Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I'm an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I'm going to give you your weekly horoscope and no-bullshit mystical advice for living your very best life.

Jessica:            Yoni, welcome to the podcast. What would you like a reading about?

Yoni:               I would like to ask about my nonmonogamous long-term relationship that I'm currently in. I'm having a lot of growing pains. My partner has pretty much worked through the initial growing pains. I'm just getting started around that right now because they haven't been able to date for the longest time, and now that they are dating, I'm having to go through the initial jealousy reactions and all that stuff. And it's been pretty rough. It's been resurfacing a lot of deep wounds that I didn't think I'd ever have to deal with ever again.

Jessica:            Okay. I have 100 questions for you.

Yoni:               Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            The first one is, how long have you been with them?

Yoni:               Four and a half years.

Jessica:            Okay. Congratulations.

Yoni:               Thank you.

Jessica:            And how long have you been nonmonogamous?

Yoni:               The whole time.

Jessica:            Oh.

Yoni:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So has it been actively nonmonogamous the whole time?

Yoni:               Yeah, practically. Not really, because they have been in grad school most of the time—

Jessica:            Which is not sexy.

Yoni:               Exactly. Yeah. So they weren't able to date most of the time. And now that they're done with grad school, they're excited to start dating, start meeting new people, start experiencing new things. And I think one of the biggest things that has come up on my end is this weird feeling of entitlement because now that they're done with school, I'm like, "Well, I wanted that time, and now you're giving it to new people." And this only started at the beginning of September, but it has been such a roller coaster.

Jessica:            Okay. And were you—

Yoni:               Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry—beginning of August. My bad.

Jessica:            Beginning of August. Okay. But still very recent.

Yoni:               Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And then were you actively nonmonogamous while they were in grad school?

Yoni:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

Yoni:               So they were always very busy with school, and I had one long-term relationship outside of them, and then—

Jessica:            Oh.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            You had a whole, entire relationship. So you're not nonmonogamous. You're polyamorous.

Yoni:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

Yoni:               Is there a difference for you?

Jessica:            Yes, girl, 100 percent. So polyamory—and this is like—okay. Can I just say, if I had a penny for every time I've had a Gay conversation about nonmonogamy versus polyamory, I would have so many dollars? So polyamory is the practice of many loves, and nonmonogamy—it's taking monogamy, which is like, "We only fuck each other. We only love each other," and it's saying, "Non." So it's not about the cultivation of intimacy and love. That's polyamory. So, if you're having a whole-ass relationship with someone else, that's polyamory, whereas if you're having only agreed-upon sexual dynamic, more, that's nonmonogamy, from what I understand. Did I write the book on it? No. But that's what I understand. And so you're actually talking more about polyamory.

Yoni:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You've had full-blown intimacies with the people.

Yoni:               Correct. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

Yoni:               Yeah. There's really actually, like, little rules between us around who we're allowed to date, and neither of us can veto each other from falling in love with someone else, for instance.

Jessica:            Wow. That's bold.

Yoni:               Yeah. Oh yeah. So it's like—I guess relationship anarchy would be, maybe, a better way—

Jessica:            Yes. Yes. Relationship anarchy, polyamory, not—

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —because nonmonogamy is, I think, a lot more controlled just as a practice.

Yoni:               Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. But again, they haven't really been super active within this agreement. It's mainly been you.

Yoni:               Correct.

Jessica:            Okay. Let's fucking pull up your chart because I have so much to say. Oh, please. And for those who are not watching who are listening, you were born October 18th, '95, in San Salvador, El Salvador, at 8:30 p.m., we are saying, even though it was so specific. Okay. Okay. Let's talk because there's so much to say.

Yoni:               What a mess.

Jessica:            No, not a mess. I mean, maybe, but also, no, not necessarily. When I pulled up your chart, I saw something, and I was instantly like, "Interesting," because of course I didn't know any of that backstory. I just—I actually thought, based on the way you wrote your question, that you were just opening up the relationship to nonmonogamy.

                        But you have a Jupiter conjunction to your Descendant, and it's opposite your Ascendant. And a lot of times—not always—folks with this dynamic in their chart feel like, "Love is a thing that I share with the people, and I have adventures with the people. And each individual adventure I have with each individual person has nothing to do with the other person." These are all completely separate encounters. And so it can feel totally fine to have different romantic encounters with several different people because they feel really separate to you. Does that track?

Yoni:               Yeah. Absolutely.

Jessica:            Okay.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Now, if I'm being totally honest, oftentimes, people with this aspect cheat because they're just like, "It's not a big deal. I'm just going out there and getting something, but don't worry; it has nothing to do with you." Do you have any history with infidelity?

Yoni:               Yeah. I cheated twice in my first relationship when I was 20 years old.

Jessica:            Okay, when you were still little.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            But I mean, you're still young. I mean, you're just immediately post-Saturn Return. Your Saturn Return ended in March of this year. In my experience, this aspect makes you a really good candidate for—what did you call it? Anarchy? Relationship anarchy?

Yoni:               Relationship anarchy.

Jessica:            Yes.

Yoni:               I mean—yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm going to contradict myself in a minute. Just get ready. But you're a really good candidate for relationship anarchy in some ways. You're really good at being able to have intimacies, like various kinds of intimacies with various kinds of people, and it doesn't take from your other relationships, right? Those things look good for you. But I have rarely met a person who has Jupiter in this placement that is chill with their partner doing the same.

Yoni:               Facts.

Jessica:            Facts on facts on facts on facts. So let's add more complexity. Jupiter is square Saturn in your chart. And so you have a tendency to really want to partner with people who are more Saturnian than you, who are dependable and maybe are a little bit more—I mean, just Saturnian. You know what I'm saying? A little bit more structured, a little less wild and free. Is that who this person is?

Yoni:               Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and even when I've dated people outside of them, I keep dating very similar signs, like Virgo specifically keeps coming up a lot.

Jessica:            Sure. Sure. I have words for that in a moment, as well, but let me say this. Part of why you like that is because we don't date ourselves all the time, right? A hand enjoys a glove, not just another hand. So, right, you're dating somebody who's different from you. But the other thing is there is a security and a dependability in that kind of a person for you, and now all of a sudden, your partner is like—and "partner"—is that the right descriptive word? Is that what you call them?

Yoni:               Yeah. We're, like, married and—

Jessica:            Okay. You're married.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Do you call them spouse? What's the right designation?

Yoni:               I call them my husband-wife, usually.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. I absolutely fucking love that, so I'm going to do the same thing.

Yoni:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            So, all of a sudden, your husband-wife is just changing the rules on you, and it turns out that you are not as adaptable, flexible, and open—a.k.a. anarchistic—as you thought you were, because when the other person is doing it—this is what often happens with a square in the birth chart, is, well, you got to be Jupiter because they were Saturn. And now, all of a sudden, they're being Jupiter, and you're like, "I'm Saturn. Fuck. I'm Saturn." Right?

Yoni:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Now, let me add something else to it. You've got this Mars/Pluto conjunction in Scorpio, and it's in the house of Virgo. It's in the sixth house. Now, Mars—and that's this bitch right here. So Pluto conjunction to Mars—I'm not going to lie—so possessive, so possessive, so possessive—square the Moon. That is, like, wildly possessive.

Yoni:               It's bad. It's bad.

Jessica:            It's bad. It's that it feels like someone is taking something that belongs to you. I think you used the word "entitlement."

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            That is a very fixed-sign, Mars/Pluto square the Moon shit right there. Yes.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's counter to how you functioned because you've been functioning out of your Jupiter, just flowing, chilling, keeping everything exciting, but to yourself.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So I'm going to be totally straightforward with you. This is not easy. It's not easy.

Yoni:               Very difficult.

Jessica:            It's not your happy place.

Yoni:               Yeah. The opposite. Yeah.

Jessica:            (laughs)

Yoni:               (laughs)

Jessica:            Sorry.

Yoni:               No, it's okay. I mean—

Jessica:            I'm not laughing at. I'm laughing with, because it is such a great understatement when you say "the opposite"—

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —because I'm looking at your chart. It triggers abandonment issues.

Yoni:               Yes.

Jessica:            It triggers resentments.

Yoni:               Yes.

Jessica:            It triggers feelings of obsessiveness and fixation.

Yoni:               Yes.

Jessica:            I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It's so terrible.

Yoni:               Thank you.

Jessica:            It's terrible because, unfortunately, your fucking Jupiter conjunction to the Descendant is like, "But I must be free."

Yoni:               Yeah, and the same with—for them as well. [crosstalk].

Jessica:            They want to be free.

Yoni:               And I want them—

Jessica:            They want to be nonmonogamous.

Yoni:               And I want them to be free. I was freaking out so much that I suggested to close off the relationship to build off—not indefinitely, but just to work on our shit so I could feel more secure before opening it up. But yeah, I mean, they weren't—it wasn't—

Jessica:            They don't want that.

Yoni:               Yeah. They don't want that. Right now, they're feeling very like they just got out of prison. That's how they would describe it, right out of grad school.

Jessica:            Right. I mean, I've heard that from a lot of people out of grad school—

Yoni:               Exactly.

Jessica:            —or after a PhD.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So perhaps there's a space between relationship anarchy and monogamy. Spoiler alert, there's like seven million places between those two things. So—

Yoni:               Totally.

Jessica:            Totally. So I wonder if your partner would be open to negotiating some ground rules because part of what fucks with your Pluto/Mars conjunction square to your Moon—by the way, Uranus is opposite your Mars and Pluto, so fucks with you—is because it's a wide-open, endless playing field where anything could happen. Any time they're away from your physical presence, it takes your activation and then just—screen enlarge, screen enlarge, screen enlarge, right? It just makes it bigger, bigger, bigger.

Yoni:               Yeah. Right now, we're fortunate enough to have found a really good couple therapist—

Jessica:            Great.

Yoni:               —that not only respects nonmonogamy and polyamory structures, but she also is—I think she's had other nonmonogamous couples before, so she has specific questions that our couple therapist before her—he wasn't really interested in getting to any of it either.

Jessica:            That sucks.

Yoni:               Yeah, it does, because I actually just got done having a therapist who—every time I would express a difficult emotion about my possessiveness over my partner, I'd be like, "Look, I'm feeling super possessive. I'm feeling super angry. I don't want to feel this way, but it's how I feel." And my therapist would just say to me, "Well, this is your choice. You choose it."

Jessica:            Oh, that's—yeah.

Yoni:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            I mean, here's the thing. Monogamy is hard. Polyamory is hard. Nonmonogamy is hard.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            I mean, everything is—relationships are hard.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And I think the freedom that you really require, to be honest, means that you have to work through these possessiveness issues, and that doesn't mean so that you don't have possessive feelings or angry feelings or resentful feelings, because that's not the most realistic goal in the world. It's that you can feel those feelings and recognize that they're not actually about your desire to contain your partner or even necessarily about what they are or aren't doing; it's about your shit and your childhood triggers and some habits that you have.

Yoni:               Yeah. I 100 percent agree. I think, right now—you know, when I wrote in to the question, I was feeling super activated, and I was panicking because the feelings were coming up again. And that's the same reason why I'm looking into the forgiveness course, because I know that there's a lot of shit I have to forgive. I know there's resentments that I have to really let go of that I have over my partner, but I know those resentments are also tied to the past as well.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Yoni:               And right now, I'm not feeling super activated about the subject, but that's also because I've thrown so many tantrums the past month that they have obviously not felt safe to meet new people or continue exploring things with the people they already have met. And I know that that's like—this is a very temporary space of feeling secure, so the anxiety is still there. I know that as soon as we start doing better, my partner is going to want to start meeting people again because that's just what they naturally want to do. And I absolutely understand that.

Jessica:            So okay. Let me interrupt you a little bit to say what I'm hearing is that it would be helpful for us to try to determine ways of coping with the feelings that precipitate a tantrum.

Yoni:               Correct.

Jessica:            Okay. Let's go there. Okay. I'm going to have you say your full name out loud and their full name out loud.

Yoni:               Okay. Cool.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Yoni:               [redacted].

Jessica:            Okay. So you have a little bit of a dynamic with them where, when you reach a certain pitch of panic or stress, they capitulate to you, yeah?

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Okay. I can say broadly that your anger or your vulnerability stopping everything and kind of making everyone defer to you—it's a family pattern.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And your partner's behavior of being open and conversational and really in the thing, but then encountering a certain level of emotionality and capitulating and just being like, "Forget it. I'll feed you grapes, whatever you need. Whatever you need"—this is their family pattern. So the two of you, on an emotional level, separate from monogamy, boundaries, jealousy—whatever—are in a very—and are they around your same age?

Yoni:               Yeah. We're only a few months apart.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense, because you're in a very immediately post-Saturn Return moment where you're both enacting, ultimately, patterns from your childhood and your parents.

Yoni:   Yeah.

Jessica:            And you're doing it in your marriage where you are so clear with yourselves as individuals and with each other as a team that you weren't going to do this. And you're both so activated because you're in love with each other, and you're wanting to be safe and happy, not because either of you is a bad guy in this situation.

Yoni:               I so wanted a bad guy in the situation.

Jessica:            I know. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.

Yoni:               Oh my gosh.

Jessica:            I know.

Yoni:               The nuance kills me.

Jessica:            The nuance is really—like, okay. So Pluto/Mars conjunction in any sign, but especially in Scorpio—it's like a hammer.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It's like Thor's hammer. It's a heavy hammer. And square the Moon? It's an emotional fixation on the hammer, right?

Yoni:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so nuance—when you're obsessing, you love nuance because you're like, "And when they looked at me, they felt like this, and then they said this, and they meant that." And you can really get into nuance then.

Yoni:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            But when it comes to blame, you want there to be clear lines.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. So good news is you're a Libra with your North Node conjunction to your Sun; there are parts of you that can totally work with nuance. It's like you really, really, really, like super fucking really, want to stay committed to relational anarchy. And also, it is not a match for you to do that at all.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And you don't want to do it at all. And instead of trying to figure out how to work that out with your partner, you have to figure out what's in alignment for you because you are 100 percent not about it and 100 percent about it. It's not like you're 50/50. You're not. You're 100 percent one way and 100 percent the other. So you can't work this out with them or for them before you work this out with and for yourself.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Yoni:               Yeah. That's what's the hardest about having—I think I once read that my chart has 11 or 12 squared aspects.

Jessica:            No. Not at all.

Yoni:               No? Okay.

Jessica:            No.

Yoni:               Maybe [crosstalk].

Jessica:            11 or 12 squared aspects? My goodness. Where did you read that?

Yoni:               On Astro-Charts, I think.

Jessica:            Astro-Charts.

Yoni:               I just know that it was saying the aspect that appears the most in my chart is the square, but maybe I'm forgetting—

Jessica:            Okay. So Astro-Charts might include squares to the nodes.

Yoni:               Oh.

Jessica:            I don't think most astrologers would because they're not planets. You do have two squares to your Sun, and you have two squares to your Moon. It just so happens you only have one trine. I think you have more sextiles than squares. Yeah, you have more sextiles than squares. So, if you included squares to the nodes, which most astrologers really don't, then you would have more squares than anything. But you actually have mainly sextiles.

Yoni:               Oh. That's good to hear.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Yoni:               I just relate a lot to having very contradictory truths within myself.

Jessica:            Yes.

Yoni:               And I think the way you said it put it perfectly, like 100 percent for it, 100 percent against it.

Jessica:            Yes. Yeah.

Yoni:               So there's, like, you know, my Libra. I'm trying to find, where's the balance? But the—

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. So the—

Yoni:               —[crosstalk] possible.

Jessica:            The balance is your Libra part is like, "I'm going to find the balance by hanging out in the middle." But because of the way the fixed-sign stuff works in your chart—Moon in Leo square to Mars in Scorpio, and Pluto in Scorpio—if all you do is hang out in the middle, you are constantly repressing yourself.

Yoni:               Tracks.

Jessica:            That means you're either repressing yourself or you're fucking acting out unconsciously but with feeling. Right?

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. So the Libra parts are like, "Hang out in the middle. Find your balance." And that's great for some parts of your nature. The parts of your nature we're talking about—that shit doesn't work. Instead, it's about hanging out with the part of you that is a Moon in Leo, that is like, "Bitch, but am I not the center of all things? Yes, of course, you can be with anyone, but why would you want to?"

Yoni:               No, I don't, which I don't want to be—

Jessica:            I know. I know.

Yoni:               —because I've experienced that before, and it was horrible.

Jessica:            It's not what you want. Also, there is a part of you that does. There is a part of you that dealt with all kinds of losses as a child—

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —that wants to be centered. And that part of you that wants to be centered—listen. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be centered. Leo Moon? Fabulous. Fucking have somebody who adores you—you actually do. You actually married somebody who adores you.

Yoni:               Which I do. Yeah.

Jessica:            Totally.

Yoni:               Absolutely. Yeah.

Jessica:            But the part of you that wants to be centered—that motivation comes out of trauma because your Moon is square to Pluto, so some of that comes out of trauma. The part that's motivated from trauma is, "You need to prove to me 700 percent of the time that I'm the center of your universe because"—

Yoni:               Exactly.

Jessica:            —"if not, then I'm proven that I'm going to be left behind"—

Yoni:               Exactly.

Jessica:            —"that I don't have worth." Right?

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So that's a trauma conviction. It's a trauma impulse. It's a well-worn groove in your psyche that every time you are decentered in a way that makes you feel vulnerable, there's this part of you that slips back into this groove of, "I have to fight for my fucking survival now."

Yoni:               Ugh.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And so the work for you—because you have a shrink, right? You have somebody that you're working on how to navigate nonmonogamy—or whatever we want to call it—with your partner, right? So I don't need to give you advice around that. But the work for you to do alongside that work with your partner is to strive to understand emotionally whether or not you are unsafe or feelings of being unsafe are being triggered. Does that make sense, the difference?

Yoni:               Yeah. Yeah, 100 percent. I think I'm—you know, since we're in this pause of them dating, I mean, technically, we have narrowed it down to, okay, instead of going on as many dates as you want—which—they didn't even go on that many dates in the first place. They went on, at most, two dates a week.

Jessica:            That's a lot of dates. Is that not a lot of dates?

Yoni:               I don't know. I mean, I—

Jessica:            It's busy.

Yoni:               Yeah, it's definitely busy. But I'm a busy person. I don't know.

Jessica:            Okay.

Yoni:               I'm comparing it to me, too, you know? Because when I was busy dating and just trying to meet other people, I would go sometimes on three dates a week, and yeah, that was very exhausting.

Jessica:            It's exhausting.

Yoni:               And that was when I had, like, zero hobbies or passions, too.

Jessica:            Right. Totally.

Yoni:               So, right now, a temporary rule is one date a week. And they haven't even started using that because they're still so exhausted from the three weeks of me being like, "You don't love me. You're just trying to leave me."

Jessica:            Damn.

Yoni:               "Why are we even doing this?" And God, I feel so bad. It's like we would have one good day, and then the next day, I'd just be like, "Why are we doing this?"

Jessica:            Right.

Yoni:               "What's the point?" I mean, yeah, and that was exhausting.

Jessica:            It's exhausting. And did you witness, in your childhood, somebody doing that, an adult doing that?

Yoni:               Like a 180 like that?

Jessica:            Emotional tantrums that made other people change their behavior to accommodate them.

Yoni:               Oh. Yeah. So that's all my mother.

Jessica:            Yes, it is. I just wanted to—I wanted you to get there on your own.  Okay.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So you know from being on the receiving end of that that it's a way of manipulating other people with your own emotions, right?

Yoni:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You are not doing it because you're a jerk. In the moment, it's like you are fighting for your life. You really do feel scared and overwhelmed, and you're just begging for help from your partner, right?

Yoni:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            But those feelings—at a certain point, your job is to determine whether those feelings are your shit or specific to the situation. So I'm going to say a little bit more about that because in your childhood, you actually weren't safe at times, emotionally, whatever—there were times when you were not safe.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And in your marriage, your partner could go on four dates a week—who has time for that? But okay. They could go on four dates a week, and you would still be safe because their love for you is embarrassingly obvious. Am I right?

Yoni:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. It's embarrassingly obvious. You being like, "You don't love me. You're going to leave me"—it is for sure a bit of a manipulation to get what you want because it's so obvious they're not leaving you and that they love you, yeah?

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. This is like a fun way that I can help you because I can really name this piece. If they're going to leave, it's not because of the four dates a week. I just doubled the dates because I genuinely think they could go on four dates a week. They could end up dating somebody for six months. And they've tied their lives to you in a way that you're going to have to get rid of them. They're not trying to get rid of you.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            You know this, right?

Yoni:               Right now, yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. So your assignment is to recognize that when you feel so activated like they're going to leave you and it's all over, that's because you're triggered and not because they are giving you any reason to believe that.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. And so the reason why I'm kind of parsing out the difference between being triggered and being unsafe is because they feel the exact same in the moment—identical. They feel the exact same in the moment, them about to burn your marriage to the ground and destroy your emotions, and you just feeling scared that that might happen—feel identical in the moment, right?

Yoni:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            But they actually take different medicine. If the problem is the relationship, then you need to stop them from dating other people. Then you need to change the rules, even though this is how it's been for four years, right? But you've already told me that that's not the case. So, if it's not that you need to change the situation, then it means that you need to change how you respond to your own emotions, how you navigate your own emotions.

Yoni:               Yeah, 100 percent.

Jessica:            Okay. And so I'm going to make you say your name one more time.

Yoni:               Okay. [redacted].

Jessica:            Stubborn, stubborn, stubborn. Okay.

Yoni:               Ouch.

Jessica:            No, no, no. It's—

Yoni:               True.

Jessica:            —true. It's true. I'm like, "No, no, no," but you know I'm right. Okay.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            I'll be honest. When I look at you energetically, you do not want to change your behavior, because it's working. You having meltdowns is getting your partner to stop dating other people, and so you feel safe.

Yoni:               Yes and no, you know? Like I said, I understand that this feeling of safety is only happening because of all those tantrums I threw.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Yoni:               And I understand that to move past this, I have to let my partner be free—

Jessica:            Yeah.

Yoni:               —and to do what they genuinely want to do, which is be committed to me, love me, and also possibly fall in love with other people.

Jessica:            Yeah. Have experiences is really what it is. It's having experiences.

Yoni:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And okay. So that's true, but that's actually not what I think you need to do. What I think you need to do is to—because that part you can do. So what you're doing is you're—okay. The activation and the emotions that you have are your Pluto/Mars square to the Moon. But then you keep on saying, "What I need to do is Jupiter conjunction to the Descendant." What you keep on saying is, "I need to give them the same freedom that I know that they deserve and that I deserve and everybody deserves."

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            You're not talking about your own emotional intensity and your emotional trauma triggers, right? Because that's what this is.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It's not like, all of a sudden, you magically don't want polyamory, freedom to love and like and flirt and fuck and all the things. You want that for you. You want that for them. But when they do it, it triggers feelings of loss and being out of control. And you don't have tools for dealing with it other than fight. Sometimes it's flight, but it's mainly fight.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So, when fight-or-flight mechanisms come online, first of all, you and me and everyone else—the way we behave is often consistent with the age of the first time we got injured in that particular way. So this is why we act like children—

Yoni:               Yes.

Jessica:            —and we have temper tantrums, right?

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Because it's like we regress to a point where you splintered off in your psyche. And so what that means is, if we pull back to, let's say, two years old—because it looks like I'm seeing some injury there, abandonment stuff, at two years old. Does that track with what you know about your parents or your childhood?

Yoni:               Yeah. I'm sure that was around the time my father—he had cheated for like the umpteenth-billionth time, and she was finally like, "Okay. Fuck this. I'm out."

Jessica:            She's like, "I'm out. I can't do this anymore." That makes sense—

Yoni:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            —because that is the first major splinter I see in this issue, in this trigger. And so I'm guessing, when you throw tantrums, you do it like a two-year-old a little bit.

Yoni:               Yeah. I mean, and when I throw tantrums by myself, it definitely feels like a little kid is crying and I'm screaming, like, "This isn't fair," and stuff.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Yoni:               When I throw tantrums in front of my partner, it's usually just criticism. I feel like I'm turning into my mom.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Yes.

Yoni:               I feel like I'm just criticizing and putting them down, and it's like, why?

Jessica:            It's because you're in the fight part of fight or flight. You're like, "I will beat you down so you don't leave me." It's a terrible strategy, but it actually works, which is even worse because then you don't like yourself, and you've gotten what you need. So that inner child part is not motivated to change, right? And you being cruel or acting like your mom—it's because you haven't developed a new way. You learned that way from your mom. You learned that way from your childhood. And unlearning that is a fucking process. And I just want to acknowledge that there is this way that you are really struggling with the desire in the moment—so not in theory, because right now we're in theory, right?

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            But in the moment, I see you really struggling with the desire to change because those feelings activate you in such a way that you're like, "No, no, no. I'm fighting for my life. I can't just sort through"—

Yoni:               Yeah. [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Yeah. It's very traumatic for you. And so I want to acknowledge this. Currently, like I said, Uranus is opposite your Mars and your Pluto. This experience you're going through in your life is honestly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you to change your survival mechanisms. And that doesn't mean you'll never be able to change your survival mechanisms again, but the Uranus opposition to Mars and Pluto is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And it creates the upsets, drama, and triggers one would need to make major changes with their survival mechanism coping skills.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And you are in it. You've been in it for almost a year. This transit started in—the last day of May. When did your partner graduate?

Yoni:               About—a few weeks before that, but then they had to work through burnout. And then, when they were finally out of burnout, from four years of burnout, in August—so it took them a few months to work out of it.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Well, the transit is a year long, and it started in May, so May through May, approximately.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And I want to just say—and do you have your own individual therapist still?

Yoni:               No, not anymore, ever since I dropped that one, because she—that wasn't the only time she helped make my inner critic even bigger. So I ghosted her, and now I'm looking for a new one.

Jessica:            If you're looking for a new therapist, I would recommend, if you can find a somatic therapist, that would be really helpful because when this shit gets activated inside of you, because it's in the sixth house, it's really physical. It's like you're physically seized with these feelings. You just get really—yeah. It's not just mental. It's not just emotional. It's physical for you.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And so a somatic therapist is going to help you to land in the body and process your feelings through your body. So I—again, strong recommend for that. But this work is work that your partner actually doesn't need to and probably shouldn't even be a part of because it's not about—your triggers are not really about the situation. They're more about how you relate to safety and possessiveness—

Yoni:               Absolutely.

Jessica:            —and, when you get triggered at a certain level, your own emotional regulation, right?

Yoni:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And so the thing I mentioned about the Jupiter on the Descendant and how it can be related to infidelity—so there's all this deep possessiveness stuff that we're talking about that is related to trauma and triggers, but I should also name that Jupiter conjunction to the Descendant just doesn't look sharing. It's just a placement that's like, "I love cake, and I always take the biggest piece. And unfortunately, that means there's a smaller piece for you. But it's nothing against you, and you're wonderful. And now I'll braid your hair." It's not mean-selfish, but it's more like, "Everything is delicious for me, so I'm going to keep on enjoying the deliciousness."

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It's so hedonistic. So I want to say—let's say you do the very fucking challenging, slow work of working with your trauma and your triggers. Yeah, you're still going to be a little like, "Why are you going on a date? You could be with me"—

Yoni:               True.

Jessica:            —even if you don't want to hang out with them.

Yoni:               I think that's something I've already said, too.

Jessica:            I bet you have. I bet you have, where you're just like, "What is up?"

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And I think there's nothing wrong with—listen—asking your partner to be like, "Okay. Now that you're dating and I'm losing my shit, can you just, once a week or once every two weeks, organize a nice date for us?" and ask if they would be willing to do it. The problem is it's not particularly symmetrical. It's not something you've done for them or that they've asked you to do for them, right?

Yoni:               Yeah, it's a good way to put it.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Yeah. And listen. I don't think anarchy is inherently symmetrical.

Yoni:               No.

Jessica:            It's okay that they are less possessive, so they ask less of you in some ways, and you're more possessive, so you ask more in other ways. That's okay, as long as there's not a manipulation there. And there is an element of manipulation that is there because your strong emotions stop everything.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And so it all comes down to the two of you and what you both consent to because—listen. I can say it like, "Listen. It's not that symmetrical," but they might be like, "That's chill. I would love to organize a date for us once a week." They might actually like that idea. That might not be asymmetrical in a way that doesn't work for them, or it may feel like it's a little unfair, and, "Why is that on me?" and all that kind—so it's really important that as the two of you come up with strategies—because I'm wanting to recommend strategies, I'm realizing your partner needs to be a part of that. They need to be a part of that because their consent is really important here so that you don't end up just managing the whole dynamic.

Yoni:               I'm very obsessed with getting only genuine things out of them.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Yoni:               So I know that the minute they said that they're not down to close the relationship, it was super difficult to hear, but also, now that they're doing some of the strategies we've been working on, it's helped because I'm only receiving the things that they genuinely want to give me.

Jessica:            Right. Right. I mean, listen. Let me say this as a psychic. Any time you say to yourself, "They're going to leave me. They don't love me"—

Yoni:               I'm right.

Jessica:            You're right? Did you say you're right?

Yoni:               No, I'm kidding. I'm sorry.

Jessica:            You are on it. Whenever you say that to yourself, you can know, "Oh shit. I'm on something right now because I objectively know that's not the case."

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            What I'm saying to you is, when those thoughts start running through your noodle, it's when your adult self needs to say to that traumatized, young part of you, "Okay. I'm obviously really triggered because, actually, I know this person is obsessed with me and loves me and is safe for me. They're not hurting me on purpose."

Yoni:               Yeah. True.

Jessica:            So that doesn't mean your emotions are not valid, and that doesn't mean you don't need something. But it's really important to label things correctly, to be honest with yourself and with your partner about what's actually happening, because if you say to them, "I'm not safe. You're abandoning me," that's not true. None of that's true at all.

Yoni:               No.

Jessica:            But if you say to them, "I am freaking out, and I don't know how to share you. And I think of myself as super nonmonogamous, and actually, I want you to be tied to me whenever I'm in the mood for it," that's actually a lot more honest.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And when you're being more honest, your partner can actually meet you wherever you are.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And they're actually good at it. Am I seeing that correctly? They're really good at showing up for you and taking care of you emotionally?

Yoni:               Yeah. I would say they're phenomenal. Yeah.

Jessica:            I would say they're really good at it.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            I mean, I don't know how many of my readings you've heard, but I love to pick at a relationship—pick, pick, pick. But I look at your relationship, and I'm like, "This person is so safe."

Yoni:               Such a catch. Yeah.

Jessica:            The things that you're freaking out about I'm zero percent concerned for. There are things in your relationship where I'm like, "Okay. We could talk about ways you could work on your relationship." The things you're freaking out about and having meltdowns about are not those things at all, okay?

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            At all. And so, again, that doesn't in any way invalidate your emotions, because your emotions are your emotions. But they're not facts, and they're not insights. They're the presence of triggers. And the way to treat triggers is really important because you and me and everybody the fuck else—we're all triggered, right? We're all—I mean, not everybody is all fucked up, but a lot of us are real fucked up in all of our ways. And it's on us as individual adults to figure out how to navigate our toxicity or whatever it is so that we don't create the conditions we wish to avoid. And that's the thing about your mom. She would act in ways that would create the very fucking things she least wanted, right?

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Yoni:               Yeah, absolutely.

Jessica:            And the thing about being post-Saturn Return—it's like every sitcom that ever existed. There's, at one point, some fucking joke of, "When did I become my mother?" And then there's a laugh track. But inside, we're all crying and dying.

Yoni:               [crosstalk] really hard [crosstalk].

Jessica:            I bet. I bet. I bet—

Yoni:               Oh my gosh.

Jessica:            —because you're in it. You're fucking in it. You're in this place where your pain can make you feel entitled to act in any way.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's not just you. That's how a lot of people are. But that's what your mom did, and you see how poorly that ages over time and how much that isolates you from your blessings.

Yoni:               Yeah. She's still the same.

Jessica:            Oh yeah. I see that. Your mom has dug in her heels.

Yoni:               Yeah. They're down there.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's very intense. And some of what you're doing now may give you empathy for young her and how she came to be the way she is. But also, she made mistakes so you didn't have to. That's the joy of being someone's child. They made mistakes so you don't have to. The path you're going down in how you relate to your own feelings—it's not the path you want.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, again, the next time the narrative of, "I'm being abandoned," "They're trying to fuck with me"—because those are basically the two—you know, adapted to the situation, but those are the two beliefs that kind of get triggered, right?

Yoni:               Yeah. Absolutely.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's when you know you're triggered and you're likely not seeing the situation clearly. And so the next action, once you identified, "Okay. I'm activated," is to tend to the feelings before you try to figure out the situation or what to say or do about the situation. Yeah. I'm sorry. I know it's very annoying advice.

Yoni:               It's just—yeah. No, it's just crazy because I have activities that I like to do when I'm feeling depressed because I've really made a lot of progress on my depression. But these anxiety attacks, these panic attacks I'm getting—that's just not something I'm really used to, like just having it come at me day to day.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

Yoni:               And so, yeah, I just never—

Jessica:            Let me speak to that. So there's two different kinds of panic attacks. I'm not a fucking shrink. Let me back up. I'm not a psychologist. I don't know about panic attacks. And also, from my astrological viewfinder, there's two different ways that humans panic. There's Uranian panic, which is nervous system dysregulation, like your nervous system is zinged up, and then there's Neptunian panic, which is, "I'm disintegrating. I don't even feel like I exist anymore." It's like a, "I know something's coming for me, and I don't know what it is.

Yoni:               Those are both me.

Jessica:            Well, you have a Uranus/Neptune conjunction in your eighth house. So, by nature, they're both you. However, you are going through a Uranus transit, so—or two Uranus transits. My best guess as your astrologer is that what's happening is your very physical and emotional activation gets hit, and then Uranus—it's basically—think of it this way. Your Pluto/Mars conjunction square your Moon is like all of your abandonment issues and resentments. And then Uranus is like—just shoves an electrical rod into it. And so you have a physiological response because it's hitting your Mars; it's hitting your sixth house. You have a physiological response where your brain is just circling and circling and circling to find the idea or the theory that justifies the feeling.

Yoni:               Yeah. I was just about to say that.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm.

Yoni:               I was just about to say how weird it is, how it is such a physical experience. But I don't know if it's because I'm an air sign; I have no earth in my inner planets. But when I'm feeling this panic, I don't really understand how physical it is until it's over, until the tantrum is done, because when I'm feeling it, I'm just—I'm really stuck in my head. I'm just trying to find all the points and evidence as to why it's okay to feel this way.

Jessica:            Yep. Yep. So, whenever you catch yourself doing that, the first thing to do is engage your body. When you are in a state of such extreme dysregulation, you will never find an answer, period—

Yoni:               Yeah. That makes sense.

Jessica:            —because the anxious mind that creates or perceives a problem will not find the peaceful answer, right?

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And so this is where, basically, just physically engaging your body in a way that is not self-harm comes in. Mars is about engaging your body, shaking it off. And I'm not saying shake off the feelings, because you're not going to shake off those feelings.

Yoni:               Damn.

Jessica:            Your feelings are like a mountain on fire. So we're not going to cure your emotions by getting in the body. Sorry.

Yoni:               Aw. I thought that's what I was here for.

Jessica:            No, no, no, no, no. But what you can do is get to a place where you are, on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the worst—where you can get from a 9 to a 7 or a 6 because then you're better resourced. And then you can assess, "Okay. I got really triggered because my partner texted me that they were going to be home late."

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            "And I'm not going to feed the content. I'm not going to chase the thoughts. I'm going to tend to the body. I'm going to try to take myself down at least two"—right? From a 9 to a 7, from a 7 to a 5. You're never going to do it at a 5. You're only going to do this at a 7 or higher because you're used to being activated. You have a very high tolerance for being activated. And so making a commitment to yourself that you are going to remember to breathe, that you are, if possible, going to—do you sing? Do you sing in the car, sing along with emotion?

Yoni:               Oh, wow. Yeah, I do. Yeah. That's crazy.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You do. Yeah, you do. And so singing, for you, is like a physical act. For some people, it's not. But for you, it's how you use your body. So singing is really helpful—again, stimming, all that kind of stuff, anything that you can do not to shove the emotion down, but also to not shove it in someone else's face.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Right? Or to not beat yourself up with the emotion, because these things backfire. They just create new problems. It's like having a migraine and going and getting a tattoo. Bad timing, but it does distract you from the migraine, right?

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So, in these moments of activation, your intuition is not reliable, which is a shame because you have great intuition.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And what happens is you try to kind of peep in and psychic things when you're activated, but it's always a mistake, and it doesn't work.

Yoni:               True.

Jessica:            True, true.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And so recognizing that this work is all an act of self-love and an investment in leaving this matrilineal pattern in your childhood—

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —which is—could not be a bigger act of self-love for you. You have the desire and the capacity to have a creative life filled with love and healthy relationships, and you can have this. I mean, you have it. You actually have it.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            But you're in this place where you're being confronted by some of your deepest shit. I would say your deepest shit, not some of. I would just say your deepest shit.

Yoni:               Oh my God. I hope there's nothing deeper.

Jessica:            I know. I'm sorry. There actually isn't. This is really like—we're here. We're here. This is it. I mean, this is pretty deep for you.

Yoni:               It's kind of a relief that we've talked mainly about my shit, mainly, because you're right; all these triggers don't really have anything to do with our relationship. I mean, they're normal to have, but I think the reactions I'm having to them—

Jessica:            Yes.

Yoni:               —yeah, obviously point to trauma.

Jessica:            Yeah. They point to trauma. And when I look at your relationship psychically, if I had any concern that they were fucking with you, I'd be on that. I'd be on it so quick and so hard. But if anything, they're enabling you.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            They're capitulating to you, right?

Yoni:               They try really hard not to, and I give them respect for that. But yeah.

Jessica:            I mean, again, they have their own family trauma.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            This is their shit. And so, if they were getting a reading from me, I would say, "You need to be able to tolerate your partner's emotions and let them have their emotions," because they come in, and they're like, "How can I fix? How can I help? How can I help? How can I fix?"

Yoni:               True.

Jessica:            They can't help themselves. But again, you are safe with this person. This person is not trying to harm you, and this person is not stepping outside of agreements.

Yoni:               Yeah. Yeah, you're right, 100 percent.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. So, therefore, I don't need to look at the relationship, and I don't need to look at them because this is really—the more that we affirm the reality of your safety, the reality of how consent is at the centerpiece of your relationship, how love and nurturance and respect is at the centerpiece of your relationship—these are rare things, BTWs. But these things are at the centerpiece of your marriage. And when you, in a state of activation, invalidate those things and say those things aren't there, that's self-harm, right?

Yoni:               Oh.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Yoni:               I mean, yeah, and it's very much harming to them to hear—

Jessica:            Of course. Of course.

Yoni:               —me invalidate all that, too.

Jessica:            It is shitty for them. It is hurtful for them. And if I was counseling you both, I'd focus on that more, but because right now I'm just talking to you, I want you to know that I understand that as self-harm. It's you pushing away the person you love the most and you care about the most, which is exactly what your mom did, right?

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It is a form of self-harm that you've learned and that you don't even know you're doing when you're doing it because the feelings are so demanding. And this is being reiterated in the world around us right now, where people's trauma and fears are being weaponized against them so that they hate people and act fucked up. We're seeing this—you're not just going through this very personal thing. Uranus is opposite your Pluto, which is personal to you, but it's also like—it's like a generational thing. It's like a shift in society. How you relate to your trauma is being reflected all around you, and it's a lot. It's, in moments, I think, fucking you up. In moments, it just feels so overwhelming and so burdensome that, again, the softest place that you can take these feelings is to the person who loves you the most.

Yoni:               Yeah. Yeah. I've thought about that, too, about connecting it to the larger structures around me.

Jessica:            Yes.

Yoni:               I started obsessively watching debates between right-wingers and left-wingers.

Jessica:            Like Jubilee shit? Jubilee shit?

Yoni:               Yeah—

Jessica:            Yeah.

Yoni:               —only because I know who's right and who's wrong.

Jessica:            Yep.

Yoni:               And I'm—yeah.

Jessica:            It feeds that black-and-white Pluto/Mars conjunction square the Moon part of you.

Yoni:               Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            I would recommend maybe you don't.

Yoni:               Oh.

Jessica:            I'm going to give you annoying homework.

Yoni:               Please. Please do. Yeah.

Jessica:            Listen. Watch whatever the fuck you want, obviously. But I'm going to encourage you to, in the same YouTube/social media landscape, look for couples therapy videos and good-faith conversations. There's so much debate content and "change my mind" kind of bullshit, but I want to encourage you to, instead, really consume content that is about good-faith conversations because you are really good at seeing behavior modeled and being like, "Oh. Check. Got that," and integrating it.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And the more that you consume content that reaffirms this maladjusted coping mechanism that you've inherited from your mom, who—trust—inherited it from her own background—

Yoni:               Yeah. Absolutely.

Jessica:            —right?—the more you kind of are locking that into yourself. And so, instead, my recommendation is to put other models in front of you of, how do people move through trauma? There is this therapist—I'm pretty sure she's a therapist—on the TikTok. I am obsessed with her. I'm pretty sure her name is RaQuel the Capacity Expert. And she might not be quite the right person, but she's the therapist person that I think is so inspiring and—

Yoni:               RaQuel Hopkins?

Jessica:            I think that's her. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think your algorithm—if you start looking for good-faith conversations and accountability, capacity management content, your algorithm is just going to feed you more of it. And if you consume Jubilee, which is really just like entrapment media—

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It's like rage bait, right?

Yoni:               100 percent.

Jessica:            Then your algorithm is just going to feed you more of that, which is going to strengthen that part of you that we want to help you to disentangle from, right?

Yoni:               Yeah. Yeah, absolutely is.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. I have a question. What's your substance use like?

Yoni:               I drink sometimes on the weekend. Oh, I guess, to me, I think my substance use comes from food more than anything.

Jessica:            Okay.

Yoni:               I think I don't really binge drink. I don't really smoke weed or any other drug. But I think I definitely eat too much junk food at times.

Jessica:            And is it when you're in emotional activation?

Yoni:               Yeah. It's better than it has been for a long time, but yeah, this definitely has brought up—

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. So the Moon is your belly. It's your digestion. And Pluto is toxic, and that Pluto/Mars is like, when you get activated, you're either going to want to shove it down or starve it out, right? Flight/fight. That's not what I'm seeing, though.

Yoni:               Oh.

Jessica:            That's not what I'm seeing. Is it that when you get activated, you go on a scroll-a-thon, and you're like, "Ten hours have passed, and I've just been fucking scrolling?"

Yoni:               Oh yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. We found it.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. So that's your—what I'm seeing as a drug. It's this way that you are not self-regulating. You're manufacturing the fawn in fight, flight, or fawn. So you're not actually soothing your nervous system; you're escaping.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Right?

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And listen. Do your fucking worst. I mean, I'm not going to tell you to not scroll. But—

Yoni:               No, I know I need to stop, absolutely.

Jessica:            But I think it's more a question—less than stop, my all-or-nothing friend, less than stop, I would say when you grab your phone—so there's a couple things you could do. One is there's this app, and it's free. And it's called One Sec. This is not an ad, obvi. It's called One Sec, and basically, you put it on your phone, and every time you go to open any app you connect it to, it forces you to wait. And it says, "Take a deep breath." I have that on certain social media platforms, and honestly, I use then 50 percent less because it's so annoying to look at this stupid screen and wait. And because I have to wait, I'm like, "Wait a minute. I don't actually want to be using this app."

Yoni:               True.

Jessica:            And then I put my phone away. So you can try something like that, or you can challenge yourself, every time you go to grab your phone to play a game or to scroll on social or whatever, to challenge yourself to—I don't know—breathe for 30 seconds. Put an alarm on your phone or something. Just create a little bit of space between the impulse to do something and then doing the thing.

Yoni:               Okay.

Jessica:            That is a teeny, tiny action compared to you being like, "I know I have to stop." But your impulse to be all or nothing keeps you in that, like—perfection is the enemy of good, right?

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And so what I'm saying is, instead of focusing on the behavior, which is—in this moment, we're talking about scrolling through the phone. Instead, try to engage the emotions that are compelling the behavior.

Yoni:               Ugh. Okay.

Jessica:            I know. I barf with you. The work is so slow, and it's so gross, and it's so painful. But if you stick with it, it gives you greater access to the whole of what you are, and it gives you greater peace. And it helps you to have healthier relationships to yourself. It helps you to let people love you.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And you have somebody who loves you bananas-style. So letting them love you is like—I mean, you're not letting them love you right now in authenticity because of the way things are going. And you're suffering as much as they're suffering.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's actually like—you know, you got a lot of problems we're talking about here. I mean, that's what I do. I talk about problems. But wow. The problem of having somebody who loves you so much and not knowing how to just let that be—that's a really cool problem. That's a really, really great problem.

Yoni:               Yeah. I agree. Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's a problem that 12-year-old you—oh my God. If 12-year-old you could now that this was your problem at this age, they would be so happy.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            They would be so happy.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So have I answered your question? Is there anything kind of scratching at your brains, anything remaining?

Yoni:               Yeah. I think you've definitely answered my question.

Jessica:            Wonderful.

Yoni:               I think it's something I've been thinking about a lot, how, weirdly enough, as insecure as I'm feeling in my relationship at times, it's weird that I'm being pushed to work on myself more than anything.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Yoni:               But it makes sense. It makes sense. The relationship, for the most part—it's very good and very stable. And I'm very lucky.

Jessica:            The relationship's very good and very stable.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            They have no interest in leaving you. They have no interest in hurting you. They have no interest in it. Zero.

Yoni:               No, they don't. Yeah.

Jessica:            Zero. Yeah.

Yoni:               Yeah. They're locked in.

Jessica:            They're locked in, like beyond the ring. They are locked in. And they've told you as—you know it because of how they behave, but also, they've told you as much, eh?

Yoni:               Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. It's good to be suspicious of people who prove themselves to be liars. Your partner is very honest.

Yoni:               Yeah. Yeah, they are, yeah, a little too honest.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. And so you know where you stand.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            You do know where you stand. If they were like, "Hey, listen. I'm not happy in this thing," they might take a minute to figure out how to say it, but they would say it.

Yoni:               Yeah. Absolutely.

Jessica:            Yeah. The good news is your problem isn't your relationship. Your bad news is—

Yoni:               That is good news. You're right.

Jessica:            Yeah. It is excellent news because you could have these issues and have a problem in your relationship at the same time.

Yoni:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Your big problem is your own capacity.

Yoni:               I'm the problem.

Jessica:            You're the problem. But hey, better you're the problem than the relationship is the problem—

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —and it's triggering trauma. Your traumas are coming up and out but not because somebody is traumatizing you.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Just because someone is triggering you. And again, the difference is fucking everything because you don't need to get away from this person or protect yourself from this person. It's more about regulating yourself and developing new tools and needing to do that in the relationship, right?

Yoni:               Absolutely.

Jessica:            And so say your full name and then their full name.

Yoni:               Okay. [redacted].

Jessica:            Do you own your home?

Yoni:               Yeah, I do.

Jessica:            Yeah. Congratulations.

Yoni:               We do.

Jessica:            And you own it together. Right. It's the two of you. Yeah. Yeah. I see that. Uh-huh. I just want to take a moment to say you have what looks to me like an adorable home.

Yoni:               It's getting there.

Jessica:            It's like a sweet home. It's like house, eh?

Yoni:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And again, if kid you could see what adult you has—

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —kid you would be so much more calm.

Yoni:               100 percent. Oh my God.

Jessica:            You have achieved so much of what you didn't dare to dream of.

Yoni:               You're right. A lot of people asked me, "What did you think you would be doing at this time?" And I was like, "I did not have the capacity or even ability to think of myself this late in my life," not because I was too shallow, but I'm just like—I just—the future just didn't exist to me then. Yeah.

Jessica:            I see that. You were just surviving day by day, hour by hour.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Your coping mechanism was just to fucking white-knuckle it and get through it.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And dreaming of love, dreaming of home, dreaming of safety—why would you do that? It was just so outside of your thinking.

Yoni:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And look at you fucking now. You know?

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And it makes sense that these feelings are coming up because you got more than you ever dreamed of. You created with someone and with yourself more than you ever dreamed of. And so now you must deal with these really deep pain points in you because they don't match your life. And you could make them match your life if you push your partner away hard enough, but they don't match your life. And again, I couldn't be happier for you that this is your problem. This is an exceptionally painful problem. It's excruciating. It's torturous to deal with. And it's the best possible thing for you.

Yoni:               100 percent, because I mean, even before all these triggers started happening, I was getting to a point in my life where I was, like—especially because my antidepressants have been working so well—

Jessica:            Congratulations.

Yoni:               —I've just been like, you know, all my issues, considering the state of the world and considering that I'm also a Trans person, a Trans woman—they're kind of so easy compared to a lot of things. And not to minimize my own experience of what's going on right now, but a lot of the shit I see a lot of other people going through is just so much harder.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Yoni:               So much harder.

Jessica:            You are—I mean, listen. The world is on fire.

Yoni:               I have it pretty easy. I have it pretty easy, I guess. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. I'm going to reframe it because I am your cheerleader right now. It's not that you have it easy. It's that you have co-created a life with your partner, and you've created a life for yourself and in yourself in which you are thriving.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And it happens to be happening while the world is on fire, yes. And is it possible that we will all burn? Maybe. Maybe. But sometimes I look at a person's chart, and I'm like, "Yeah. Of course you did. Yeah. And it was like, of course, there was no other way it could be." No. You had to work. You had to work on yourself and try different things. And you've worked to get to where you are. Am I right about that?

Yoni:               Yeah. I definitely undermine that work a lot.

Jessica:            Yes, you do. Yes, you do. Yes, you do.

Yoni:               But yeah.

Jessica:            And that's what I'm pushing you on because in order to work on this stuff, which is your deepest shit, you need to be able to value your own labor and value your own successes because you've moved through other things; you can move through this. You may have heard me say this many times, but I'll say it a million times more: progress is progress. Teeny, tiny progress is progress. I don't care how big the progress is because progress—it has its own energy, and it helps us to cultivate greater progress, more progress, different progress.

And that's what it's all about. It's about movement. It's about not getting stagnant. And when we learn from your mom, what we know is that she got real stuck, and she got attached to being stuck. And being stuck, over time, made more and more things kind of implode and be a problem for her.

Yoni:   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And that's what happens—not just to her. That's what happens to so many of us. And right now, you are being confronted by the parts of you that want to do that.

Yoni:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And you have enough good in your life motivating you to not do that.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            That's fucking cool, right?

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And I'm not a Pollyanna, but let us not forget that that is cool and that you—"cool" sounds like a nerdy thing to say, but it is so cool. It is genuinely very cool.

Yoni:               That's how I would describe it. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Yeah. It is very cool. I think, in your moments where you're like, "Ahh. I don't fucking want to do this work," remember that the reason why you're motivated to do the work is because your life is beautiful, and you want to live it, and you want to be happy in it. And you have so much good life to fight for.

Yoni:               Yeah. Absolutely.

Jessica:            So put that in your pipe and smoke it when you don't smoke weed, but there you go.

Yoni:               I'll smoke it.

Jessica:            You'll smoke it.

Yoni:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Well, I just really enjoyed doing this, and I really hope it helps.

Yoni:               It's helped a lot. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Good. And stick with the couples counseling, obviously, but get yourself your own shrink.

Yoni:               Absolutely.

Jessica:            All right, my dear. Take really good care, and actually, send my love to your partner—

Yoni:               Thank you so much, Jessica.

Jessica:            —to your husband-wife. It's so my pleasure.

Yoni:               Yeah, to my husband-wife. Exactly.

Jessica:            Yeah, to your husband-wife. Exactly.

Yoni:               Thank you so much. This has been amazing. Thank you.

Jessica:            Awesome. It is so my pleasure.