Saturn and Venus kick you upside the head.

I didn't write this, but I probably could have written something similar (except my Venus is in a different sign, and Saturn doesn't rule my 7th. Venus rules my 7th and Saturn squares it. Maybe that's equivalent?).

I am constantly being disappointed in love. The men whom I could love simply don’t love me back. The only guy who ever stuck around for me was the one I wasn’t in love with. When I was a child my father rejected me, and ever since then the same thing has been happening with the men that I care for.

I fall for hypnotic, charismatic men who know how to influence their surroundings. They are capable of deep and powerful love. Unfortunately, I am never the person who receives it. To make it worse, two men I fell for are now madly in love with the same woman, who is ten years older than me. At the same time, after all this time I still don’t feel like I’ve met the person who can truly sweep me off my feet.

In other areas of my life I am independent and in charge, but in love I just feel like a victim. I’m starting to believe I have this terrible deep inadequacy that can never be erased. I need a lover who is as strong as I am, but my partners never seem to recognize my best qualities. What can I do? Am I simply destined to be unloved?

Elsa's answer:

I don’t believe anyone is destined to be unloved, but I know for sure that loves comes easier to some than others. And with Saturn ruling your 7th house and Venus in Scorpio square Saturn, you are clearly one of the others and for that I am sorry and I will try to help.

Saturn tied to Venus delays love in most cases, and if you read around you’ll be told that love comes later in life but I’d say there is no such guarantee. Love comes later in life to those willing to work for it. And I am sorry but this is just a fact and thinking otherwise is sort of like believing we all get rich in the end. Er… no we don’t!

No arguments with that...

So yes, Venus Saturn can love and be loved but you have to accept the conditions which most people just will not do. And I don’t mean to make this about me but I am going to use my personal life to illustrate this because I can’t see any other way to offer you something of substance that might actually help.

I don’t know if you read my blog regularly but I have a great love with a man I call the soldier. And our relationship is basically impossible. We are constantly thwarted. We are pounded in every way you can possibly imagine. With Saturn highly emphasized in both the synastry (aspects between charts) and the composite, we are delayed, screwed, blued and tattooed on a routine basis but we love each other and we hang in.

Once again...this comes up. I think in a sick way, I also find that sort of thing fascinating. I know I'd hate it if I was actually in that kind of relationship IRL, but part of me really does want to see how it'd come out. Even though I KNOW it'd be badly, and it's not like I am looking for stress in relationships. (Obviously, it finds me anyway.) Hell, one could say that Older Ex was someone I already had that kind of relationship with, but it wasn't as binding as one would think in the end. (Though if he still thinks of me, maybe it was more than I thought.)

Sorta off-topic, I am currently working on the astrological charts of a friend of mine and her husband- he has been in Pissy Bitch mode for a few months now and it is worrisome. So far I can't say I've seen why he is having Pissy Bitch mode now, since he doesn't have any major transits that would cause such going on, and he's got a massive stellium in Aquarius. I was assuming he must be a Scorpio rising (my friend is a Scorpio), but nope, Sag rising. In my experience, it takes a hell of a lot for an Aquarius to get pissy and yell, and Sags aren't inclined in that direction so much either. (I was flabbergasted when a friend of mine with two planets in Aquarius admitted to getting annoyed at someone last week.) But it turns out he has Mars conjunct Saturn, and she has Mars opposed to Saturn. Well, there ya go. Oof.

The synastry isn't massively Saturninan other than them both having that particular affinity, but their composite chart has a whopping moon/Jupiter/Saturn/Uranus conjuction in Capricorn- almost all of their planets are there, except for some stray Saggishness. Heck, the planets away from the bottom are in their 6th and 10th houses. I said, "Wow, this looks a lot more like an ideal business partnership than a schmoopy relationship." She was all, "No way would we go into business together." I don't know...

Okay, back on topic.

And we have found that by accepting the conditions and the limitations, the universe does support the relationship, but hey! No whining. No whining when sometimes weeks pass and we can’t see each other. No whining because other couples have it easier than we do. No whining even though we are pretty sure it will probably be years before we can actually be together. Getting the idea? Who would sign up for this?

Well you would if you were smart. Because the love is real and it is deep and with a chart like yours anything less well never satisfy. So here’s the point:

Forget the love that other people have because it has nothing to do with you.

Heh. Yeah... I do get jealous of other people's loves. A lot of them seem to be fairly easy- fall in, stay in, all is snuggly, happened when they were 18 years old... okay, you know what I mean. It's frustrating.

Be willing to redefine what it is you think you want because as you have noticed you’re not getting it. If you are consistently denied what you want, it might be productive to want something else.

Well, in my case, I am choosing to want singlehood... which mostly works out very nicely, thank you. (Especially lately because so many people are having astro-weirding warping their love lives in the last month. I am really hoping that crappity wears off soon before divorces happen.)

But.

For example, I want convenience! I want a man who lives right down the street who loves me like the man who does not live right down the street. And I want this new hologram man to be of the same quality of the man who comes with all the challenges and guess what? Too bad! That man does not exist. So I can pine for this thing that doesn’t exist or I can live in reality, yes? And you can do the same.

Ask the universe to send you a real love, not a fantasy love. Ask for something singular and hand-picked to challenge you. Then commit to doing absolutely whatever it takes to feed and maintain the relationship. And accept that pain is part of the deal. With a chart like yours, relationship at times will be absolutely grueling. You will be made to face your fear when you are scared to death but I can tell you firsthand the reward is in proportion.

That sounds right...fucking horrible, but "right." That is generally how relationships go for me. (Chiron in the mix too.)

"What you’re doing is working the deprivation side of Saturn. No love is safe, see? No love = control. You’re going to have to work much, much harder. Believe it or not you’re shirking your duties here. It is much easier to say I don’t have or I will never get, then it is to go out and work for it.

....

Um. Yeah. True and true.

"And I am sorry but if I wrote this any other way this would have been crap for your purposes. La la la, you’ll find love late in life just isn’t going to cut it. The love is there, you’re just going to have to swim upstream to get it but here’s the trick: if you decide to do this you will find it exhilarating and incredibly satisfying. It’s the difference between working for your money and being handed it. Which of those experiences do you think is peak? Come to recognize you’ve got no interest in tutti-fruitti easy-peasy light-fare love and you’ll be on your way."