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:            Blue, welcome to the podcast. What would you like a reading about?

Blue:               So I can read my question. I wrote to you, "Hi, Jessica. I hope this finds you as well as can be. I would love for your input on an issue concerning blame, intentional versus unintentional manipulation, and how to right what went wrong. I had a very intense falling out with a friend over a year ago, which either led to or initiated the process of also ending a long-term relationship. I've been in and out of therapies, oscillating between blaming myself and blaming them and striking a weird balance between the two. I admire your work and life path and would love to realize what you see within my chart and psychically regarding this situation/how it can propel me forward. Thank you so much for reading this." And a smiley.

Jessica:            And there's a smiley. That's an important part. We don't want to leave it out.

Blue:               Yes. Very important. Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. So I'm going to get more details in a moment, but first I want to say we're only sharing a little bit. You're a Virgo. You were born 2001. That's enough for the people.

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. So let's unpack a little bit. What happened? You can give me Cliff notes.

Blue:               Cliff notes—friend and I, really close friend, really intense friendship—literally started the day we saw each other is when the friendship started. We decided while on a trip to go see a concert to move in together.

Jessica:            Wait. Let me interrupt. You were friends, not dates, not hookups. Friends.

Blue:               No. Friends.

Jessica:            Friends.

Blue:               Friends.

Jessica:            And for how many years or months were you friends before this trip you're about to tell me about? Oh, no, before moving in. Before moving in.

Blue:               Before moving in? Four years. Three, four years.

Jessica:            Three, four years.

Blue:               Three, four years.

Jessica:            And right now, you're how old? 24?

Blue:               23.

Jessica:            23. So you were friends from the age of 19 till 22.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

Blue:               Pretty much. Yeah.

Jessica:            Clocking. Tracking. Clocking. Tracking.

Blue:               Yes. Yes. Exactly.

Jessica:            Okay. So now you've moved in together. Okay. Now you've moved in together.

Blue:               Yes. We moved in together, and I feel like it's important to note we also moved in together while we were staying in an Airbnb with my boyfriend at the time.

Jessica:            Okay.

Blue:               We were all staying together. We wanted to go to this concert. We love this artist. And we decided in that moment, we were going to be like, "We're going to move in together. It's time. We've been talking about it for a really, really long time." So it commenced.

Jessica:            Great. Okay. So the three of you are like, "This is meant to be. We're doing a damn thing."

Blue:               Yes. Yes. "We're doing the damn thing." I was about to graduate. They had already been out of college for a year, and we were having our respective issues with transitions. And it was just like, "Let's do it. We love each other. We care about each other so much. Let's do it. We feel like we could cohabitate really well." So we begin the process of moving in together. I am struggling to find a job. They had secured a job, especially postgrad. At this point, it's June. I graduated in—

Jessica:            June 2024?

Blue:               June 2023.

Jessica:            2023.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

Blue:               And then I graduated in May of 2023, so trying to find apartments. I'm trying to find a job. I'm really hopeful and I'm applying to jobs with a pretty—not a super high salary, but I see the qualifications. I see that I meet them. I'm like, "Okay. Let me do this 50 to 70k range." We're talking about money. We're talking about doing an income-based rent split as well. And before this, we had started looking for apartments. I was talking to them about my financial concerns and presenting a couple of doubts about kind of embarking on this journey. And they said that they would pay rent for me and not to worry about it.

Jessica:            So they made good money?

Blue:               They made better money than I made, but to be mindful, we were moving from, respectively, two of the most expensive cities in the U.S. to one that had a much more fair cost of living.

Jessica:            Okay.

Blue:               So rent for our place wound up being about 1,750, and it was something that they told me that they could afford at the time and not to worry about it.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Mm-hmm.

Blue:               Yeah. So we found a place. We move in together. Oh my gosh. Amazing. We're kee-keeing all the time. We're chatting. Our friendship was just blossoming. My boyfriend at the time comes over a lot, you know?

Jessica:            Uh-huh. Five nights a week?

Blue:               Not five nights a week, just the weekend.

Jessica:            Okay.

Blue:               He'd be over for the weekend.

Jessica:            Okay.

Blue:               And I'm trying to foster a friendship between my boyfriend and my best friend, and it kind of comes to head that they're kind of just tolerating each other for my sake. I'm kind of deluded about this and I'm like, "We're going to be like a little group of people. We're going to be a cute little group." However, my best friend brings a friend to come and stay with us for a while. And after this friend comes, it's like a complete 180. All of a sudden, they start being really cold to me. All of a sudden, I am not receiving any warmth, any affection. Whenever they see me with my boyfriend in the apartment, it's very, very tense, and it's making me really uneasy. I don't come from the best home environment, so having tension within the—

Jessica:            Roommate stuff is so hard, too.

Blue:               So hard.

Jessica:            It's just like being uncomfortable in your own home, and it's—

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah, and you don't want to—

Blue:               Oh, it's the worst thing.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's awful. So wait. Do you have a job at this point?

Blue:               I'm still looking for a job.

Jessica:            Still looking for a job.

Blue:               But I have unemployment coming in, so I have a little bit of money in that sense.

Jessica:            And are you paying for rent yet?

Blue:               No. I'm paying bills. They said not to worry about rent.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay.

Blue:               So a complete 180 when the friend comes, and eventually, they pull me into my room, and they're like, "I need to talk to you." And they talk to me about rent, and they say that they need some sort of help with the rent. And they initially were like, "Your boyfriend should be paying your half of the rent because he's here on the weekends, and he claims to love you, essentially, and care for you." I was not in a good relationship. They knew this. I was trying to make it work. It was a very toxic polyamorous relationship. It was my first relationship as well. It was not good. And he would not give me $5 to hold on a good day, kind of.

Jessica:            Okay.

Blue:               Even just going back through it, it's bringing up a bunch of emotions. And they're very, very upset with me. They're kind of yelling at me, and I'm just trying to kind of sort through what's going on and figure out how to best resolve this. I tell them I'm really trying to find a job. I'm like, "I can prove it to you if you want. I don't think my boyfriend would be willing to pay rent. I'm sorry." It seems like a lot of this is oriented around my relationship, like my relationship with my boyfriend, as well, and their concerns with it.

                        And it just—it was a very tense conversation, but it ended amicably. But then, near the end of it they say something, and they're like, "Well, you owe me for the past few months of rent, like half of every month of rent." And I'm—what? I'm 22 at this point. I feel embarrassed saying it, but I genuinely thought that when they said that they would cover the rent that that meant that they would pay the rent and that there was no debt accruing, essentially, because that's something I also would do for them. And I had the understanding that we had the same values in regards to when it comes to sharing resources like money.

Jessica:            I mean, it also sounds like instead of them telling you, "Hey, this is starting to bug me. Hey, this is starting to not be cool for me," they waited until they were pissed. It sounds like maybe they waited until they told the story to their friend, and their friend was like, "That's fucked up," and it empowered them to feel some kind of way about it. And instead of being like, "Hey, my bad for letting this go on past when I'm consensual with it," they came at you with anger. And it sounds like them coming at you with anger not only provoked a sense of, like, "Oh shit. This sucks," but also defensiveness. I'm hearing all of those things. I'm just reflecting back to you how I'm hearing the story so far.

Blue:               Yeah. Fair.

Jessica:            So you say blame and manipulation. Is this the moment when blame and manipulation comes through?

Blue:               Yeah. This is the moment when it comes through in the role of my friendship because there's kind of two things going on at the same time. But in my friendship, I had a really difficult time coming to terms with whether or not I should kind of—I'm the solely responsible party or if they're the solely responsible party.

Jessica:            Why is there somebody who's solely responsible?

Blue:               I guess because it's such a big issue, and when it comes to money and especially when it comes to rent, it feels like things can be so black and white. So, whenever I would tell friends and family about what was happening, it was automatically a thing where it was like sides had to be taken, and it was like, "No. You are being manipulated. You didn't go into this agreement with this person. This is not okay," kind of, "What are you going to do? You gotta tell them that you didn't know this, and you can therefore not pay them back."

Jessica:            Okay. So, straight out the gate—you haven't even gotten through describing the situation, but I'm going to say let's talk about your birth chart for a quick second because I'm hearing something that is like red flags for me.

Blue:               Okay.

Jessica:            So you're saying it's either/or.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            You're trying to figure out, in this moment of your life, whose fault it is because it's either their fault or your fault. Is this correct? Am I hearing this right?

Blue:               Somewhat. In my mind, it is black and white, but it's also like I'm just not satisfied with it being a matter where blame is equally distributed. Whenever I try and land there, it just doesn't—it doesn't work for me, and it feels like I just reach a place where I'm stagnant rather than actually able to move forward or even move backward.

Jessica:            Okay. So I'm going to again interrupt you to say what you're describing is your thoughts and feelings about whose fault it is, which is actually a way to kind of move away from the central question of it's gotta be somebody's fault; one person was wrong, and the other person was victimized by the person who was wrong, yeah?

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay, because you were kind of saying that until I said it back to you, and then you're like, "Not exactly."

Blue:               I was like, "Well…"

Jessica:            I know. Okay. So let's talk about this. In your birth chart, you have Saturn in the second house. And guess what's sitting opposite Saturn: fucking Pluto in the eighth house. And let me tell you a little story about what that means. It means, for you, because Saturn is in your second house, money is actually hard for you to come by. It's nothing about your ability to manage or navigate money. Saturn is slow development, and the second house is your personal resources. So you know how some people just—they go to Value Village or whatever, or they go to the thrift store, and they just find a perfect, adorable set of plates and they just have the cutest stuff? And it's not even about them spending money. They just—like, physical things come to them.

                        Saturn in the second house isn't usually like that. Saturn in the second house is just like—it gives you kind of a harder relationship to the accruement and the holding onto of resources. Saturn is—it can be about scarcity, but it can also be about building blocks. And so we'll come back to that. We're not focusing on this as an overall personality thing. We're just focusing on this in the context of your crisis. So then you have Pluto in the eighth house. Pluto in the eighth house—generally, when you were raised with that, some shit went down with the adults around you, whether it was your parents or your grandparents or your guardians, around money, like one person fucked over someone else. One person stole from someone else, whether it was implied—

Blue:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. So you know what I'm talking about.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And having these two planets opposite means that there is a way that you are inclined towards a rigidity around your survival mechanisms around money. And that's because you fucking—that's out of lived experience. That's out of both what you've experienced—but you're young, so it's also just what you grew up around.

                        Straight out the gate—and the reason why I interrupted the story—because the story's not over. But the reason why I interrupted the story is because, so far, from the story of it being someone's fault, it sounds a 50/50 to me. I don't think it's your fault or their fault. Now, listen. Here's the thing. You and I can have a misunderstanding, and it can be very deep, and it can ultimately be both of our fights. I could have done a thing—not on purpose, but I could have done x, y, and z better. Same thing for you. But nobody's trying to fuck somebody over, right?

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            But then, in reaction to our mutual shared responsibility, I might be a monster and you might be a victim, or we both might be monstrous. You see where I'm going with this, right?

Blue:               Yeah. Yes.

Jessica:            So I understand there's more to the story, and I want to just validate that for you because I think that's really important. And also, you did not have a great conversation about a big deal because it's not like this person has their parents paying for their rent and they have a limitless trust fund, right?

Blue:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay.

Blue:               Yeah. Sorry.

Jessica:            So that's really important because it totally makes sense what you understood when somebody said to you, "Hey, I'll cover the rent," that you understood that to mean, "I will pay for the rent." That is a perfectly reasonable assumption. That was the assumption I had when you were telling the story thus far. And it's also perfectly reasonable that somebody would say, "I'll cover you," thinking, "Of course, I'm not paying for it. I can't afford that. You know I can't afford that," right? Both things are actually reasonable if we allow for the fact that you are both terrible communicators, eh?

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

Blue:               Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            No shade, but you know what I mean? You live, you learn. Hopefully you learn.

Blue:               Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So I want to just hold space for, as I'm listening to your story and I look at it energetically, thus far, no one's trying to fuck over anyone. No one has malintent, and everybody is trying to survive a fucked-up world in which money is hard to come by and hard to hold on to.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Does that feel right?

Blue:               That feels really right.

Jessica:            Okay. So I want to interject that because if you told me this story and I was your friend, also in my early/mid-20s—whatever—and you told me this story, I'd be like, "What the fuck? This person is trying to make you pay back four months of rent, and you didn't even know?" I would have that kind of defensive-on-your-behalf, rallying-for-you reaction, too. And that doesn't mean that I might not be able to see the other person's perspective.

Sometimes when our loved ones rally for us and sometimes when we rally for our loved ones, we actually do them a disservice because we don't sit with the messiness, which at this point in the story—and I can see that the turns are wild, and I don't want you to get into too many details because I want to make sure we use our time well. But I do want to say I can see that twists and turns occur after this part of the story.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            But at this point, the biggest sin that either of you made was not asking follow-up questions and not being direct.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And you were equally responsible for that.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Neither of you is more responsible. You were not taking advantage of your friend. You were grateful.

Blue:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            They meant it in total good faith, what they offered you. It's just that you weren't clear with each other. So I want to just make sure I belabor this point because you've got Mercury in Libra, zero degrees and zero minutes. And this means a lot of things, but one of them is you have a tendency to communicate really diplomatically, which is what's true on a good day, and on a bad day, what that means is, yeah, you don't ask follow-up questions, because you don't want to hurt my feelings. You don't want to make me uncomfortable.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And so this will get you in trouble, capital T, capital R—I won't spell the whole word, but you get it. Like, a lot of trouble in life, as I'm sure you've already experienced outside of this as well.

Blue:               Absolutely. Yeah.

Jessica:            And so getting into a habit when somebody offers you something—being like, "Hey, I just want to make sure this is—when you say this, I'm hearing x, y, z. And I just want to make sure I'm hearing it correctly"—that could be a way of navigating it. But practicing asking questions, I think, is going to be really important for you because you're so uncomfortable pushing people for details. You're a Virgo, but man, you don't want to know the—you want to know the details, but you don't want to push for details.

Blue:               Yeah. That doesn't feel right.

Jessica:            Yeah. And yet—see, the thing about that Mercury in Libra, even though it can make you be diplomatic to a fault and not ask for details, it's also technically judicious. Having Mercury in Libra, technically, you could be a lawyer. Technically, it makes you—

Blue:               I want to be a lawyer.

Jessica:            Okay. There we go. See what I'm saying?

Blue:               Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And that's like a professional arguer, a professional mediator. And so you have that skill set when you're comfortable taking up space in that way. And so, as a lawyer or as a negotiator, it's like your role is supposed to be argumentative or whatever, and so it's okay for you. And with friends, you're supposed to be understanding and supportive and sympathetic, and so that's where you're less comfortable.

So it's just one of those things where, again, I want to say practice because, at this part of the story, the thing that you could take responsibility for is that you didn't ask for details, and you took for granted that your perspective was shared, whether that's based on a shared politic or it's simply shared on common sense. And I think you did have a shared politic, but I think your idea of common sense was different in this situation. Their idea of common sense was like, "Of course I can't afford to pay for your rent." And your idea of common sense is, "Why would you offer to pay my rent if you can't afford to pay my rent?"

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            They're both reasonable. Neither of them are bad. Now, I know the story is about to turn, but I wanted to make sure to get that in. Okay.

Blue:               No, I appreciate that a lot.

Jessica:            Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Okay. Okay.

Blue:               I'm digesting. I'm digesting.

Jessica:            Good. There's a lot. There's a lot in there.

Blue:               But thank you for that.

Jessica:            My pleasure. So, again, not getting too into details, but what happens next?

Blue:               What happens next is a lot of back and forth. We're having a lot of conversations to kind of gauge where we're at in terms of finances. They had a lot of Capricorn placements, so they were very direct, while I would kind of take the back seat and be like, "Okay. I'm trying to work with what you're giving me." And we get—there's tension. We make up. There's tension. We make up. A lot's happening. And there is this recurring thing of essentially, "Why is your boyfriend not supporting you more financially?" It comes up frequently, these conversations.

Jessica:            Does he have a lot of money?

Blue:               No, he doesn't have a lot of money. However, he was not respectful of our space, to be completely honest.

Jessica:            Okay.

Blue:               And it became a problem. There was a lot of mess being left around, and when I would try and confront him, I would be met with a lot of hostility, which is not good.

Jessica:            So this is why your roommate was leaning on the boyfriend thing, because your boyfriend was taking up space in an already tense situation in a way that made it worse.

Blue:               Absolutely. Absolutely.

Jessica:            Okay. That's an important data point.

Blue:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay.

Blue:               And on top of it, we actually—this would have been us breaking long distance. So we spent quite a bit of time on the phone beforehand, and that actually carried over into when we were now in the same state, which my friend did not like. I did try opening up space for conversation and being like, "Hey, I wanted to make this as not-awkward as possible, but essentially, how do you feel about the amount of time that I spend with you? I want to make sure that you still feel fulfilled and cared for. We moved down here together." And at that point, we were spending most evenings, honestly, together. But—

Jessica:            You and the friend?

Blue:               Yeah, me and the friend. But I eventually retired to my room to go and call my boyfriend.

Jessica:            I see. Mm-hmm. And is your friend Queer?

Blue:               Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. And does your friend have feelings for you at any point?

Blue:               When I talked to my friends about it, I've actually had a couple of friends be like, "Yeah, they did have a crush on you. I don't know how you didn't see it."

Jessica:            I mean, this is sounding super Gay.

Blue:               It is very Gay. It gets—

Jessica:            It gets gayer? It gets gayer?

Blue:               [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Okay.

Blue:               But I will say, in the past, we've smooched, but it was like one was on drugs, and then the second time, it was like practice. We were both college-aged, but I was like, "I'm taking you at face value."

Jessica:            Okay. Wait, wait, wait. Are you Queer? Do you date your friend's gender?

Blue:               Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            Okay.

Blue:               Nonbinary people. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. I gotta say, again—I don't usually interrupt this much, but it's a very long story, so this is what's happening. This is what you get. Okay. One needn't be a psychic to note that part of what this is about is your roommate has feelings for you, and then when the person you're dating comes around more or takes up more time, it's less exciting for them, and then they start to feel rejected and—I mean, this does not take a psychic to tell.

Blue:               No, I 100 percent agree with you in hindsight.

Jessica:            Okay. In hindsight, but at the time, you didn't know?

Blue:               In the moment, no.

Jessica:            You didn't know.

Blue:               At the time, I didn't know. I had such an intense love for them. But I did feel more like we were siblings than like [crosstalk].

Jessica:            You weren't into them.

Blue:               No. I wasn't into them. I thought they were very beautiful, but I wasn't into them [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Yeah. It's not about that. You just didn't feel them in that way.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And have you ever seen this person date?

Blue:               Yes. I have. I have.

Jessica:            Do they tend to financially spoil the people they date? Do they tend to give them gifts, take them out for meals, be that kind of person?

Blue:               No. They would only really do that with me. But I was like, "Oh, it's"—because I would do the same with them, and I'm like, "Oh, yeah, we all eat. We're all eating."

Jessica:            Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I mean, I wonder if you're hearing it as you're saying it.

Blue:               I am. I am totally hearing it.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Good. I mean, it's starting to make sense why it would get so messy down the line.

Blue:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Again, without knowing the details, this is starting to make more and more sense. So they're jealous.

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            They're uncomfortable. Meanwhile, the boyfriend is a pain in the ass in the house.

Blue:               Yes. And he's also jealous.

Jessica:            Of course, because you obviously have a weird, unconscious thing with this person—

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —where you played house with each other and were intimate and didn't like to share each other with other people. Sounds very Gay.

Blue:               Very Gay.

Jessica:            It's so Gay. I mean, it's almost gayer than Gay sex. It's very Gay. It's very Gay. Okay. Okay.

Blue:               (laughs) Oh my God.

Jessica:            Okay. Sorry, but I mean, we must call it what it is.

Blue:               No, you're right. It's all in hindsight, but in the moment, I was like, "This is revolution [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Yeah. I know. I get it. I get it. Yes. Yeah. It's like magical friends. No.

Blue:               Yeah. No.

Jessica:            It's just kind of Gay. It's just kind of Gay and confusing.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            I just feel like that's—I mean, again, it's all good. It's all good. You're in your early 20s. This all makes sense. Okay. So get me to the upshot.

Blue:               The upshot, like the—

Jessica:            The upshot of, like, yeah, the big da-da-da-da, like the drama that hits.

Blue:               The drama that hits—the shit hits the fan. They send me a demand letter after not talking to me for a week. Yep.

Jessica:            And the demand letter's like, "You gotta get out"?

Blue:               Yeah. "Gotta get out. Gotta pay me this amount." I literally got it while they were in the other room after having not talked to me for about a week at that point. And I freaked out. I did not expect this at all. And it came a few days after I had a conversation where I had to put my foot down. I was like, "I'm going to be completely honest with you. I do not want to pay this money back to you. I did not agree in the first place. I also don't have the means to." At that point, I got a job. I got a part-time job. It was not a lot of money. I was getting maybe $700 a month, and on top of it, I was having several different health emergencies. I have ovarian cysts, not great. So I was being hit with really crazy hospital bills at the time. And I was like, "I just—I can't do that."

                        And after I put my foot down, had that conversation—and that got explosive in its own right, but then we reconciled. Then they stopped talking to me. Then I get the demand letter, call up my boyfriend. He gets me out of the house. He is showing, honestly, a lot of support for me, in a way. He also doesn't want me to talk too much about the situation. If I talk about it too much, he's like, "Hey, I just kind of want to enjoy my time with you. Can you stop talking about it?" which is really interesting.

                        I move my things out. It takes me a minute. I have to apply to a credit card. I don't have money. My family doesn't have money. It's a very upsetting process, very upsetting process. And I have to move all of this out while they're still in the home, and sometimes they'd be and the kitchen and they'd see me, and other times they'd shut themselves in their room and talk really loudly on the phone or play music really loudly. It was just really fucked up. When I wasn't actively moving my things, I was just holed up in my room with, like, a gallon jug water and granola bars because I just didn't want to go outside. I had this paralyzing fear that, just like how they kind of pulled this out of left field, that something else would happen out of left field.

Jessica:            So you were still staying at the house after you got the demand letter?

Blue:               Yes. I was still staying at the house.

Jessica:            Did they ask you to leave the house, but you stayed anyways, or they didn't ask you to leave the house?

Blue:               They asked me to leave, but they gave me a time frame.

Jessica:            Okay. So you were—

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. That makes more sense. That makes more sense. Sorry. I didn't get that part.

Blue:               No, all good. All good.

Jessica:            Yeah. So this is fucking hell. And then you get out during the time frame, in the time frame allotted?

Blue:               Yes. I get out in the time frame allotted. I had a little bit of time left over that I spent with my boyfriend. We had gotten a hotel room, and just to kind of keep it brief, there had been a lot of problems on his end with actual thorough sexual hygiene in the relationship with him being polyamorous. And it became a problem because we meant to be intimate that night, and I asked him—I made a really fair request, what I believe is a really fair request of him to just clean shit up. And he completely turned on me, got really upset with me, got really gaslighty, as he would usually do. And it wound up with him coercing me into having sex with him.

Jessica:            I'm so sorry.

Blue:   Thank you. It's like salt in the wound.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Blue:               And I don't know if I'm villainizing him. I don't know if this is the black-and-white perspective or what, but it just felt like he was kind of happy that he finally had me all to himself, essentially, now that my friend was out of the equation. So it just created a really weird dynamic.

Jessica:            That exchange with him in the car, which was right on the heels of being evicted, was before you moved back home to your home state?

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. So then you moved back to your home state. Did he move back to your home state with you?

Blue:               No. He stayed in that state because that's where his home is.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Before you give me more details about the boyfriend, is the relationship you're having a hard time getting over the boyfriend or the friend?

Blue:               More so the friend, but also, in a weird way, the boyfriend in terms of kind of coming to terms with how I even stayed in it for so long because both of them—they're intertwined. They're intertwined.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, before you give me more details about the boyfriend—because part of what's happened is that this experience has fused those two people together for you—

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            —which isn't fair to you or to them—not that you need to be fair to them, but if what you're looking for is peace, then you do have to be fair to them.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            For your own fucking self. So we'll come back to the boyfriend. Are you comfortable with me doing that, of putting the boyfriend to the side?

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

Blue:               Of course.

Jessica:            So let's stick with the friend. Okay. Wait. Let me just slow it down. I want to tell you this. You have Mars at 26 degrees of Sagittarius in your birth chart, which means this whole period, up until February 2nd of 2025, you were going through this once-in-a-lifetime transit that fucking sucks. It's called Neptune square Mars.

Blue:               Oh my God.

Jessica:            And it's a two-year transit, approximately two years. So it was the period of time that you were involved with these two people.

Blue:               Oh my God.

Jessica:            And one of the things that happens very commonly under this transit is you get involved with people where everything is completely confused. There are no boundaries. And Mars is all about what you do. It's like you feel like you can't do anything. You feel like there's no direction you can go in in order to be yourself or take care of yourself.

Blue:               Absolutely.

Jessica:            Yeah. And so this is part of why these two relationships are getting smooshed for you, even though they don't fucking like each other; they were not in cahoots. But that whole—it was like you were walking through taffy for this period of time, and they were the two people in the taffy with you. So you're thinking of them connected, even though the only connection between the ex-boyfriend and the ex-friend is you. It's not them.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And the connection that's important here is around communication and boundaries, right?

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            So we can talk about and I can validate all the fucked-up things about him because I can tell just by glancing at him psychically I'm going to have very little good to say about this fucking guy. You know what I mean? That'll be easy.

Blue:               Uh-huh.

Jessica:            It's way too low-hanging fruit. What's more interesting is why you chose him, why you continue to choose him, and what it cost you. But we'll come back to that, okay? I want to stick with this fucking ex-friend. So you moved out. Did you pay them back?

Blue:               No. I disputed it. I was really upset, and still, I feel like—

Jessica:            Wait. Before you give me the feelings, you disputed it. It was a legal thing?

Blue:               Yeah, it was a legal thing.

Jessica:            So did you win the dispute?

Blue:               It actually never went to court. I responded to their—I disputed it by email, pretty much.

Jessica:            Okay. Mm-hmm.

Blue:               I was like, "I dispute that." I spent a really long time drafting a message. I did a lot of legal research. And of course, it's not flawless, but it's a place to start.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Blue:               And yeah, I disputed it. I said, "I dispute the debt. If you want"—

Jessica:            And what did they do?

Blue:               They wrote a response, I think the day after. And they were like, "You know, I am"—they sent a more official demand letter, and they said, "You know, I'm planning on pursuing this." And I accused them of gaslighting me in my dispute letter because they presented a series of events that didn't happen, and they knew it didn't happen.

Jessica:            Okay.

Blue:               They knew it did not happen. So I said that that's gaslighting behavior. They said, "Don't call me a gaslighter." And it was a very defensive letter. I feel like that's the most that I can say about it. It was very defensive and [crosstalk] letter.

Jessica:            So there was like two or three letters sent, and then nothing happened after that?

Blue:               Yeah. Nothing happened.

Jessica:            Okay.

Blue:               Absolutely nothing.

Jessica:            Okay. They gaslit you. You got away with four months' free rent. Am I hearing that right?

Blue:               Unfortunately, yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Well, it's interesting that your energy dipped into the bottom of your feet and your voice sounded like that because you sounded real pissed a few minutes ago, and now you're like, "Oh shit. Am I the villain?" And I just want to say I don't know what's—if we're pointing fingers, which I don't want to do, but if you want to, I don't know what's worse: being gaslit in two letters or—what is it—thousands of dollars, right? Because this is not a person who has a lot of money. Again, there are people, there are circumstances, under which I'd be like, "Well, that money doesn't mean anything." But to this person, it actually did.

Blue:               Yes, it did.

Jessica:            So what's happening now, if I'm seeing this correctly, is that now, in your system, there's like—there has to be a bad guy. There has to be a villain. And now what I'm saying makes you feel like I'm saying you're the villain. Is this how it's feeling?

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. And so this is part of why it sucks when we look for a villain. Sometimes there's a villain. I don't want to name names—Donald Trump. Okay. Villain. Right? You know what I mean? A fucking villain. Sure. And sometimes in personal relationships, there's a villain. Sure. But in this situation, you both handled it terribly, and you both handled it terribly because neither of you have the appropriate skills to navigate it kindly, not because—it's not like they could have communicated better but they chose not to or you could have paid them but you chose not to. Neither of those things are the case. It's that you just didn't have the tools.

                        And I want to just say I don't think you're the villain. I don't think they're the villain either. I'm sorry. Hold on. Let me just stay grounded in this because I see you're, like, leaving your body because it's like part of what—please tell me if I'm seeing this correctly, but part of what is happening after this whole experience is it fucked you up. It was so traumatic. And when you tell the story, if people don't kind of give you the reaction that you need where they agree that that person was the fucked-up party, then you feel terrible about yourself. Is that what's happening?

Blue:               Not really, actually, because when you tell me that I'm not the villain, it's like, "Yay. Okay. I'm not the villain." When you tell me that they're not the villain, I'd say maybe it's around 25 percent of me that's like, "Oh," like a little disappointed. But then 75 percent is like, "I need to hear this, and I need to kind of"—I feel like the best way I can say it is get acquainted with it, like just sit with it [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Okay. Try it on for size.  Try it on for size. Okay.

Blue:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Let me just kind of ground into it. And I'm actually going to have you say, first, their full name and then your full name.

Blue:               [redacted].

Jessica:            Okay. There's a lot of things in here. There's a lot of pieces in this.

Blue:               Oh. Wow.

Jessica:            Okay. So what I want to do is I'm going to ask you. That's what I'm going to do. So part of what you said at the beginning, if I'm tracking it correctly, is that it's sat with you in a way where there's, like—I wrote down the words "blame" and "manipulation" because I heard them really like there was a lot of energy in those words when you said them at the beginning.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And so you feel manipulated, and you're struggling with how much blame you have towards this person. Am I hearing that correctly?

Blue:               Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Okay. Great. So, once they got mad, once they were like, "I'm not playing nice anymore. I feel like I'm being manipulated. I feel like I'm being mistreated. I feel like I'm not being heard"—and that is what was happening for them.

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            So, once that happened, it was like you saw a whole other side of them, a whole other side of them. You saw their trauma. You saw this, "People try to hurt me when all I do is try to help them. And at this point, there's nothing I can do to take care of you that doesn't cost me." And this is like a trauma pattern from their childhood. Do you know them well enough to know that?

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Your trauma pattern is the unpredictability. It's like, one minute, the reality is, "We agree on everything." The next minute, the reality is, "We—I—what? You were thinking x? I didn't know you were thinking x. What?" And then you have a conversation, and then you end things well. And then, 24 hours later, they're mad again. That unpredictability is so triggering for you from your childhood, yeah?

Blue:               Yes. Absolutely.

Jessica:            So the two of you really unconsciously activated trauma trance patterns from your childhoods, which were not that long ago, and really played out some really fucking upsetting themes for each other.

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            And both of you handled it terribly. I'm going to say they did not do a worse job than you. And that's okay if you disagree. But from what I'm looking at, you both went into these ways of coping with the hurt—you both did this. You would say something open and really intelligent and smart, and you would have these conversations that made you feel like, "Oh, this is my friend. This is a person who I share values with."

Blue:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And then like five minutes later—maybe two days later, but it would happen quickly—you would fall back into defensiveness and survival mode.

Blue:               Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. I want to say welcome to adulting. I mean, that's fucking—that's humans. That's humans, right?

Blue:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And if they had actually taken you to court—which, honestly, they could have.

Blue:               Yeah, they could have.

Jessica:            I mean, they might have lost or not, but if they had taken you to court, I would have a different take on this. But they just gave you something that they weren't fully in consent with, and then it blew up your relationship, which kind of blew up their life.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And they are hurting as much as you are from this—very differently, but as much as you are.

Blue:               Yeah. That makes me feel really sad, actually.

Jessica:            I'm sorry.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            But the truth is, were they gaslighting you? Not on purpose. I mean, I think the word "gaslighting" is so complicated because I think—I don't know. It's like one of those words that everyone uses, but does it mean the same thing in all situations to all people? I don't fucking know. You know? It's one of those things. Gaslighting, for me, technically is like this person is trying to make you go crazy by making up things they know is false. I don't think they were doing that. I think they took a grain of truth, and they obsessed on that grain of truth, and then in their minds, it became something very big when it was actually something small. Does that make sense, based on the things they said?

Blue:               That makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. I think you did the same thing. I think you obsessed on one little thing they said or did, and you made it into a really big thing when they were like, "Yeah, I said that, but I also said ten other things."

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Were they unkind? Were they fucked up? Yes. Were you unkind and fucked up? Yes. Okay? I mean, they got to kick you out of their apartment, right?

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            But also, you got to live there for free for a long time. And I think it's relevant that you could have known they had feelings for you. You could have known. You didn't. I believe you that you didn't, but you could have if you had thought about it. Maybe friends even pointed it out and you were like, "Nah." You could have known.

Blue:               Friends only pointed it out after what had happened.

Jessica:            After. Yeah.

Blue:               But before, the only person that was like, "Something is going on here," was my boyfriend at the time. And I dismissed it because he was really possessive.

Jessica:            He was possessive.

Blue:               Yeah. He was really possessive.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Blue:               So I was just like, "I don't believe you." [crosstalk].

Jessica:            I mean, that makes sense. I mean, your boyfriend was an unreliable narrator of all sorts of situations—again, low-hanging fruit with that fucking guy, right? But also, he saw the two of you together more intimately than anyone else did. It's one of those things where it's like hindsight. When you love somebody and you're friends with them, it can get sticky, especially—it's like you happen to be the genders that the two of you both date. You know what I mean? It can very easily get sticky. And again, I genuinely believe that you didn't know that they had feelings for you. But I also genuinely believe you could have, if you were willing to, know that part of their generosity was their desire to be super close to you all the time.

Blue:               It's so interesting because—yes. Yes, that is true. I think the way that I thought about it was I was like, "I would do this for you in a heartbeat. I want to be close to you. I want to cohabitate with you. I want to begin this—to my genuine understanding—platonic but very caring and sustainable home with you." So that's what I was thinking that they understood it as. The amount of intimacy in our friendship—I was like, "It's just a really intimate friendship. There's no desire here."

Jessica:            Again, when I look at this energetically, it makes me wonder if this is maybe a pattern for you to maybe not totally notice it when people have feelings for you because—

Blue:               It is.

Jessica:            It is. Okay.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Because I'm like, "This is way more obvious than you're making it sound." Okay. Now it's coming together. Now it's coming together because it genuinely—it does not look like the most subtle thing in the world.

Blue:               It's so funny because it actually happened with my current partner.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Okay.

Blue:               When we first started dating, I really wanted to be in a relationship with him, but I was like, "I don't know. Maybe he just wants to be friends." He literally described his type, which was me, on our first date. And I was like, "It could just be a friend thing."

Jessica:            "If only he would want to date me on a date."

Blue:               Exactly.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. You're making my point, and it makes me feel good—not for you, sorry, but I guess for my own ego. But yes.

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            So this is, again, one of those things where it's like it's not about, like, you should have known. I'm not sure that they fully knew until their feelings were hurt. But if I'm, as a psychic, sitting here kind of watching the film of this, the silent movie of this—I mean, my God. The subtext screams, you know? And so you were both terrible communicators. It got you both into a situation that you genuinely didn't want to be in. I do think that for the first two months, there was no problem for them with paying for everything because they were new to spending that much money. You know what I mean?

Blue:               Yeah. I get that.

Jessica:            And the longer you spend a lot of money, the more it hurts, you know?

Blue:               Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            And I do think that for whatever reason, they did not communicate the financial part of this to you. I don't know if they have complicated feelings about money or class. But they made it more personal and didn't talk about, like, "This is a financial burden for me, and I can technically do it, but it hurts me." Did they say that to you?

Blue:               They did say something in the midst of everything where it was like, "I just financially cannot do this."

Jessica:            Yeah. I think that's one of those things that you chose to not really center in your thinking but they thought was a huge deal to tell you that and that you just didn't respect it, didn't hear it. So again with the gaslighting. I don't know which one of you gets the award for doing more of it. Because neither of you were being totally forthcoming, neither of you were listening well because that's the thing. When a human isn't good at verbalizing the full truth, that same human is generally not listening because you're trying to react and respond to what the other person's saying while they're saying it instead of just really listening. And so I think you were both doing that. I don't think one of you did it more than the other. I don't think one of you is worse than the other.

I think you were equally unfortunate in this situation. And when I look at them energetically, the money thing was really a hard chip, and again, not at the very beginning. But that's everything. You know, you carry something heavy in your bag, and at 10:00 a.m., it's heavy, but by 4:00 p.m., it's super heavy, right?

Blue:   Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's just normal. And for some reason, that was not in your estimation. You were really just focused on your own finances and your own limitations financially and really did not consider theirs, which hurt their feelings.

Blue:               I did offer to leave. I don't know if that adds additional context, but by the time we'd maybe had a conversation after the first conversation, I said, "I have no problem figuring out how to go, and you can find a new roommate and something that's more sustainable for you."

Jessica:            And that was like a month before things blew up?

Blue:               It was after things blew up the first time. It was the second conversation we had.

Jessica:            And how much time was there between that second conversation and the letter to vacate?

Blue:               I would say around a month.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. So it was a month. It was a month.

Blue:               Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Again, when your friend who loves you said to you, "This isn't working for me. This is a burden for me. Oh my God. You thought I was offering to pay for this. I was offering to front you," and you were like, "Well, fine. I can leave"—do you see how—

Blue:               Yeah. I—

Jessica:            Did you hear it?

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Did you hear it a little?

Blue:               Yeah. I heard it. Yeah.

Jessica:            Of course they weren't like, "Okay. Go." That's not what they wanted you to say. They wanted you to validate what they had done for them. They wanted you to recognize that it was hard on them. They wanted you to recognize that part of what they thought they were creating with you was a dynamic that they didn't actually get with you once they moved in—

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —that they were doing all of these things that were hard for them for you, and they didn't feel it reciprocated, and they were butthurt.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            You didn't hear any of that, partially because they're a terrible communicator and partially because you were so in your own trauma of, "Wait a second. This person's flipping the script. Wait a second. This person's pulling the rug out from underneath me. They're being unkind. They're kind of bullying me around my very security and stability. They're supposed to be my safe place, and they're not." Both of your perspectives were valid. I don't think either of you were right, and I don't think either of you were wrong. I think both of you made mistakes. And if you were to forgive them, you would have to admit and own your own part, and then you'd have to forgive you as well.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's really hard to do. It's easy to look for who's the bad guy in this situation and to be like, "Okay. Well, they're the bad guy." Or maybe you have minutes of the day where you're like, "Oh shit. Am I the bad guy?"

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So you do have both. You're both the bad guy, and you're both actually mainly guilty of just being young and dumb, if I may say that with love in my heart, with love in my heart, because I don't think that either of you—this is the problem with being in your 20s, is that you make a lot of mistakes that you never make again because you learn it. How many times are you going to learn this? Once.

Blue:               Once.

Jessica:            Once. Right? But it's like you had to have the experience.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It would never occur to you to think when somebody says, "I can cover the rent"—why would it ever occur to you to be like, "When you say that, you mean like pay pay, not forward, not like front?"

Blue:               Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            It would never occur to you because you're only in your own head. But now that you've had this experience, you know to ask a fucking follow-up.

Blue:               Now I know. Yeah.

Jessica:            So it's like, again, this is why I say young and dumb. It's because I genuinely think that both of you thought because you agree on so many ideas that you would have the same point of reference and you would have the same feelings.

Blue:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            The messiness of it all is that you actually shared the same intention. They offered to front you the money because they cared about you and because they felt they could and because they wanted to. They didn't do it to fuck with you. You know, I mean they didn't actually have a cruel intention. But it stopped being consensual, and they didn't let you know. And when they did let you know, they did it fucking terribly. Terribly.

Blue:               Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            If they had said to you, "Hey, I'm starting to feel uncomfortable. I actually can technically afford it, but it's really hard on me financially. And I love you, and I want this to work. I don't know how to do this if you can't afford to"—you know, if they had come to you like that, you would have heard it.

Blue:               Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            We can't be mad at them for not having those skills unless we're going to be mad at you for not having been able to see it when it was pretty obvious.

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            So I'm going to give you homework, my Virgo friend, and it's going to be writing homework, okay?

Blue:               Let me take out my notes.

Jessica:            Yeah. Take out your notes. Take out your notes. Exactly.

Blue:               Okay.

Jessica:            I'm going to give you the homework—and you can do this as many times as you like, okay—to write a letter of accountability. You're not sending this to them. You're not sending this to them. This is for your dear diary, just so we're clear, okay? Write a letter of accountability, of acknowledging how you chose—what you did on purpose or not, it doesn't matter—what you did, what you didn't do. And I also want you to write a letter of forgiveness to them. And if you don't mean it, don't do it, okay? Don't do it. If you really are just in a place where you're like, "I can't forgive this person for their behavior," maybe just a letter where you are acknowledging their perspective—maybe that's an easier place to start.

                        If you actually acknowledge their perspective, looking at your birth chart, you will be able to have empathy for their position. When you don't see somebody else's perspective, for you, that often means it's because you don't know how to have empathy for the other person while also having a boundary with them. You either have empathy or boundary.

Blue:               Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And so, when this person was saying all the things they said, you had to have a boundary because it was your survival. It was like your home, right? It was also your best friend. And so you kind of unintentionally,. Unconsciously shut off your empathy for them.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And they noticed it really very obviously. They definitely noticed it, and it brought out the worst in them. You brought out the worst in each other, unfortunately. And it really unfolded really quickly over a month. It was funky, but then it was fucking drama for a month.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And a month in a housing situation with somebody that you were once close to that's now dramatic is torture.

Blue:               Oh yeah.

Jessica:            It's hell. It's awful. I don't want to under—you know, I don't want to act like that's like, "Oh, it was just a month." No. It was a month.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            But in that month, you just both dug in. You didn't listen to each other anymore. Neither of you were seeing things from the other person's perspective in that month. And this exercise of writing these letters is an exercise of exploring different ways of thinking about the situation. This is why I'm saying it's not a letter to send. I'm not recommending that you call them and be like, "I forgive you," or whatever. That's not what this is about because this situation is not far enough in the past for either of you to have a different relationship to it. But being able to hold how your own responsibility for what you did and what you didn't do, for what you could have known but you didn't know, but you could have—you know what I mean? Just like they could have known, but they didn't know, certain things.

                        So what comes up for you as I give you this homework?

Blue:               Release. Like, a lot of release. I love the people in my circle so much; however, when it comes to talking about this, it's like, "You've been wronged. You've been wronged, and they did you so dirty, and da-da-da-da-da." And I understand where it's coming from. But I believe that because I've been having so much tension around this issue and who's to blame, what manipulation looks like, is it unintentional, is it intentional—I do think I've kind of just subconsciously been looking for a way to understand both of our perspectives.

Jessica:            Yeah. Understanding somebody else's perspective and even having empathy for their perspective doesn't mean you consent to being in relationship with them.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It doesn't mean you let them in. It doesn't mean that it's okay for you. But there is a way that if you can hold empathy for—and I'm really surprised your friends are—I mean, I get it, why your friends are like that. But also, this person didn't push the matter. They gave you thousands of dollars when they felt like it wasn't fair, and they let it go. That just—I feel like, well, how mad are you going to be about that? I don't know.

Blue:               Exactly.

Jessica:            I know it's not just that, but also, they didn't chase you down. That would be unforgiveable. You know what I mean? But this is a different thing. Anyways, being able to be an adult who can understand, "There are certain things about the way this person behaves that I'll never understand"—let's go back to your low-hanging fruit, a.k.a. your ex-boyfriend. I mean, again, it's hard for me to want to talk about him because I'll just be like, "He's ughs." I don't want to be not constructive. Do you know what I'm saying?

Blue:               Yeah. I get it.

Jessica:            There's a lot of unforgivable things about this guy, like a lot of them. But we can look at his own childhood and understand the context of how he has been treated as a child, but also when he was a child but people clocked him as an adult, and understand how he came to be so incapable of being with an emotion.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            We can have empathy for his soul. We can have empathy for his little inner kid and still say, "That guy fucking sucks. Don't date him." You know what I mean?

Blue:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            We can acknowledge he is a complicated person who makes terrible choices in reaction to his trauma. And also, he's lovely. He's funny. He's smart. He's weird. He's like somebody who can make you feel excited to be alive and like, "What's next?" Am I seeing him correctly? Yeah?

Blue:               Yeah. Definitely.

Jessica:            Yeah. And to be able to acknowledge, okay, all of these things about him are fun and were great for you to be with, and all of those parts of him you can have empathy for and care for and still say, "Not that fucking guy. Not now. Not ever again. Fuck that guy"—you can do all of those things at once is what I want to say. It's being comfortable with "and also." He's a harmed person who's just acting out of trauma and harming other people because he doesn't know how to sit with a goddamn emotion.

Blue:               Not at all.

Jessica:            Not at all. And also, fuck that guy, and no way, right?

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            We can do that. That was easier because it's so obvious with him, right?

Blue:               Yes. Yeah. Exactly.

Jessica:            With the best friend—I mean, you just trust friends more than dates anyways, right?

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            That's just easier. Real talk.

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            And also, with the best friend, it was messier because you were acting out of trauma in tandem. You were perfectly embodying a traumatizing parent for the other person.

Blue:               Oh.

Jessica:            Yeah. And sometimes, when that happens in life—and I'll say it just fucking happens in life. It does. Sometimes, when it happens in life, we eventually need to say to them on a soul level—not on the phone, not via text, not an email, but on a soul level—"I see you. I acknowledge my part. I will make amends by not doing this again as a soul. And I can have empathy and care for you." And we don't ever say it to them because they're not a safe person. Right? And that's, for instance, the ex-boyfriend. He's taught you lots of lessons. We thank his soul. We say "never again" to his fucking personality. But to the friend, I don't think that they're toxic in any kind of way like the ex-boyfriend.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And I think that if you were ever going to be able to truly own, "I misunderstood, and then I handled it poorly, and then I handled it poorly, and then I handled it poorly. And I am sorry. I didn't mean to put you in this position, and I care about you. And I don't know if we can be friends, but I want to acknowledge that part"—if you ever did want to say that, you have no guarantee that they would say it back. You have no guarantee that they would have done the reflection and the introspection to be able to own their part or not be continuously in that trauma pattern with you because the only way to survive the adults around you that were so unsafe for you was to get away. It's to be completely self-sufficient and get away. That's your trauma pattern, right?

Blue:               100 percent. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And you did. You got away. You got away. For them, it's that they get left.

Blue:               Oh.

Jessica:            Yeah. Sorry. That's why they didn't tell you to go. They didn't want you to go.

Blue:               Oh no. [crosstalk].

Jessica:            I'm sorry. You broke each other's hearts. I mean, you did. You already knew that part, though, right?

Blue:               Yeah. I knew that part.

Jessica:            You knew that you broke each other's hearts.

Blue:               Yeah. Oh.

Jessica:            I know. But again, I want to encourage you to practice—and this is hard. It's hard for anyone, and it's hard for you—but to practice having empathy for your friend's wounding and to understand that the reason why you lashed out is because of your own wounding. So the thing that broke you up is the thing that brought you together, actually. You had really complementary trauma.

Blue:               Really complementary.

Jessica:            Yeah. Really complementary. So you got each other, and you understood each other.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And when you were on the same team, you were able to really get into the nuance and cheerlead for each other in a deep, real way.

Blue:               Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            And then you enacted each other's trauma. And I think there is a world in which—and I don't encourage you to rush this. I know you move fast. Don't move fast through this, because if you were to call them or write them or something, they would inevitably say something fucked up, and it would be hard for you in this moment to not go straight back into your "I have to be rigid. I have to defend myself. I have to get out of here" kind of trauma pattern. And you're just not ready to have this conversation with them—but to be able to hold the nuance and the messiness and that when they started to advocate for themselves, they were actually trying to break through a trauma pattern by advocating for themselves.

                        And when you had them come at you with this unpredictable fucking crazy-ass energy that you did not see coming, talking it through and being reasonable and bring transparent, as you knew how to be, was your way of working through the trauma pattern.

Blue:               Yeah. Yes.

Jessica:            It was like your way of breaking through patterns. For them, it made them feel better in the moment, but nothing changed, and so it didn't make them feel better.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And for you, you were like, "Let me explain to you how I got here, so therefore things don't need to change," or, "They need to change or they'll change down the line." They were like, "I need this immediately," and you were like, "Okay. Cool. But let me explain to you why you should wait." And when you said it, it made sense, but then they were left with the feelings, and they were like, "Wait a minute. This person didn't listen." Neither of you listened to the other one. Again, I don't think one of you is worse than the other. I think one of you is worse than the other in each interaction, but in the big picture, that's not what it was.

                        And I genuinely think that the love that you—I'm speaking in the present tense; I can't help myself—that you have for each other is not poorly placed. And that doesn't mean you can be in a relationship with each other at this time, or maybe ever again. But you came to each other because you saw each other so clearly. There was something so validating about this relationship when it was good. And that's why, when you had a meaningful—it wasn't even a disagreement; it was a misunderstanding. It was a colossal one, but it was a misunderstanding.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            You both took it personally. You both were like, "There's no way you could not know what I was saying. There's no way you could not know what I understood," because you had completely gotten each other to that point.

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. And you both convinced yourselves that it was malicious on the other person's part, like it was intentional.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And that—both of you—that is from your individual family traumas. Neither of you were being malicious. You just genuinely were on different pages.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And you get weird and woo? You get weird and woo?

Blue:               Yeah. I have an altar.

Jessica:            Okay. Good.

Blue:               I have had a couple of encounters. I actually have experienced some spiritual stagnancy after this.

Jessica:            Oh, I'm sure.

Blue:               It took me a minute to re-erect my altar. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. I mean, this has been really activating. And the difference between this situation and family is you both have agency. And that's the biggest difference, to be honest. And that's a bummer because both of you thought that you were doing something radically different, and then you got into this situation, and it was just a different version of this thing that you had both thought you were leaving behind.

And so this is why I wanted you to start with a letter to yourself, because every single person—it doesn't matter how wonderful or how terrible your childhood is. We all have—our early developmental experiences kind of—our lizard brain knows this is what's real, this is what's possible, this is what is, and we play it out. And again, you play it out, and hopefully you learn from your errors and you keep on going. For you, being in a state of anger and defensiveness is like having a block of cement in your chest. It blocks you from your guidance, you know?

Blue:               It does.

Jessica:            And, that said, get mad. I mean, it's great to get pissed off when—you know, if somebody pisses—be mad at that low-hanging fruit, the ex-boyfriend. He's the one to be mad at.

Blue:               Oh yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. He's the one to get mad at, whereas in this situation, I mean, it was much more complex. And holding blame and anger and obsessing on how they manipulated you requires you to be disingenuous with yourself about yourself and about them.

Blue:               I think that's why I was coming up with so many roadblocks in processing the situation. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And you've seen one of your parents do that, right, get stuck in anger, get stuck in defensiveness?

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It would be too easy for you to do that because it's been modeled so well for you.

Blue:               Oh yeah.

Jessica:            This is how you screw yourself over, by getting stuck in trauma.

Blue:               Yes. That's exactly what I've been feeling.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

Blue:               I've been feeling stuck.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Blue:               I've been feeling stuck.

Jessica:            And in this situation, owning your agency, owning what you did and didn't do, will set you free. And setting you free means free to feel sad, free to feel humbled. It's not just good. When people hear "free," they think lollipops. No. No, not just lollipops. Also dinner. You know what I mean? It's all of it. But we can't intellectually manufacture forgiveness or humility. This is an emotional process. And I think that—you see, you've got this Moon in Aquarius, and it's conjunct Uranus. Your emotional processing is so fast, but it can often be very intellectualized as opposed to that tender, vulnerable emo part.

Blue:               Definitely. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And when you catch yourself telling the same story over and over and over again, you know that you are—this is like a pro tip for your life, okay? Moon in Aquarius, especially Moon in a hard aspect to Uranus—if you catch yourself telling a story over and over and over and over again, it means that your mind, your nervous system, is trying to take over the vulnerability and tenderness of a feeling.

Blue:               Yeah. Definitely. I think I clocked that in the situation, and that's why I reached out.

Jessica:            Good. Yes. I love it.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            I had no idea what this reading was going to be about, but I'm super into it. So all of this to say, if you move forward and do the work, sometimes you're going to forget and you're going to be in your head about it, and then you're going to have to slow yourself down and be alone with yourself in a room and feel your feelings about it. And they're going to be messy. And the messiness is the point, and that's hard for a Virgo. But the messiness is the point. It was a messy situation. You are messy people. And that's okay. That's not bad. It just is what it is.

                        If I have my dishes in the sink and you have your dishes in the sink and neither of us are exactly doing our dishes, at a certain point, it doesn't really matter whose dishes it is. Somebody just has to do the fucking dishes, right?

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And this is that situation, is you both put all your fucking shit in the sink. Nobody did their dishes. Both of you thought you were entitled to that. Both of you thought that the other one should take care of it. And neither of you were wrong, and neither of you were right. But you were so in the outrage and heartbreak that your defenses took over.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And I hope that you can forgive yourself for that as much as you can forgive them.

Blue:               I really, really want to.

Jessica:            Yeah. I think you can. You're actually very, very forgiving once you decide that it is appropriate to be forgiving. You know, it's just you gotta make that decision. You know what I mean?

Blue:               (laughs) I do?

Jessica:            Yes, you do. Of course you do. Yeah. And again, just so we're being balanced and fair, you don't have to forgive your ex-boyfriend. He sucks.

Blue:               (laughs) Honestly, it's really good you say that. I feel like in the messiness, and especially because these two people are enmeshed in my mind, it's like if I forgive them, then I forgive him, kind of.

Jessica:            Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Completely different relationship.

Blue:               Completely different relationship.

Jessica:            Completely different relationship. Completely different.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            This person lied. He just straight-up lied. He's lied. He told you, "Oh, yeah, I listen. Oh, yeah, I'm this person." He pretended to be something that he was not.

Blue:               Yeah. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's lying. He lied.

Blue:               This is validating.

Jessica:            Okay. Good. I'm so glad. Also, he's not polyamorous. No, no, no. He just fucks around.

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. There's a big fucking difference. I just feel like certain people shouldn't have the language of polyamory—

Blue:               No. No.

Jessica:            —because it was not consensual. It was not, like you said, clean on all the levels.

Blue:               All the levels.

Jessica:            And this person, he just—everything was fun and easy; he was there. When shit got real, he was so annoyed that he had to be there. That's not a boyfriend. That's a fuckboy.

Blue:               Oh my God. And I read his—it was so funny. I just gotta say this. When we first matched on Tinder—and it was like campus Tinder because we went to the same college—he sent me his chart, and I was like, "Oh hell no. Absolutely not." Gemini Sun, [crosstalk] Rising —

Jessica:            I knew you were going to say he was a Gemini. I knew you were going to say he was a Gemini. And you know what?

Blue:               [crosstalk] and Mercury.

Jessica:            Let me just say my forever fiancé is a Gemini. I love a Gemini. But when a Gemini man goes wrong, that's how he goes wrong. That's how he goes wrong.

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            But here's the thing. Here's the thing. Astrology or not—fuck the astrology. Forget the astrology. He showed you who he was, but part of who he showed you that he was was fun and sensitive and weird and cool and tenderhearted. And I want to validate that it's not like, "Why did you make this crazy mistake and date this terrible man?" because he showed you his potential, and then he promptly showed you he didn't live with his potential. And you were like, "Okay. That's cool, but he could be his potential."

Blue:               Yeah. Yep.

Jessica:            And whenever we're focused on someone else's potential, the thing to remember is you're really focused on your projection onto them, who you believe they could be if they wanted to be. And who he showed you he actually was is a real pain in the ass. He's a real fucking pain in the ass, this guy.

Blue:               Yeah, like massive.

Jessica:            So high maintenance.

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            He thinks he's low maintenance. He's not low maintenance.

Blue:               No.

Jessica:            He does what he wants how he wants when he wants, and you have to go along with it.

Blue:               Absolutely.

Jessica:            You have to be in the mood he's in when he's in the mood.

Blue:               This is so valida—

Jessica:            You're welcome.

Blue:               This is so insane because so many people in his life view him as this saint. So, when everything went down, I just had this really strong desire to—I don't know—speak about it and just be like, "He's not this good person. He is not this good person. He has harmed me in more ways than one." So hearing you say, no, I read it accurately—

Jessica:            Oh, absolutely.

Blue:               —and this wasn't a fluke [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            No. No, no, no. All of those people who think he's a saint have the same surface relationship you had with him before you lived in the same place.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It was adventure. It was fun. It was potential. It was theory. It was talk. He feels like—when I look at him energetically, it reminds me of the first times I did drugs, where I was like, "This is fun. This is cool. Will this feel this great forever?" He brings that to social interactions.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So, when people engage with him, as long as they never need anything from him that he doesn't want to give, he's fucking awesome.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So it's not for nothing that you chose to be with this person. It's that you chose to be with a person even when he started to show you that he was not what you needed or wanted or felt safe with.

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            You kept on choosing him because of who he was in the first two months. You are not he first person to do that.

Blue:               He hated that.

Jessica:            Oh, of course. Yeah.

Blue:               He hated it. Yeah.

Jessica:            Sure. Listen. This guy is a fucking pain in the ass. And because you are considering his trauma, because you are considering the good in him, that's great for your soul. It has nothing to do with him as a person, though. It doesn't mean you let him in. It doesn't mean you ever talk to him. This guy fucking sucks. So could he be a better person? Of course he could. Everyone could be a better person. That's fine. He sucks, whereas your ex-friend, I actually wouldn't say that. I would say they're damaged. They make mistakes, but the mistakes they made are actual mistakes. This guy was just like, "Oh, you don't want to eat pizza? Oops. I just drove us to the pizza place."

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            He knew what he was doing. Yeah.

Blue:               (laughs) Oh, wow. I can't—yeah.

Jessica:            You're welcome. You're welcome. So here's the thing. Boundaries are the common denominator here. Your boundaries are the common denominator here. And if there's anything that links the two of them other than you and proximity—is boundaries as a lesson for you. So that's something for you to remember. But just because you might have empathy and forgive and even let the friend back into your life, don't do that with the guy.

Blue:               No.

Jessica:            Burn the bridge. Burn the bridge.

Blue:               Oh, it's burned. It's burned.

Jessica:            Okay. Good. That's great. Some bridges are best burned. You know what I mean?

Blue:               Oh yeah.

Jessica:            A controlled fire is good for the forest.

Blue:               I tend to burn a lot of bridges, actually. It's not grea.t

Jessica:            Uranus conjunction. I see you. I see you. You're just like, "I'm done with you. I learned the lesson. I'm out."

Blue:               Yeah. Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. I see it. I see it.

Blue:               Not great. Not great.

Jessica:            Sometimes it needs to happen.

Blue:               But sometimes it needs to happen.

Jessica:            In this situation, it needed to happen. What would be the point of keeping this person around? "To what end?" I say. To what end?

Blue:               Torment.

Jessica:            Yeah. Exactly. Torment. Exactly. You don't need that. The final word I'll say is that reflecting on why you have a compulsion—I'm calling it that—to merge these two people as the same—that's 100 percent on you, okay? There's no actual technical, literal reason that you would connect these two people. They don't like each other. They don't fuck with each other. They're completely different relationships. Whatever it is that you can figure out about yourself about why you've smooshed these two people together so intensely in your thinking and in your emotions, that's going to be really valuable for you to know about yourself and has nothing to do with them. Yeah. Write that down. Good. Good. Write that down.

That rigidity thing that I mentioned earlier—it's that. It's like, "This whole fucking shitshow happened in my life, at this one period of my life, and so it's me against them," in your thinking. And again, that's a trauma pattern from your childhood. And it worked. "Me against them" worked for you as a kid. It kept you safe. But it's not going to work for you as an adult, not in every situation, especially not as a knee-jerk reaction, right?

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            The thing about even the concept of knee jerk, the doctor taps on your knee and you're like—it's supposed to move. The knee-jerk reaction is like a normal part of the human experience. You're reacting to something that's deep inside of you. You just want to make sure that thing is not a trauma pattern but instead an intentional, self-aware response, which of course it isn't most of the time, for most of us, right? That's okay. But also, being aware of that can really help you.

                        As you practice owning your part in one relationship and not doing it in another in the same way, that's going to be a good exercise for you because it's going to be a real stretch to not do everything for everyone. That's that Saturn/Pluto opposition, like, "Either I see everyone's perspective or I see no one's perspective. Either I'm completely wrong or they're completely wrong." And we gotta get into the nuance, right?

Blue:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            There is nuance in the relationship with the ex-boyfriend, but it doesn't matter. Fuck that guy.

Blue:               Yeah. Fuck that guy.

Jessica:            Thank you. Thank you. Fuck that guy. So glad that it's over. I'm so happy for you that it's over.

Blue:               You and many other people.

Jessica:            Oh, I bet. I bet.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And here's the thing, is as time passes and you develop more adaptability with this stuff, your relationships will be a lot easier because you'll be able to self-regulate and have boundaries with people, so things don't need to get to a ten on a scale from one to ten before you're like, "Oh. I have to do something about this."

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            And that'll make your life easier, which we love for you.

Blue:               Yes. I want that really badly.

Jessica:            Yeah. I want that for you, too. And I actually think you can have it. And when I say you can have it, I don't think it's this month because you are still going through a Neptune square—I'm sorry. Neptune is now opposite your Mercury.

Blue:               Okay.

Jessica:            And so the theme of boundaries in your thinking and with your friends is continuing. You're in a fucking period. Am I jealous? Zero percent. It's not a fun transit.

Blue:               No.

Jessica:            But the gift of this is understanding the assignment, and it's boundaries. It's boundaries with yourself and where you allow your thoughts to linger. It's boundaries with other people. It's boundaries in lots of ways. There's energy boundaries. There are emotional boundaries. There's interpersonal boundaries. There's behavioral boundaries. You get it. We keep going, right?

Blue:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And some of it, for you, is boundaries in your health, like how you navigate stuff, because you've got Mercury in the sixth house. So it's still health stuff for you, I'm imagining.

Blue:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And so recognizing that this period, this period of boundaries, is a data point that helps you to identify that things aren't supposed to move fast—okay? They're not supposed to move fast. So, if you find that things are moving slowly, that's by design because nobody learns boundaries quickly. I mean, listen. Somebody could burn your house down with the lighter you gave them, and then, "Oops. I learned to never give people lighters." Okay. Fine. Sometimes, in very dramatic situations, we learn things quick. But most of the time, really learning boundary lessons takes time.

Blue:               Okay.

Jessica:            And so look for the potential of learning a lesson around having healthier boundaries with your relationships that are working well. Look for the themes.

Blue:               Okay.

Jessica:            Okay? You're already thinking of things. I see it. I see it.

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Good, because that's the assignment right now for you. And as hard as this is—and this is hard—I gotta say better now than later, actually.

Blue:               Yeah. I agree. I agree.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. This is a great lesson to do in your early 20s because all this shit would cost you so much more in your early 30s or onwards, right?

Blue:               Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            So the one last thing I'll say—in 2026, you're going to enter into a period that's going to last a couple of years, and it's going to be major relationship themes.

Blue:               Oh.

Jessica:            So that just tells me you're in fucking school for this.

Blue:               Okay.

Jessica:            And so it's just a period of, over the next—like leading up to 2026 and 2025 and the last couple years—boundaries, boundaries, boundaries, boundaries.

Blue:               Okay.

Jessica:            And then, in 2026, it's going to be a two-year period of really intense relationships. So, if you don't do your fucking homework and do the internal work of having energy boundaries with yourself and others, that Pluto transit is going to be a lot more dramatic. Okay?

Blue:               Oh my. Okay.

Jessica:            And so it's fun to have the math. Also, it's intimidating to have the math. When I say the math, I mean astrology. But I feel like it might be helpful for you, my Virgo friend, to know it's like, first, there's grade 11. Then there's grade 12. Then you go to college or whatever. I don't actually know how it works. But you understand what I'm saying, right?

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            There's a graduation if you do it kind of, quote unquote, "right." And if not, it'll just be more messy. There will be more fucking dishes in the sink. You'll be like, "Why"—

Blue:               Yeah. That helps me a ton.

Jessica:            Okay. Good. You're welcome. You're welcome.

Blue:               That helps a ton. Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Good. Okay. Good. My pleasure. My pleasure. Okay. Great. Well, there's your reading. We did it. We did it.

Blue:               Amazing. Thank you.

Jessica:            It is my pleasure.

Blue:               Oh my gosh.

Jessica:            I'm so glad we did it. And I really am so glad that this person—I don't know. I feel, like, some relief about the friend.

Blue:               Yes, like, so much, so much relief. I actually—forgiveness has been a pretty big theme the past few days as I've been thinking it over. And I recognize that I would be like, "I could never forgive them for it," but it didn't feel right.

Jessica:            Yes.

Blue:               It just felt like a really hard block in my heart.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

Blue:               So opening up to the potential of doing it and now having a clearer route on what that could look like helps me a ton.

Jessica:            Okay. We did what we came here to do, and I'm very happy about it.

Blue:               Yes.

Jessica:            Yay.

Blue:               I'm very happy about it, too. Thank you so much.

Jessica:            It's my pleasure.