Dear Lost In Love,

Yeah, I have some advice and so does my editor, HQ, who I consulted on your question because I consider him an expert on this subject. Half-Asian himself (and married to an Asian woman), he came back with this learned advice:

• The man has to be prepared to endure a lot, over the long haul. If he is a good man, the mother will almost certainly come around. It may take 10-20 years though… not everyone is prepared to endure that. On a practical level, he needs to be prepared for the family to completely reject him at first. If he sees it as just the first step in a long journey, than it’s much less painful.
• It’s true that the mother will never be able to fully connect to someone who isn’t Vietnamese. But there are other ways to create commonality.. he will have to work hard to find these. For example, maybe she loves Music… or Education. These are things that he can connect over.
• Finally, it seems like the parents hold all the cards… but that’s not true. If the parents love their daughter, they are going to want her to be happy. So that’s one thing in his favor. The other huuuuuuuge advantage that he has is babies. If he can hold out until they have a baby together, her parents will almost certainly accept him. After all, who can reject their own flesh and blood? Once they have a baby, then he is part of the family by definition.
• So basically, he has to be prepared for a waiting game… but time is on his side.

~~
So that’s that, and here’s my bit:

I would also expect problems. Your mother has made it very clear how she feels about this and like HQ, I have personal experience with these issues from the other angle.

I am an Italian who married a man whose family of WASPs who were dead set against this, in spite of the fact his sister had also married Italian and been enormously happy for fourteen years, with two children.

So when I traveled to meet my future in laws, I met this sister and her Italian husband first, who were obviously very supportive of our relationship. And when we pulled up in front of their house, the husband ran out to meet up on the sidewalk, fell to his knees in dramatic Italian style, kissed my hand, stood up and hugged me, swung me around and nearly threw me up in the air he was so gleeful.

“Finally!” he said. “Finally one of my people! Please tell my wife I’m not yelling,” he said in his loud Italian voice.

I laughed. He was Aquarian.

“Tell her this is talking, not yelling! I have been trying to explain this to her for 14 years!”

I looked over at his wife, who was grinning ear to ear. These two were in love, see. “He’s not yelling,” I said in my loud Italian voice that matched his. “THIS IS YELLING!” I bellowed. The Italian guy roared and covered in kisses.

“See? What I tell you?” he said. He was an immigrant, see. She’d met him in Italy and imported him.

But anyway, later over dinner the conversation became more serious when he explained that even after fourteen years of making his wife the happiest woman in the world… “I am still an outsider in this family,” he said. And it pained him. “Look at these beautiful children,” he said. And they were. Those kids were gorgeous and he could not understand the lack of heart in this family. So considering this, I think you and your man are going to have a real challenge. But here’s the thing:

I looked at your chart and you have an Aquarius Moon. You very much want to be liberated from your family. There is a part of you who wants to shock them as well. And you also have some serious Sagittarius so you are going to favor “foreigners” and fare well with them. So it’s my opinion that a marriage like this is part of your destiny. I just don’t think you’ll be happy with a traditional situation. You crave expansion which is not what you get when you marry someone who looks like your brother… and your other brother… and your other brother too!

So I say, go forward. But it’s very important you stand with your partner when and if your family move to trash him. Because they very well might. And if you are willing to do this… well go back and see HQ’s advice. Because I think he’s on track.

What do the rest of you think? Anyone else have experience with this? Tell us.

It’s another blog for the Double Aquarius, biracial, gay cellist, deep-thinking, hard-working writer with one of the most exquisite charts I have ever seen in my life. Do you like him, so far? I do.

I promised yesterday to write about relationships. I also wrote about Jupiter. And it turns out, you have Venus conjunct Jupiter in your chart. This is a very good thing. There is promise of benefit (Jupiter) from partnerships (Venus)… however these planets are in CAPRICORN and you know what that is?

It’s more Saturn. More fear. More delay. Which is of course what you have experienced. So here is what this looks like, all strung together…

You are afraid of your enormous prowess. To let the dog out, so to speak. You are afraid of rejection. You are afraid of being judged. You are afraid of you’re not good enough.

Here is the truth… which is a Jupiter thing by the way:

You are enormously talented. You are a deep person of substance, with endless capacity and energy at your disposal. You are a quintessential “individual”. And this may be intimidating to some, but others will accept no substitutes. They want an extraordinary man for a friend and for a lover, even if he comes with extraordinary challenges. And on that note, I am going to recap my advice:

Good Morning, Double Aquarius, biracial, gay cellist, deep-thinking, hard-working writer with one of the most exquisite charts I have ever seen in my life.

People with Saturn square the Sun and Moon are plagued with feeling that they suck!!! They can’t possibly be ‘good enough” just the way they are. So they generally try to compensate, by becoming the best at whatever they do. Do you play the living shit out of your cello? I bet you do.

This is a very hard problem to work with. Time brings some relief, but that’s not much help when you’re in your young twenties trying to feel good about yourself. So here again…you need to pick your friends.

Anyone who criticizes you should be out on their ass. That’s the last thing you need. You want to form and invest in relationships with people who support (Saturn) and empower (Pluto) you.

But to do this, you are going to have to internalize the idea that you are in fact worthy. And I am trying to help you on that front, by devoting most of this week to work on your chart - something unprecedented on my blog. And it’s not because I feel sorry for you. It’s because I think you are worth investing in. Actually, I know you are worth investing in.

So anyway, you’re going to have to work on your tendency to feel as if you are flawed. First by restricting access to people who nurture these kinds of feelings in you… while simultaneously increasing your exposure to people who hold you up. And people like that are out there, don’t you doubt it.

Beyond this, it’s an internal fight. Like a child who has been berated by a parent. Get rid of the parent, and the grown child replays the devastating messages. You need to work hard not to punish yourself in this way. And it can be subtle at first. “I can’t figure this out…” becomes “I am figuring this out…”

What that is, is hope. And hope is a Jupiter thing. And Jupiter is the antidote to Saturn. Despair (Saturn) versus the belief that things will improve (Jupiter). Get it? You want to cultivate the “Jupiter” end of this equation. Find some optimists for friends. Some people who are buoyant and make you laugh.

That is why I am calling you that name by the way. ‘Double Aquarius, biracial…” It’s to make you smile.

Tomorrow, focus on relationships…

~~
Have a question? Need advice? Ask here!

Hello again Double Aquarius, biracial, gay cellist, deep-thinking, hard-working writer with one of the most exquisite charts I have ever seen in my life.

I am going to define your problems for you. Not that you didn’t do a good job, because you did. But you have your words and I have mine.

Pluto square the Sun and Moon gives energy that attracts and repels. When you sense people are attracted to you, it gives a feeling of power. When you sense their repulsion, you feel like an ogre or worse. Much worse actually. It’s very strange energy because it pulls people in as it simultaneously pushes them away and you have to walk around with a force field like that.

Well guess what? There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s how you are built. It’s how I am built too, so don’t forget that. You are not alone out there.

There are others like you… akin to you, and this is one of the ways you can go at that loneliness problem. You can keep an eye out for your tribe, that is. People like you, who are sensitive to what is hidden. People well acquainted with intense feelings, including pain.

Because you may very well be an intense piece of work, but understand this: people feed off energy like yours. They sure as hell do. Right before they persecute you in many cases, and not because you deserve it! But because as Elvis Costello writes in “Blame It On Cain”, “…it’s nobodies fault, but we need somebody to burn..”

Remember they used to burn “witches”? Who do you think those women were? Think they were intense? Threatening? Sexual? I bet they were and what did the collective do? They burned them down.

You could say the same thing about the black men killed by the KKK and the like. Do you think those white boys were threatened? I do.

And what if you were one of them? What if you are part of the group being persecuted?

Well you are, aren’t you? And no wonder you feel “unattractive”. How can you not feel lowly and dirty and so forth, when the collective constantly throws it’s shadow on you?

Well the fact is, I don’t think this is entirely avoidable. You can work with it and I’ll get to that, but I don’t think you can avoid going down from time to time. And I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad. I am trying to illuminate the root of your desperate feelings, the “slow rhythms” you mentioned that you can’t quite pin down.

I want you to see that you are carrying the shadow for the collective and the root goes back for generations. And at this point, I guess I better apologize to your Aquarius side. The part of you that is detached, that is. Because I know this is very heavy for you on some level, but I can’t help it. This is your chart.

Come back tomorrow.

~~
Have a question? Need advice? Ask here!

Dear Strung,

Well hello, you Double Aquarius, biracial, gay cellist, deep-thinking, hard-working writer with one of the most exquisite charts I have ever seen in my life. How the hell are you? Not so good, I’m sorry to hear. I will try to help.

And I am going to take my time. I am going to write on your chart for a few days, so those reading with short attention spans, please come back later in the week.

First the anger. Anger, sex drive and “getting what you want” in general is a function of Mars in a chart. Your Mars is in Scorpio conjunct Pluto, which is one badass Mars. It’s potent. It’s powerful. It’s a killer Mars, a super focused Mars, but. But it is also conjunct Saturn.

Saturn insists you control this! Saturn is afraid. And this is for good AND ill.

For example, Saturn tied up with Mars gives discipline. You can sit in that chair and play your instrument. You can take direction. You can burrrrrrrrn it to your hard drive.

But on the downside… well there is great fear. What if your power gets loose? What if you lose control?

And in a way, this is what is happening with the angry outbursts. You have been containing this Mars of yours… denying it and it’s not going to take it anymore. Basically you are meeting your own prowess. It wants to be acknowledged and exercised.

And you can think if this in phallic terms if you wish. In fact, I recommend it. Like a hard-on that occurs in nature, your energy wants to be used.

And I am not suggesting that you are not acquainted with this in the least. But over this next year, as Saturn transits your natal Mars, Pluto, Saturn conjunction, you will become very aware of your raw male energy and more masterful at channeling it - which for the record, is OFF THE CHARTS by anyone’s standard.

Now regarding your low mood and problems in relationships, these things are hard-wired, just like your prowess and the struggle it presents. Further, they are connected.

See, the Mars, Pluto, Saturn conjunction in your chart is square both your Sun and Moon in Aquarius, and brother? Let me tell you something. This is just about as hard as it gets. Anybody who thinks they’re having a hard life ought to get in your body for a day. It would shut ‘em right up. So absorb this today and tomorrow, part two.

~~
Have a question? Need advice? Ask here!