The Day Star Signs Almost Broke Our Relationship
Do ‘incompatible’ star signs really affect relationships?
We Are As Different as Chalk and Cheese
I still remember that day. It was Friday the 13th on which our ‘incompatible’ star signs almost broke our vibrant relationship.
Our love story began 25 years,5 days and 2 hours ago to be precise. I am Capricorn and she is Sagittarius, and we were teeming with differences to begin with.
I am organized in anything and everything I do including love and she loves wanderlust and variety, with change being her second name. I am constant in my choices and aim for rigidity while she is always aiming for new things, challenging new frontiers and sometimes reckless to the point of irresponsibility.
To cut the long story short, we are as different as chalk and cheese but as they say opposites attract, we managed to set the world of Cupid on fire. After more than two years of dating, fighting, adjusting, and finally discovering something new about each other every day, we decided to get married and inform our parents about the same.
We both belong to a very conservative Hindi brahmin community where love stories are frowned at. But to our surprise (and delight of course!!), nobody objected. Both sides were pleased with our respective choices, but her side had a single non-negotiable condition.
Our detailed horoscopes would be thoroughly matched for compatibility by their family astrologer who will also suggest any “remedies” in case of misalignments between our star signs. We tried to brazen our way out of this ‘astro condition’. After all, who sees horoscopes in the 21st century, we argued.
The Crossed Star Signs Almost Derailed Our Relationship
It was funny as well as irritating. But no one budged even a bit. We agreed and then a day after, came the ‘astro-bomb” that almost derailed our relationship.
The astrologer declared that our horoscopes absolutely spell disaster for each other. Not only are we totally incompatible but there was a high probability that either one of us would die within one year of our marriage. In one word, his conclusion was “break off”. We were just not destined to be soulmates.
All hell broke loose. Within a span of 10 minutes, the friendly families from both sides became immensely hostile to each other with both sides imploring, cajoling and even threatening us to break our relationship and “stay safe”. It was a tussle between love and astrology and our “incompatible” star signs were threatening to crush our beautiful relationship.
But we both stuck to our guns. Astrology be damned. Star signs be damned. We will marry, come what may, we declared. It took 3 long days of infighting, crying and sullenness to get everybody to agree with our decision. We finally married in an atmosphere of doom, dread, and impending fear.
It has been 13 years since then and we have been alive and kicking so far with our love showing no signs of abating. That we made a famous “astrologer” eat his words makes us go with crazy with laugher every time we think about him.
And here is why our relationship is going great so far.
We Give In to Each Other’s Quirks
Noted philosopher, Plutarch in his famous book Moralia makes a profound statement about the importance of appreciating each other’s quirks.
“Those who have to go near elephants do not put on bright clothes, nor do those who go near bulls put on red; for the animals are made especially furious by these colors; and tigers, they say, when surrounded by the noise of beaten drums go completely mad and tear themselves to pieces. Since, then, this is also the case with men, that some cannot well endure the sight of scarlet and purple clothes, while others are annoyed by cymbals and drums, what terrible hardship is it for women to refrain from such things, and not disquiet or irritate their husbands, but live with them in constant gentleness?”
What Plutarch meant here is giving in to those little quirks or habits that everybody might have in life. Your better half might not like loud music while you might not like too many guests at home. You might love to be in chaos while she might have obsessive-compulsive disorder and so on…….
The point here is finding the middle ground. These little adjustments or tolerations are the building blocks of rock steady relationship.
We Compete to See Who Is More Devoted
Devotion does not mean puppy love. Devotion means thinking beyond yourself in anything and everything you do.
Pericles, the prominent Greek statesman, and Orator nailed it to perfection when he said.
“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”
What Pericles meant here is the transition which happens from “My life” to “Our life” once we enter into a relationship. And this needs to reflect in every action or activity that is been done. For example, if you are thinking of dining out at a Chinese restaurant and she hates Chinese, your selfless action should be to go to a place which keeps both of your interests in mind.
If two people compete to show how much each person cares for the other, they’ll have a beautiful union. On the flip side, though, if each person in a couple only thinks of himself or herself, the couple will be doomed to separate or be lonely.
This is selfless devotion, and this must be a two-way street for any relationship to work.
Adultery Is Not Acceptable
Rufus the philosopher strongly viewed adultery as a crime when he said.
“If it seems neither shameful nor out of place for a master to have relations with his own slave, particularly if she happens to be unmarried, let him consider how he would like it if his wife had relations with a male slave. Would it not seem completely intolerable not only if the woman who had a lawful husband had relations with a slave, but even if a woman without a husband should have?”
This topic is controversial and there are both healthy and unhealthy reasons for having adulterous affairs. In cases in which relationship problems lead to an affair, or to significant personal problems that are corrected, the relationship can actually be stronger after the affair.
But the bottom line is, not all relationships in which a partner has an affair is a bad relationship and not all people who remain sexually faithful are in happy relationships.
We Are Independent
Being in a relationship does not mean losing your identity. Rather it means enhancing your identity to a different level.
And Heraclitus, the Greek writer was bang on target when he said.
“Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become.”
Independence is very important in any relationship. In order to be happy in a relationship, we must be happy individually first. That is, in fact, the key to a successful relationship. With that in mind, partners must continue to take out time for themselves, enjoy their personal hobbies, and in general, spend some time apart.
Not only does absence make the heart grow fonder, but in the time, we spend alone, we get to reunite with our spiritual side, re-establish our sense of self, and check-in with the progress of our personal preferences, goals, and achievements.
Lastly, We Gave Time to Our Relationship
As Plutarch states, any relationship gets stronger as the years go by.
“In the beginning, especially, partners ought to be on their guard against disagreements and clashes, for they see that such household vessels as are made of sections joined together are at the outset easily pulled apart by any fortuitous cause, but after a time, when their joints have become set, they can hardly be separated by fire and steel.”
All you must do is think about your relationship like a bank account — a kind of trust, that, if consistently funded with deposits of positivity, will keep it afloat and fresh. Work together and make your relationship bank account flush and it can never go kaput.
About Govind
Govind is a retired corporate executive spending all his leisure time writing and reading just about anything under the sun from leadership, management to ancient history. He loves talking about topics like leadership and management that are close to his heart and writing his heart out for the world to listen and learn from him (more precisely his mistakes). He can be reached at govind.narasimhan@yahoo.com
