Can People Change Their Relationship Patterns?

I was talking to someone the other day about similarities in the romantic relationships they've had over the years. They brought up the question of whether or not people can actually change their relationship patterns, particularly their problematic ones. I believe people can. My personal example for this belief is my father. He had one type of relationship with my mother (not good) and a much different (and better from his perspective) relationship with his second wife. In some ways, the desire for this type of change is the driving force behind most remarriages. The remarrying person wants a new and better type of marriage than the one they had before. And yet anyone who's ever experienced a distressing and re-occuring relationship pattern knows how they seem to operate subconsciously.

You meet someone who seems so much different from the man or woman you were with before, and yet within months you are seeing eerie similarities to the feelings and problems you wanted to leave behind. What gives? Can people outgrow their relationship patterns and find newer and happier ways of relating--or not?

I don't know what the answer to this is in a purely scientific or psychological or philosophical sense. But I can tell you what I've observed in an astrological sense--or at least how I interpret what I've observed. It's this: people can grow into new and better relationship patterns in their lives when they're ready.

I'll give the example of someone with a chart from a generation a bit before the boomers. The person in question has a Capricorn Ascendant with Saturn conjunct. Not an easy start to life nor an easy perspective from which to view life (Saturn conjunct Ascendant typically signifies a difficult start to life and this person did indeed have a difficult beginning, battling much childhood illness).

Uranus in Aries is conjunct the moon in this chart in the 4th house of home and roots. The moon is the symbol of the mother and therefore has a great deal to do with a person's inherited relationship patterns. Not too promising.

Uranus is a disruptive planet and Aries is an angry sign. You get an angry mother along with disruptions in the person's home environment and no really good chance for this person to learn how to conduct peaceful, stable relationships. Again, this tracks with person's actual experience of a wartime (World War II) home. The disruptions came in the form of bombs and the mother was not only angry but mentally unstable (sometimes signified by Uranus conjunct Moon). Our war-torn child has now developed what psychologists might call "attachment disorder" and is not particularly well disposed to forming rewarding relationships.

To make matters worse, Mars is in the 5th house of love affairs and Pluto is in the 7th house of marriage. True to the chart, this person did indeed experience a series of conflicted and angry love relationships capped by and culminating in an extraordinarily difficult and even abusive marriage. So far, it would appear that this person is simply a prisoner of relationship patterns originating in childhood, and is doomed to live out a life in the grip of subconscious demons that won't let go.

In reality, however, the person eventually left the abusive marriage, fell in love with someone capable of loving back, remarried and settled down to decades of happily ever after, more or less like the fairy tale. The person was free to contend with all sorts of other life issues, but the former relationship patterns were no longer active and no longer a matter of distress. The person "outgrew" years of difficult programming, experiences, and even baggage to find the much sought after love and happiness. Why?

Because the person's chart doesn't end with Pluto in the 7th house of marriage. Venus is in the 8th house and Neptune in the 9th. Venus is a symbol of romantic love, and sometimes Neptune is too. There was nothing "wrong" with this person's Venus and yet it never seemed all that helpful in the person's life until after the divorce. And part of the reason for that, in my observation, is that people do not just spring into life with all the capacities of all their natal planets fully formed and ready to go.

People develop. They develop the capacities of their natal planets, including their relationship planets, as they go through life. Most commonly people seem to develop their capacities in a kind of chronological order, following the order of the planets from the Ascendant through the houses, almost as if the chart was a path or a map. In this person's chart, the ability to experience being loved (Venus) comes after learning what needed to be learned from a difficult marriage (Pluto in the 7th). When this person was ready for a new level of relationships and relating, the old patterns fell away.

Stories like this (and I see a lot of them) make me think that true and deep and important and lasting psychological and life change is more possible than many of us realize. It is just that we make those changes, achieve those goals, and unlock those relationship keys when the time is right for us according to our own plan of development and not before.

Whenever I buy a mutual fund, I get a prospectus that says "Past performance does not guarantee future results," or something like that. This is a true statement, and it is true of human life, not just mutual funds. Not matter what your past performances in relationships may feel like--you are not automatically doomed to repeat them. You may need to learn a few Pluto lessons before you achieve the perfect second (or third or fourth) marriage you long for, but that does not mean you cannot achieve a new and better way of relating.

You can. You will. When you're ready. Whether that readiness comes at 20 years of age or 80 doesn't matter--as long as you know that you never lose that capacity to develop the qualities and functions of your natal planets, including the relationship planets.