doesn't want to become like the Hulk.

Sugar: I feel like you saying that helped me realize I think that's more of a misdirecting of my anger because I feel like the real issue is still there.

Jessica: Yeah. I really think that you get anger trapped in your body, which is why you disassociate from your body, which is why sex doesn't occur to you until you're like, "Oh, right, I could get into sex." But it's not like⁠—it feels inaccessible to you. Developing a relationship to experiencing your anger in your body⁠—again, you have a Mars/Sun conjunction in your birth chart. You get pissed, and it's really physical. And because of your Moon/Saturn conjunction square to your Sun/Mars, you feel like you need to clamp down on it because it's too mean, and then what ends up happening is you just have resentments, and it leaks out, and you shut the fuck down. Right?

So finding physical ways of experiencing and expressing anger⁠—I don't know what would be fun for you, but it has to be fun. I'm not encouraging you to⁠—

Sugar: [crosstalk]

Jessica: You [indiscernible 01:04:52] something. I encourage you to. Now, the other thing is⁠—I'm back to porn because it's about starting a conversation without it being a process. It's about being like, "Hey, I'm thinking of you." Text each other porn. It's just enough of a "Wait, what?" that it could be really hot and change things up. Again, it's more like dating stuff than marriage stuff.

Sugar: I like that you mentioned the porn and it's a good way to communicate, and it's easier for us. I mean, maybe it won't be like that forever, right?

Jessica: Absolutely.

Sugar: But it's a good way to start, and I feel like it's fun that way.

Jessica: Great. Okay. I'm so excited this works for you because the thing I love about it, too, is that it leads to exploring kinks without having to be like, "Would you want to do this thing?" It can be more of a playfulness because you're talking about actors on a screen, not just about your personal preferences, which is so vulnerable. The awkwardness can be actually really hot if you find a way for it to be hot.

There's other ways of playing with this, including you could read shit, and you could leave books with bookmarks. I know that's old-school. Books? What are books, magazines? But you know what I'm saying. You could leave that shit around the house and be like, "Bookmark. Highlight," whatever, so it's not processy, but it just makes sex something that's just in the house and in your lives in a way that you share a little bit more.

So you know your relationship to anger, Sugar. You can choose to not deal with it for a little while, but only a little while, because Pluto is going to start to square your Mars early 2023. So, in February 2023, for two years, your anger shit is going to be up, my friend⁠—up. That means get ye a therapist. That means finding ways of experiencing and expressing your anger. Honestly, I would recommend starting with your family of origin, not calling them and yelling at them, but unpacking your childhood and dealing with these issues that are inside of you and how you may be projecting them onto your marriage.

Doing that will save you reams of drama and will be really important for the marriage. It also can be really helpful for working on sex, actually. Part of why when I started looking at your charts, I was so happy that we were having this conversation now is because if you don't work on this, Sugar, it'll get much harder to work on. So starting before the transit is forcing you to is nothing but good ideas, nothing but good ideas. And if there just so happens to be more porn in your house all of a sudden during this transit, it will help you, sir, and by way of that, help you, ma'am.

So, Happy Bunny, okay. At the start of 2022, you stopped going through a Pluto conjunction to your Moon. And that tells me that the last two years have been pretty rough for you and the relationship on this topic. I want to acknowledge that even though, yes, you are a hammer, a glorious hammer, you have been feeling so compromised and hurt by this dynamic for a long time, and the fact that you haven't burned anything to the ground is a testament to both the work you're doing on yourself but also your care for the relationship and for Sugar. Did things get different for you in June, Happy?

Happy Bunny: Yeah. Right when I turned 30 is when⁠—I mean, my whole life, I was always the weird one that loved⁠—I couldn't wait to turn 30. Something in me was like, "When I turn 30 is when I'm able to make decisions for myself. I'm going to be just so much more empowered." So I was very much looking forward to it, and when it happened, something shifted. It makes sense. The last two years have been super rough. With all this pandemic, a lot of⁠—it challenged me to really go within myself and really see what I want in my life and what I don't want in my life. And I've kind of gone through cutting cords and all that kind of stuff.

And when I turned 30 is when it kind of became more real. It's like, "Wow. All this work that I've done is here and now," and I just can't help but think⁠—like now I'm thinking more about the future, like what do I really want to do in this lifetime as a human being? And it just became very much more real.

Jessica: Good. That's really great. There's a couple things. First of all, super on track for 30. Second of all, Saturn Return. Third of all, Uranus is squaring your Saturn, so you're going to continue to be like, "What do I want? Who am I? What do I want?" And the good news of this is that because Uranus is squaring your Saturn on the Descendant⁠—it's also squaring your Ascendant⁠—you are able to change right now. You are willing to change right now for the relationship, but ultimately, it's for yourself, right?

Happy Bunny: Yeah.

Jessica: That said, in June, you started a two-year-long transit of Neptune squaring the Sun, and it intensifies your need for romance, intimacy, and connection⁠—not fucking, but intimacy and romance. And I just want to validate that, that within all of this, you do really need to feel like your partner sees you and swoons, sees you and wants to just pull you in for a hug or give you a kiss for no reason. That is increasingly more important for you, from what I'm seeing.

And, Sugar, I want you to hear this, again, not for pressure, but to just know where your partner is at because she needs TLC. And it's easy because when people have Capricorn Moon⁠—as you do, Happy⁠—Saturn on the Descendant⁠—as you do, Happy⁠—it can be easy for people close to you to not realize that you need tender loving care, that you need caretaking and to be kind of⁠—not babied, but smooshed. Not smashed, smooshed. But you do really need that.

Your love language is actions. You're just like, "I'll do shit to show you that I care." And inevitably, when we do that, we kind of train people to not do shit for us. And so, in your dynamic, you might be like, "Oh, I need more intimacy and care," and so you do things to kind of communicate that, and it doesn't work on him. He's not like, "Oh, she's taking better care of me. I should show her how much I appreciate it by doing x." That's a false equation for him.

So I just want to have⁠—Sugar, I want you to hear this, and I want you to see her sweet little face as you do. Something for you to, again, not feel guilty or obliged around, but I know you care about her, and you want her to feel loved. What she needs is not complicated. It is simple. And also, Happy, Sugar isn't giving it to you not because he doesn't care, but because he's so disconnected from his own damn body that it's like it means jumping through all these internal hoops to get to a place where he can show up. And it's very hard to do that.

So we have a perfect storm. I don't think it's going to blow your house down. I don't think you're going to lose all your possessions in this perfect storm. And also, no matter how much you care about each other and how much work you do, it's still going to be stormy weather a little bit right now. So have I answered your questions? Do you have any final question or contextualizing question that you would want to ask me?

Sugar: I guess⁠—so, for me, recently, people-pleasing has been something that I've been struggling with. And it's something conceptually new to me that I was sort of living my life, too, as a very heavy people-pleaser. I thought making other people happy is what fills me, but ultimately, I burned out, basically, doing that. So I had to re-examine my life, and I feel like now is a good time, where we had this conversation with you, because we've been sort of in a renegotiating part of our life, like wherever we were, whatever contract we "locked" ourselves into, shouldn't be the way it is for our life. And same way it is if you take a contract at work and you do more work or you grow with the company. Everything changes, right?

Jessica: Yes.

Sugar: So I feel like even taking sex off the table is like a good reset for us because if we're really trying to renegotiate everything, we should take it away and look at everything from a fresh perspective. So yeah. I feel like I've been, I guess, focusing on⁠—like we said, with the anger, I always felt very uncomfortable with the Mars aspect to my chart. And as a Libra, I feel even more comfortable with anger. But I'm realizing that I'm misdirecting a lot of my anger because I'm trying to people-please, but it's ultimately not what I want.

And I feel trapped in doing it, and to go through that loop each and every time, it's confusing for, "Oh, what do I want?" or "Why did my"⁠—if your first reaction is to people-please, it's hard to get to the surface of what you really want. So I guess I gotta do that work. Yeah. I feel like if I address that, then it'll be good incentive for me to work on everything that we discussed because ultimately, I'll get my communication more clearly to you, and then it'll be reciprocated that way.

Jessica: Yes. That is a good summary. Only one thing is missing, which is the advice I've given you for the invitation I have posed for you to make an effort to be more physically affectionate with your wife.

Sugar: Yes.

Jessica: I think that the advice is so simple, but it is going to be hard because you are pretty out of your body, right? But it is something I want to just make sure you keep in the summary of what we've talked about because if you do everything right that you just talked about and you work on all that shit, but you forget the part where you're just going to be holding hands more or snuggling more on the couch when you're watching TV, then you're going to deal with the hammer, the Happy Bunny hammer.

Happy Bunny: He always compared me to a blunt object. That's very funny you brought it up. He's like, if I was a weapon, my weapon of choice would be a very blunt object.

Jessica: Yeah. You'd be an anvil or a hammer. I respect you. But of course, I am one, too, so of course I would. But this is the thing⁠—

Sugar: Sometimes fear is a good motivation, so⁠—

Jessica: Did you say fear?

Sugar: Yeah.

Jessica: I respect⁠—I think it's a great motive. Let's also throw in the mix the desire to have fun, weird times with your partner. And when the two of you as a team lean into the ways that you're weird, you're happier together. So lean into that weird shit because you have so much in this relationship chart that articulates your capacity to be happy over the course of time together. You really do. But if you try to have a conventional marriage, yeah, not as much, right?

In regards, Sugar, to some of your anger stuff, which you are clear about needing or wanting to work on, playfulness is the antidote for some of that. And for you, Happy Bunny, with your hammer ways not always being super effective, playfulness is the antidote. So, again, I want to just really reiterate you can't always be fucking playful, but introducing more habits around playfulness can be really impactful. I think it will be really impactful for the two of you.

Okay. And this is the last thing I'm supposed to tell you here. Okay. This is kind of for you, Happy, but of course for both of you. Okay. When the two of you make agreements, once you make an agreement, Happy, it is perfectly reasonable for you to say to Sugar, "Tell me, what can I actually expect here?" Asking Sugar for parameters that include time, as long as you're not rigid about it, but having some sense of how much time does he need⁠—you know what I mean? He's a guy who's got to preheat the oven. So what's that look like for him? 250? 450? What's happening?

That's a reasonable thing for you to ask. This is a sticky bit of advice I'm giving you because, Sugar, it might make you feel pressured. So it's not appropriate for all the things, but I do think your need for a sense of what are reasonable expectations here is fair. It's perfectly fair. Does that make sense?

Sugar: Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. Good. Well, my dears, I am so happy we did this, and I hope this is helpful. I feel like it could work. I feel confident for the two of you.

Happy Bunny: Thank you. Thank you so much. I mean, yes, this reading is awesome. I think we have a lot to take away from it. Actually, it's weird. It's actually more comforting. This is reconfirming all the work that we've been doing up until this time, even. So it's great. I'm glad that we did this. Thank you so much, Jessica. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Jessica: Absolutely my pleasure. I wish you both the best of luck, and yeah. Stay cute, Happy and Sugar.

Can I just take a minute to say how much I appreciate both Happy Bunny and Sugar's vulnerability and willingness to be so real and get a reading in public on a podcast, but also how much I appreciate every person who has been willing to do that in the past few months? And I've just really been loving giving actual live interactive readings with folks for the podcast. So great thanks to everyone who has been on the pod with me and also who's been writing in and willing to be on the pod with me. So yeah. Just wanted to take a moment to say that.

And also, what I just did in that reading was use a composite chart, which is to say it's a relationship chart. There's a few different ways that astrologers can do relationship readings, and for me, composite charts are the way to go. While I am not teaching couples counseling or composite charts at this time, I am giving a class on September 3rd on sex and sexuality in the birth chart. And I'm really excited about it. I've given classes that kind of touch on this, but not are fully devoted to sex and sexuality. So I'm really excited about it. And if you are interested in this topic, whether you can participate in the class as it happens live at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on September 3rd or not, you can sign up for the class. There's a link in the show notes and a link in the ticker tape of my website and in the Shop page of my website. So there's lots of places you can find the link if you want to learn more or register for the class.

And while you're there on my website, of course, you can get other classes that I've given around all manner of things⁠—astrology and emotional intelligence, the twelfth house. I have a class on outer planets and love, mental wellness, drugs, inherited conditions in the birth chart. So I'm really interested in using astrology in ways that applies to real-life concerns and are real-life issues. And so, if you're in the market for that kind of stuff, giddy-up on over, lovelanyadoo.com/shop.

Okay. There's a lot to talk about in what is going on this week, and we're looking at the week of August 21st through the 27th of 2022. There's a lot going on this week, including a New Moon, but not limited to that. So I'm not going to say too much more in advance other than things are happening very fucking quickly, and you may feel that in your life, things are happening very quickly. I just want to acknowledge that, because it is likely to be kicking up a lot of anxiety or intense emotions. And that might not be happening for you personally, but it may be happening for the people around you, urging them to act weird or just not be their typical selves.

So I just want to acknowledge that, because it is a lot, and it's real. And I wish I had some sort of magic pass or some sort of perfect answers for coping with somewhat impossible situations, situations that require so much compromise that even if you're making great choices, it's not likely to feel great. This is where the need for emotional intelligence, the capacity to be empathetic and kind to yourself in a difficult process, and empathetic and kind with others as they are in their own shit, and within all of that, to have healthy boundaries so that you are not eating their shit or consciously or unconsciously requesting that others eat yours⁠—right?

And within that, it's important to take on kind of a marathon runner's approach instead of a sprinter's approach to understand that there's a big picture here at play in that you don't just need to get through this moment; you need to get through all the moments, and there's going to be a lot of moments. So what can you put in place to support you? How can you adjust your thinking or your attitudes to sustain whatever it is that you need to sustain over the course of time, not just over the course of this moment? And I will acknowledge that for some people and in some situations, that means only focusing on this moment because that's where you're at. It's about, again, understanding the larger context of what's happening in the world, of what's happening in your life and your nature, where you're at right now.

And this week's horoscope begins with an opposition between Mercury and Neptune. Now, let me just say we entered into the Mercury Retroshade on the 20th, and we entered into the Shade at the same time that we're experiencing the Mercury opposition to Neptune. And I, when I was prepping this episode, made so many errors, very uncharacteristic-of-me errors. I've been talking to so many people who are just having a loop-de-loop kind of time, and some of that is because of the Mercury opposition to Neptune. Some of that's because of the Mercury Retroshade. And I'm crossing my fingers that it's more related to the Mercury opposition to Neptune because that is a shorter transit.

Now, you've already been feeling this transit for a few days, and it is exact on the 21st. Mercury opposite Neptune is anxiety-provoking. It makes us more likely to feel overwhelmed by what we don't understand or we don't yet know. It inclines us to be more fretful about our assumptions. So that can mean that we place things on a pedestal and imagine that the other person's perfectly happy, perfectly fine, and we're suffering. It can mean that we're just idealizing things in general, and then there's a crash. Or it could mean that you have a really negative viewfinder right now, and you're kind of scanning for things to freak you out, things that are bad.

Mercury opposite Neptune can be quite an uncomfortable transit. Mercury is your mind. It's your attitudes, your communication. It's friendships. And Neptune is idealistic, dysmorphic, uncomfortable in reality. And so you can see how this would lead to having a hard time staying focused on unpleasant details or on fixed reality points, making fear-based assumptions, generally just feeling anxious and overwhelmed. The best thing to do under this transit is to identify your boundaries, and not because this transit supports us in identifying our boundaries. No, sir, it doesn't. But what it does do is create the necessity for boundaries, and that's because if we try to take on too much at once, if we try to connect this moment to all the moments before it and all the moments after it, we're just often anxiety soup. We're not able to make use of that information.

And so it can become quite messy quite quickly. This is why it is a terrible time⁠—terrible time⁠—for processing, unless it's absolutely necessary, because either you or the other person or the other people or everyone is likely to have kind of a skewed take on reality or having a hard time really listening to what's being said and not injecting your own fear-based projections onto it. It's an opposition, and as you hear me talk about a lot, when we're dealing with oppositions, there is a higher likelihood of projection⁠—you projecting onto someone else or them projecting onto you. And that sucks. It's uncomfortable, and it's really difficult when you're engaged in that kind of dynamic to pull yourself out and be properly objective.

Because of this, it is not a great transit for making major decisions, for having important conversations, making plans. If you're traveling on and around this date, be patient. It's likely to be a little messy. Another thing that can be really tricky around this transit is spiritual matters because it can make us more porous so that we are feeling more of whatever it is that is going on around us energetically. So, if you're an empath or a highly sensitive person, if you're a medium, you're likely to really feel this one because it makes it harder for us to have those energy boundaries, a.k.a. more necessary for us to have them.

This transit can intensify your connection to the woo. So, when I say woo, I am using this as a really big umbrella term for any kind of connection to the divine, which can be achieved through really esoteric means or really conventional religious means. And so it can intensify your yearning or connection to the woo. It can also incline you to want to have escapist experiences, like something to get you out of your body or out of this reality. And as long as you're being careful, that's all good.

As I have said many times before and I will repeat many times again, difficult Neptune transits are a terrible time for consciousness-raising drugs⁠—for drugs in general, but for people who are using substances as a way to facilitate getting deeper into spirituality, this is not the time to do it. You don't need to do it. In fact, under this opposition, if you are doing deep spiritual work, opening up/receiving/connecting is not going to be a problem. The problem is more around making sense of what we have pulled in, having healthy boundaries, maintaining our grounding. That's what's more difficult under this transit. So don't do anything on purpose to undermine your groundedness in this material reality that we are all quite frankly anchored into for as long as we're alive.

Okay. So Mercury opposite Neptune⁠—it can be pretty confusing. It can be socially kind of a pain in your ass. But it is not forever, and it can serve as a little bit of a gauge of where you're at in relationship to your own anxieties and the resources that you have in place for understanding what you're going through and going through it in a way that actually works. So make use of this transit if you can, and if you can't, just cope with it in a way that is supportive. If you've been thinking, "Huh. Social media is really stressing me out," hey, man, take 72 hours off. Miss this transit with social media. That wouldn't be the worst thing. Certainly, I want to direct you away from reaching out to your stressful friends if you have any, people who kind of trigger you. Yeah. This isn't the date for connecting with them.

Okay. And that brings us to, happily, a very supportive shift in energy. On the 22nd, we have an exact trine between Mercury and Pluto, and we move into Virgo season. I'm a big fan of Virgo season. Let's get back to business. Let's go back to school. And I don't mean that like going back into institutions, but I do mean it's time for learning. It's time for thinking. It's time for getting grounded. I'm a big fan of that. And that overlapping with the Mercury trine to Pluto is a lovely thing. And I will say that Mercury trine to Pluto overlapping with the Mercury opposition to Neptune is also a very lovely thing because what we have is Mercury in Virgo trine Pluto in Capricorn, very grounded.

And this transit strengthens our ability to process through difficult content. Pluto is always deep healing shit. It's taboo shit. It's shit. And Mercury, again, your mind. And so, even though the Mercury opposition to Neptune is fuzzy and uncomfortable and all this kind of stuff, Mercury trine Pluto strengthens our likelihood of finding resources that are actually materially supportive. It strengthens our ability and willingness to sort through the overwhelming amount of stuff that we may have dumped onto the table and actually be able to process it, to be able to make sense of it.

Mercury trine to Pluto is a transit that is excellent for connecting with friends. So, if you think about these two transits, these two Mercury transits, and you think about them on their own, it's kind of like, "Well, this one says don't hang out with stressful friends. The other one says it's a great time to connect to friends." And there's two ways you can think about this. One is the trine supports us in making choices around who we connect with so that even though that opposition inclines us to gravitate towards what's most stressful and overwhelming, the trine empowers us to not actually do that, to maybe learn about ourselves and what our impulses are about.

Another way of thinking about this is if you do engage with someone or someones who really stress you out and overwhelm you, you've got greater resources, like maybe another friend who can be like, "Yes. I can commiserate. This is real. This is happening. Let's talk about how you can cope with it." So this is really a supportive duo of transits if we can make use of it. And there's going to inevitably be some of us who are going to have a harder or an easier time making use of that trine, and those of us who are more specifically or less specifically impacted by the opposition.

And to kind of have a sense of who's who, I will just say the Mercury opposition to Neptune is happening at 24 degrees and 44 minutes⁠—we're going to call it 25 degrees—Mercury at 25 degrees of Virgo and Neptune at 25 of Pisces. So, if you have anything at around 25 degrees of any zodiac sign in your birth chart that gets directly aspected by these zodiac signs, then you're going to feel this one. In regards to the trine, on the 22nd, Mercury will be at 26 degrees of Virgo, Pluto again 26 degrees. So anything around those degrees is going to impact you.

I want to say one last word about this Mercury trine to Pluto. If you need to study, if there's something you're trying to learn, if you've got plans to make, this is just a fantastic transit for it, fantastic. Now, Mercury opposite Neptune is going to undermine that a little bit; I cannot tell a lie. But you're going to have another chance to make use of this energy because we know Mercury is about to go Retrograde. This transit will recur during the Retrograde on September 27th. So we'll have a continuation of these energies, and that can be a really great thing. So pay attention to what comes up on and around this date, and bookmark September 27th as a continuation of that. There will be much less stressful conditions surrounding the next time this happens, even though Mercury will be Retrograde.

Okay. This, my friends, brings us to the next exact transit of the week, and that's on the 24th of August. And it is a Venus trine to Chiron. So Venus will be at 16 degrees of Leo and Chiron at 16 degrees of Aries. So we have this beautiful, fiery trine between Venus and Chiron. This is a little bit of a confusing transit. It's a trine, right? So a trine is a 120-degree angle, and it is a benefic flow of energy. Yay. Venus is very relational. Venus in Leo is very much about our relationships, our sense of beauty, creativity, and connection. It's also, of course, related to our finances or the economy in general, and it is related to our value systems.

So, on the one hand, the Venus trine to Chiron can be an opportunity for us to touch in with our values, or relationships, our finances, and deal with things that are kind of difficult, deal with things that are stressful or that have been maladjusted. Thanks, Chiron. On the other hand, we may be experiencing a great deal of flow in that regard, in regard to any of those issues. And that, my friends, can be a really great thing or a really shit thing. What will often happen during a trine is we are forced to encounter the ways that we have set things up in our lives or within ourselves, even, that reflects our wounding more than our hopes.

Most of us set things up in our lives in ways that are resonant with our wounding, resonant with our early developmental experiences or societal pressures. We do this unconsciously. We tell ourselves, "I want to be happy and free," and then we set ourselves up in situations where we are decidedly stuck and not happy, and we keep on committing and recommitting to those situations. This can be so frustrating when we do this, and again, we all do this in our own ways. It's part of the human condition. But this Venus trine to Chiron is an opportunity to become more aware of that⁠—if you're doing that, to become more aware of it, and to understand that the way systems are set up in your life, in yourself, in the world⁠—when they're set up to make a person or to make people unhappy and then they work, then yeah, you're going to be unhappy.

So this trine is an opportunity to become more aware and to make adjustments. You're not trapped. You're not without recourse. You are able, especially during an easy transit⁠—"easy" transit⁠ like this—to make adjustments and to use your self-awareness to transmute, transform, change, adjust your insights, your outsights, the world. So, if things are rough on the Venus trine to Chiron, it's a reminder to check out how you're participating, what you set up, all that kind of stuff. This is going to be quite important to you for the next time that Venus and Chiron meet in a more challenging transit.

Now, if you are somebody who is really doing the work and you're really aware of your stress points in any of the Venus/Chiron dynamic, then this might be more conscious for you. You might be like, "Oh shit. Yeah. Yeah. I'm dealing with this, and this makes sense. And I want to keep on going." And with that, what I want to say is working with the energy in our lives, in the world, is effective. It's efficient. It works. And that doesn't mean that it feels good. And if you are not where you wish you were in your life or in regards to a particular issue, try to resist any urge to have a value judgment around it. Let's remove good and bad from the conversation. This is just where you're at and what needs doing, what needs caring for.

My friends, that brings us to the 25th. And on the 25th, Mercury Retroshade ingresses into Libra. And this is important because when Mercury goes Retrograde, it will Retrograde in Libra and then Retrograde all the way back into Virgo, where it's been, and then when it does its Retroshade post-Retrograde, it'll go through those late-degree Virgo placements and back into Libra again. So this is a moment to pay attention to. I would definitely recommend triple-checking your work, triple-checking that miscommunications aren't occurring, because it would be very easy for that to be happening, I think especially as we ingress into Libra. So, again, just pay attention, my friends.

On the 26th, we have two "eh" transits. I'm sorry. It was the best descriptor I can find. Venus is forming an exact square to Uranus, and the Sun is forming an exact square to Mars. And I'm giving you the degrees. If you're really interested in tracking the timing of transits, as always, I point you towards my pro tool, Astrology For Days over at astrologyfordays.com, where you can be taking copious notes as you listen to me or study under other astrologers and track the transits for your time zone⁠—because I'm always speaking Pacific Time⁠—on your own. I find it to be the best way to learn.

But anyways, Venus is at 19 degrees Leo, Uranus 19 degrees of Taurus, the Sun at 4 degrees Virgo, and Mars at 4 degrees Gemini, on the 26th, just to give you a sense of what may or may not be hitting your birth chart. So Venus square Uranus and Sun square Mars⁠—it's not a great combo of transits, I'm going to warn you. Venus and Mars are both planets that are very relational, and so there's a great risk of having relationship drama on this date, around this date, on and around this date. I'm sorry.

Sun square Mars, yeah, that makes a person hot under the collar, defensive, irritated, aggressive, aggravated. This transit is annoying and agitating. If someone comes at you with a little too much energy, if someone comes at you aggressively or rudely, I would encourage you to, first of all, know you don't need to eat shit. Have your boundaries. Take care of yourself. But also, pick your damn battles wisely because everyone's going to be hot under the collar. Everyone's going to be feeling easily activated and defensive, and it is likely not fully to do with you but largely to do with how that person is or isn't processing their emotions. And yes, anger is an emotion, and it is a valid, healthy emotion. Unfortunately, it's one that tends to get under-expressed or overexpressed, and in both of those cases, it can be quite destructive.

Learning to have a healthy relationship to our anger and agitation is really healthy, and I know a lot of people have value judgments against these feelings. And these value judgments make everything worse. There is no shame in being angry and being irritated and being frustrated, none at all. We don't want to treat people poorly. We don't want to perpetrate self-harm. But those things are symptoms of maladjusted relationship to anger. They themselves are not proof that anger is bad. And so this is something to keep in mind, whether you're dealing with your own Martian angry emotions or you're dealing with somebody else's.

Now, Mars is also related to fornication. It's related to passion. It can be quite an exciting and playful planet, as can the Sun be very exciting and playful. The Sun is our identity and will, and Mars is our ego and drive. So, when these two planets form a square to each other, as they're doing on the 26th and we're going to be feeling the 25th, '6th, and '7th, you may be feeling very motivated to get shit done, to prove yourself. You may be feeling really motivated to hook up with someone. You might be feeling really horny or really sexual. That can happen under this transit.

Again, what we want to make sure of is that you're approaching yourself and others in a way that is proportionate to the situation. So consent is a big deal when we're talking about sex, but also, when we're talking about if you want to have a fight about something with your bestie and your bestie is not in the right space and they tell you so, they are not consenting to having a showdown with you. And so, if you push it, that's you being a bit of a bully. And sometimes shit happens. Again, no value judgments. But it's important to be able to understand these are the energies running through the world, running through us as individuals and a collective, and so these are the lessons we're meant to learn.

Now, Venus square Uranus happening at the exact same time⁠—these transits are even exact within an hour of each other, so this is really an explosive day. Venus square Uranus creates instability in our relationships, which Venus fucking hates. Uranus is just like, "I want to be free. I want to do my own thing. I'm an individual." And Venus is like, "Let us find our sense of wellness and safety and security through each other. Let's connect and have that connection be an anchor." And Venus is also in a fixed sign, as is Uranus. So this transit may bring up relationship problems, and it may feel like it's coming out of the blue or out of left field. Again, not a great time to process. However, a time when somebody is likely to want to process.

This transit wants us to be open and flexible, wants us to be willing to experiment. That experimentation can be, again, really fun and sexual because not only is Venus square Uranus happening, which can be really fun for exploring your sexuality, but the Sun square Mars can intensify passions. But the exploration that we're really meant to be pursuing here is ideally meant to be aligned with our values. And unfortunately, because of Uranus's destabilizing impact⁠—in addition, Mars's egoism⁠—there is a risk that you or someone else will act out in reaction to strong feelings instead of acting in alignment with your needs, your passions, your values. And that's, of course, where we want to point things.

The positive potential with these transits is that you meet someone new, and it is exciting and goes in a totally different direction than you expected, that you start a new project or you get engaged in a project that is aligned with your passions and your values and that kind of empowers you to do things differently than you've done before or than you expected. The positive potential here is that we get out of our own way and we stop aligning with our convention or with how we've done it before or what we think we're supposed to do, and we just follow what feels right. And we don't need tons of ego validation along the way; we just do it because it feels right.

The positive potential of these two transits is actually really strong. It's just that it'll be easy for probably most people or a lot of people to fall back into the defensive relationship drama shit that these transits can provoke. Now, in regards to understanding these two transits in the world, I expect the 26th or around the 26th to be a big news cycle day because people with power like very much to preserve their power, and they may feel challenged to defend something that they're doing or that they've done. And they may do it in a messy or sloppy way. We may see more violence or unexpected circumstances emerge.

And these two transits are just small parts of a much larger ongoing series of events, transits, conditions in the world that are challenging. And so, again, this is where we must remember that we are a part of the world. We are not just here to live our own little personal lives in our corner. Each of us is a part of larger systems, and everything that you're experiencing and even that you're doing is both a reflection of the past and an investment in the future, not just of yours as a person or yours as a family member, but as a larger global citizen, as a community member. And things are fucking up, my friends. They're really up.

And we may see some sort of shift or action or development around the 26th that is a bit of a call to action; it maybe shakes us out of our self-involved stupor. Of course, when Uranus and Mars are involved, there's always the risk of toxic individualism, toxic masculinity. And we want to look out for that in ourselves, in the people we're dealing with, and then of course in our social systems, our political systems.

That all said, I got 1.5 transits left to talk to you about. On the 27th, we've got a New Moon in Virgo. It is exact at 1:17 a.m. Pacific Time. So I am a particular fan of a new Moon in Virgo. I just feel like it's such a good moment for setting intentions for how we want to orient our actions, our behaviors, with our feelings and our needs. This is a good New Moon for self-care in general. That's a Virgo New Moon for you, and it happens but once a year. So it's certainly something to make use of.

New Moons are a great time for setting intentions, for manifesting. This New Moon, like so much of the lunations we've been dealing with, has some shit around it, my friends. And so let me say, first of all, that Sun/Mars square, it is still⁠—it's not in perfect exactitude, but jeez Louise, is it exact. And that means the Sun and Moon are both square to Mars. This increases agitation, irritation, ego conflicts. This can be a time where we, on the positive, find a way of accessing our passions, our anger, our ambitions, and grounding it through the Virgo energy into kind of bite-size pieces so we can move forward with the boldness and the courage that Mars can offer. That's the positive.

The negative is you're pissed off. You're annoyed. Everyone's annoying you. You're annoying you. You're annoying them. And then there's a fight. That's the downside. So it is important to remember that you are just as annoying as other people are. We're all very annoying, just so we're clear. Everybody's annoying, and that's not a bad thing. It's helpful to remember, though, so that when people bug you, you do not need to internalize it as, "What's wrong with me that I'm annoyed?" or, "What's wrong with them? They're a terrible person." It's just these are the emotions that this New Moon is likely to kick up.

This is a good New Moon for understanding your relationship to these Martian feelings and planting some little internal seeds around how you want to adjust or invest in those emotions and in your ego in general. Now, this is going to be made a little bit more complicated, but also facilitated, by this Venus/Saturn opposition⁠—it will be exact the next day, but it is very close to exactitude here on the New Moon⁠—forming a T-square to the Uranus/North Node conjunction. So North Node is at 17 degrees of Taurus, while Uranus is at 19 degrees. So they're still very conjunct.

And this T-square is a little bit of a game changer. So, as you know, that Saturn/Uranus square that's been ongoing is destabilizing. It challenges our sense of reality, of what's real, what's not real. What do I need? What do I need to let go of? It is a tension between the need for progress and the need for stability, the need to go your own way and the need to consider others. Now, on top of it, that Uranus/North Node conjunction is all about this reset of a 15-year cycle. It is very much of a spiritual encounter and also a practical encounter with what we value, who we value, and how we experience and express that value. And now that we throw Venus in the mix, it becomes much more related to the economy, the rights of people who are not cis men⁠—so every gender but cis men⁠—and our relationships, our values, and how they're expressed in these particular ways.

And so this T-square is definitely something to look out for because it means that this New Moon is going to bring up a sense of isolation or loneliness and also the potential for us to find communion with ourselves. The positive potential here is that even though you may be feeling kind of isolated or disconnected from others or really just dealing with limitations that are exposed in your life or in yourself and that are imposed from people or systems with power, even though you're struggling with those things, the potential of that Uranus/North Node focal planet to our T-square is that we find the potential, the tools, the resources for progress within ourselves and that we find the kind of juj, the energy, that we need to mobilize, to make the internal adjustments, to make the material shifts that need to happen.

So, again, we are dealing with this kind of inside/outside dynamic that I imagine we will see play out in both our internal lives, our personal lives, and also in the world around us. Again, I'm going to be paying attention to the news on and around this date. So I hope you are, too, because we here at Ghost of a Podcast Industries are not fans of avoiding the world in order to be spiritual, but instead being spiritual and understanding that our care and engagement with others and for others is a reflection of the embodiment of our spirituality.

Okay. So this T-square is likely to bring up relationship shit. So, again, we've got a theme this week. The fact that it's a New Moon in Virgo is a reminder that how we behave, what we do, the ways we materially express our feelings, our needs, our care and engagement with others⁠—that's on us. And if you realize, "Oh shit. I've been wearing a pink hat, but I should be wearing a yellow hat," New Moons are a great time to be like, "Cool. I'll just put the damn yellow hat on." To, in other words, make adjustments and start something new is well favored by a New Moon.

So the key is to not get so wrapped up in your ego or so wrapped up in your attachments, because this T-square that I'm mentioning is fixed, even though the New Moon is mutable. It's going to be really important to not get so in our own ways that we kind of compound our problems. And that's the risk, that we double down or someone else doubles down, even when all evidence and all dynamics support maybe changing your mind, maybe adjusting somehow. So recognizing that you have been wrong in whatever way is not failure. Failure is recognizing you've been wrong and doubling down anyways. That's failure.

So, again, there's this theme that we must engage with around humility and making sure that our ego strengthens us instead of just puffs us up. We want the depth and the reality of strength and courage instead of just blustering and bullying. So, this New Moon, if you're doing spiritual work and you're trying to really make use of these energies, of course you want to run this information across your own birth chart, but a good thing to do is to do work to get out of your own way, to align yourself with the ways in which you want to be⁠—not what you want to have, but how you want to be, how you want to participate in the world or how you want to talk to yourself or engage with yourself, so that you can kind of scoop out the bits that aren't working or that are getting in your way and really focus on the bits that are working and that you want to expand in yourself, in the world. That's a really good use of this energy.

So, again, what we're talking about is change, and we're talking about investment, and we're talking about humility and adaptability for this New Moon. So use that information as it serves you. And I promised that I would tell you about 1.5 transits, and so I want to just acknowledge that the Venus opposition to Saturn⁠—that transit is exact on the 28th. I'm definitely going to get in-depth into it next week on the podcast, but I feel like it's worth naming because this transit is rough on relationships. It can be rough on your self-esteem in general. And so it's really important to put things in place to support you and to know that if you wake up on the 26th, the 27th, the 28th feeling just fucking down, yeah, that's a Venus opposition to Saturn. You're feeling it.

And the best way of engaging with astrology and our ability to use these transits is to make use of that information, like, "Okay. I'm feeling down. What do I need to support myself? Do I need to ask myself questions in order to locate myself within these feelings?" That kind of shit. That can really help. And again, we'll get more into it next week.

And as always, if you're like, "I don't want to fucking wait till next week, Jessica; tell me more now," you can join me over on the kittens level of my Patreon because on the 1st of each month, I drop a bonus episode of Ghost of a Podcast where I delineate all the major transits of the month ahead. So that information is out there. And of course, what I say in that bonus episode is different than what I say week to week. So you get new layers of information, and who doesn't want that?

Okay. My loves, I want to thank you for joining me for another week of Ghost. I want to gently but firmly remind you to wear a goddamn mask because if we're all in this together, we better be acting like it. It's pandemic pandemonium, and I don't know what else to say. Wash your paws. Wear a mask. Said it; I'll say it again. Thank you. I love you.

Okay. And as you move through this week with all of this intense astrology, don't forget your boundaries. Don't forget that how you engage, what you take in and on from others⁠—it's not easy to have boundaries around that stuff, but you get to have boundaries around that stuff. It is healthy and it is possible for you to have boundaries around that stuff. And remembering that, staying connected to your agency, will really support you in making the most of this week's transits and the transits beyond.

All right, my loves. I will talk to you next week. Stay safe, and take care. Buh-bye.