The Challenges of Midlife: Relationships

People during their midlife years today need more freedom and independence in their romantic relationships than previous generations did.  This increasing need for freedom and independence in relationships is both a liberation and a challenge for today's mid-life adults. 

Let me explain why, in astrological terms, the marriage and relationship paradigms that might have worked for your parents' generation are increasingly untenable today. 

It all has to do with the planet Neptune.  Neptune has a profound effect on romantic relationships.  Today, Neptune is in Aquarius.  When you were born it was most likely either in Scorpio, Libra, or Virgo. 

If you were born between 1956 and 1969, Neptune was in Scorpio when you were born. If you were born between the middle of 1942 and 1956, Neptune was in Libra.  If you were born between 1929 and the middle of 1942, it was in Virgo.  What this means in effect, is that each generation is born with its own idealized template of how romance is supposed to work. 

If you were born with Neptune in Scorpio, for example, somewhere in the back of your psyche lingers the idea that the ideal romantic relationship includes such things as sexual passion, the merging of interests, handling finances jointly, possessiveness, and the need to keep secrets to make relationships work.  Although your personal conscious attitude toward romance may be somewhat different, astrologically you absorbed the template of your generation.  When you were born, a smaller percentage of women worked independently outside the home, so joint finances made sense.  Exclusivity and possessiveness seemed natural to sexual relationships, as did sexual passion. 

Neptune is a long way from Scorpio now, though--it's in Aquarius. The Aquarian ideal template of romance emphasizes freedom and independence for both partners, compassion and lack of jealousy of the partner's outside interests, and is less concerned with joint interests than with a meeting of the minds between two equals. 

In my experience, this shift is affecting midlifers profoundly.  Society is changing; freedom and independence are much more openly touted as important values in relationships (being a separate, whole individual is now considered important), and women have more economic independence than they used to.  So many of clients experience the inner tug toward Aquarian freedom, independence, openness, and progress in a very personal way in their relationships.  When they are married, they struggle with issues of stagnation or discontent at not "being themselves." When single and looking, they wonder how they will find someone they can relate to an equal, open basis. They simply don't have the tolerance for suffocating relationships any more.  When single and not looking, they wonder if their enjoyment of their own independence is weird or wrong.

In other words, embracing the societal and astrological emphasis on growing independence and freedom in romantic relationship is an adjustment for the Neptune in Scorpio generation.  It requires being far more open and honest with your partner (or prospective partner) than you might have been raised to be.  It means this generation needs to take the time and trouble to work things out with their long-time spouses, individuals who are also affected by their own needs to "be themselves."  It also means accepting that there is no going back.  Ignoring your own needs for freedom and independence, as well as the necessity for having compassion for your partner's separate needs, will not make them go away.  You may feel you are growing away from your partner, but you are also growing into yourself.  In an astrological sense, there is nothing to do but figure out a way to accommodate yourself to the evolution within yourself and society. 

If you were born with Neptune in Libra, your situation is different.  Your generation has had to face the expedient but sometimes crippling effects of denial (Neptune rules denial) in relationships.  A striking public example is Hillary Clinton, whose Neptune in Libra marriage operated for decades in denial of her husband's philandering ways. Eventually, the changing positions of the planets forced an open confrontation in that marriage. I have seen this same dynamic played out in so many of my client's lives, although the issue is not always infidelity.  People of the Neptune in Libra generation often held their marriages together by fooling themselves on some fundamental level. 

Now that Neptune is in Aquarius, the Neptune in Libra generation has largely had to face its own delusions and it has earned the right to implement the tricky balance between freedom and harmony, between separate interests and shared ones, between independence and relating.  Neptune in Libra people have had to learn the value of letting their partners have their "space" without turning a blind eye to outright deception.  Maintaining this balance as a mature adult is the challenge and promise of romance for this generation.  It takes work, but the Neptune in Libra generation has the right stuff to do this work, and to achieve a measure of hard-won peace in relationships. 

The Neptune in Virgo generation, in contrast, comes from a time that is out of sync with the relationship paradigms of today's society.  This generation emphasized the practicalities of romance, the need to make it work on a day to day level without indulging in a great deal of exploration of the inner meaning of marriage and relationship.  Today's emphasis on freedom is vaguely uncomfortable for Neptune in Virgo, but not disastrous.  What the Neptune in Virgo generation has earned is the right to ignore the changing trends of society in favor of implementing the kind of relationship template that works for the individual.  The Neptune in Virgo generational template is both realistic enough and flexible enough to handle the truth, so that these people can do things their own way.  The current transit of Uranus through the opposite sign of Pisces only emphasizes the need of this generation to do things however it wants--and the heck with what the other generations think!