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

Danny: Hi. I'm just going to get into it and read it to you if that's okay.

Jessica:            It's perfect.

Danny:            "I'm turning 40 this year and might be having a midlife reckoning. I don't feel old, but aging freaks me out. I never imagined I'd make it this far, and now I'm faced with the wild idea of actually living the rest of my life. So tell me, how do I age and live meaningfully without just getting old? 40 and freaked."

Jessica:            It's a very human question, very human question. Okay. I got questions about your question because you know I do.

Danny:            Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Aging freaks you out?

Danny:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            How and why?

Danny:            Two things come to mind. One is history in my family. I grew up the only child in a house full of older adults. I was raised with my mother, my guncle—my gay uncle—and my grandparents. And the messages I heard growing up was, "Don't get old. It sucks when you get old. Just don't do it." You know? And as a kid, I didn't really know how to make sense of that. The other part was I thought I was going to be forever 21. I just didn't think about being an older adult, you know? And I was living my life kind of fast, kind of crazy, having a lot of fun, a lot of adventure, jacked up my nervous system in a lot of different ways, traveled internationally. I had a lot of fun not thinking about the future, really. And this year, I went to the doctor, and I'm thinking for sure I'm jacked up. Turns out I'm in pretty good health—

Jessica:            Great.

Danny:            —which is wild to me, given the way that I've lived my life. And I thought, "Okay. I'm in this bitch. I gotta live this bitch. Now I gotta—I may live until I'm in my 70s and 80s."

Jessica:            Or 90s.

Danny:            Or—oof.

Jessica:            Sorry. Had to throw it out there, but literally, yes, all of those things are possible. Yeah.

Danny:            Yeah. Yeah. So all that, you know? I don't have siblings. I've gone no-contact with my family. I don't know if I'll have children. I don't think I will because I think I would have been more excited about it by now. I thought maybe I could be like a cool Queer auntie and raise other people in the village, the way that I was raised. But I don't have siblings. I've gone no-contact with my family members who have siblings. I'm in a relationship, which is rocky right now, with a woman who has a big family. So I thought, "Cool. This is going to happen, and I'll have those nieces and nephews." But then—now that's on the rocks.

Jessica:            Okay.

Danny:            So just, again, the midlife reckoning.

Jessica:            Yep. Yep.

Danny:            It all is history and then present shit that's happened, so—

Jessica:            Okay. I have one more question for you, which is—you're 39 right now.

Danny:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Do you have friends who are in their 50s or 60s or 70s or 80s? Do you have any people in your life that are in any of those decades?

Danny:            Yes, I do.

Jessica:            Okay. And when you think of those people, do you think of them as kind of not really living a meaningful life? Are they just kind of like old people who happen to be moving through their days, or do they have meaning?

Danny:            Two older adults come to mind who are living meaningfully. Then I have older family members, my mother included, who are not. But I can look to about two, three people who are living a really full older adult life. Yeah.

Jessica:            And those are the people that you have in your life actively currently?

Danny:            One of them has passed.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay.

Danny:            Yeah, and the other is still alive. Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. So there's layers and layers of what I want to say. The first thing I want to say is that most people, I have come to learn, do not think about time. Most people hit 25 and then 30 and then 35 and then 40 and on and on and on, being like, "Wait. What? I'm getting old? Wait. What?" And then something happens, and it happens at different ages for different people, depending on all manner of details, but where your body looks older, where people look at you and they're not like, "Oh, yeah, you're 25," where they're like, "Yeah, you're not 25. You are an aging beauty," or whatever the fuck it is. And what happens to people is it's really humbling, where you're just like, "Oh. That was a limited-time offer."

Danny:            Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            You know, there's an expression, and it's that youth is wasted on the young.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And the reason why that's true is because when you're young, all you have is your youth, and when you're older, you have your youth-plus. And with the plus, you can understand youth in a different way.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            All of this to say there's layers. One is you are going through two out of the three midlife crises transits right now. So you are in a midlife crisis, from my perspective as your astrologer.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            And then there's something else, which is a very, I think, important thing for a  very young person, which—I am including you—

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            —in the concept of a young person myself—every young person really needs to remember, which is that regardless of what age you are, this is as young as you're ever going to be.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And regardless of what age you are, you are still yourself. You don't magically turn 52 and then stop being your Queer, weird, rebellious, excited, interested self. What happens to humans, very broadly speaking, is we in our teens and 20s are like, "Fuck this. Fuck that. Fuck this. Fuck that," in our individual ways.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And we go and we have experiences.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And then those experiences start to have consequences in your 30s.

Danny:            Yes.

Jessica:            And so people tend to get a little more conservative, and they pull back a little bit. And then, in your 40s, you hit this midlife crisis, where you are.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's really destabilizing, and you will change. So the question is, do you do the hard work to embrace yourself and, with the youth you still have, with the life you still have, embrace who you want to be and how you want to live? Or do you kind of do what most humans do, which is start to become like the people you're from—

Danny:            Oof.

Jessica:            —fall back into trance patterns? Sorry.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            There's an expression that I learned from the healer Nikki Sacchi, but I don't think she created it. And it's, "What you don't transform you transmit." And this is through the midlife crises transits, which are around early 40s—right? Late 30s, early 40s. What happens is you either transform or you start to transmit.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            And this is why people get really stuck. They're like, "I know myself. I don't want to compromise anymore. I know how I am. There's no point in me going out to this new farmers market because I know I just get overwhelmed by—I don't have to do that anymore. I've already done that." And it's like a lot, a lot, a lot of little things and a lot of really deep things, and then we kind of atrophy, right?

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And this is why a lot of older people are stuck. It's because making change and creating momentum inside of yourself and in the world is harder when you have more baggage.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            So I get tons and tons of questions for the podcast, and something that happens when people are over the age of 40—sometimes over the age of 45—is they will write a question which is a great question, and then they'll add so many details and so much context and 50 other questions associated with the one question because, when you're older, you understand how these things are connected.

Danny:            Yes. Exactly.

Jessica:            And also, when people get stuck, what happens is it becomes harder to choose to just be like, "I'm going to work on this one thing at a time," which is actually an adaptable approach as opposed to being like, "Everything is connected in this way." When you do that, you are compressing everything together.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And it makes it impossible to create momentum and change, whereas if you're like, "Okay. I'm scared of aging," and you don't connect it to every other thing in the world that is authentically connected to the fear of aging—if you just sit with the fear of aging, you can make shifts. You can evolve with it.

Danny:            I see.

Jessica:            But if you tie it to your childhood and all the things and all the things all at once, it becomes too heavy, too daunting, and then no real progress is made because it becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy. It's a family trance pattern is what the fuck it is. It's a family trance pattern.

Danny:            I thought I did a lot of work. I mean, yeah, I did a lot of crazy shit, and then I reached points when I headed into my 30s, a lot of reflecting, a lot of hard rock-bottom moments that made me question, a lot of loss that made me question and want to do things differently. So I feel like I did all the therapies. I learned a lot about communication, how to communicate. I've done a lot of values work, too. And I don't know. I kind of thought it's going to end with me, with my generation, like I'm going to break these patterns.

I see my patterns. I think I have a lot of self-awareness. I have a community of therapist friends—I'm a marriage and family therapist—who hold me accountable. I have folks who hold me accountable. And just in the recent months, I feel like I relapsed back into my 20s, and I started acting—

Jessica:            Yeah.

Danny: —like a younger version of myself. So—

Jessica:            Yeah. That's because the Pluto square to Pluto started in the last several months for you. So let me say a couple things.

Danny:            Sure.

Jessica:            I know I cut you off a little bit, but I don't want to get lost.

Danny:            It's okay. Thank you. I need that.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. Good. So the first thing is—and this may blow your mind when you think about it really personally, and if you pull back, it's not going to surprise you at all. Every single generation thinks they're the generation that's going to break the patterns.

Danny:            Oh. Shit.

Jessica:            If you think that boomers, who were the youth of the Civil Rights Movement, didn't think they were breaking the patterns, then what do you think they thought they were doing? Gen X before you—because you're a millennial—felt we were breaking the patterns. We all live through our collective experiences and our individual experiences, and we all think we are the radical generation. Now, we think that in our 20s.

                        Here's the problem with that thinking. It's not bad thinking. Obviously, every generation thinks it because humans think it. But the other part of it is it's a youth-based way of thinking. It's an idea served to us by patriarchy—and it's bullshit—that you reach a point where the work is done, and you still are alive, a person, and you just don't have real problems because now you're an adult. Now you've figured it out.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            That's bananas.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            It's bananas. And anyone—this is part of why I asked if you had older friends, because anyone who is older than you that you're friends with—I'm not talking about your parents; I'm talking about your friends, people you would choose—will tell you is that you keep on being you, but your priorities change because your physiology changes, because time shifts, because you have more experiences, and those experiences weigh on you.

                        So now back to your midlife crisis transit, the Pluto square to Pluto. What you started to describe was textbook Pluto square Pluto.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            It's that all this shit that you felt like you worked on and you exorcised from yourself, the toxic shit you exorcised from yourself in your 20s, starts to come back in the midlife crisis, in the Pluto square to Pluto.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            And it's because whatever you didn't really transform—well, no, that's not true. You transformed it; you didn't excise it. So it went from, "I'm not going to be my mother," to, "Okay, but now I'm like my father"—

Danny:            Damn.

Jessica:            —or some version of that. Or some version of that.

Danny:            Yeah. Oh yeah.

Jessica:            And then you have to continue to heal. And I don't want to blow your mind, but guess what: if you make it to 80, you're still going to have childhood issues. You're still going to have relationship issues. You're still going to have to learn to communicate. And part of that is because everything is different because the stakes of, let's say, having a girlfriend at 40 are different than the stakes of having a girlfriend at 32.  They're different. And so, even if you are the same and you keep on working on yourself, the stakes change. The way the world engages with you changes.

Danny:            I see.

Jessica:            Your spoons change. Your ability to cope with shit changes. The truth of the matter is, in the bulk of history, we did not have the right to explore our own healing, to work.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Right?

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            We [indiscernible 00:13:19] to work, to have our own money, for the—I mean, that was in the 1970s that that changed, right before you were born.

Danny:            Yeah. True.

Jessica:            It is very, very recent. It is in my lifetime that women in the United States could have their own money, really.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And so it's important to keep in mind that what we have seen in our living ancestors is not just about who they were as individuals. It's not just about their cultural context—class, race, ethnicity, religion, all the things. It's also about patriarchy and how it has limited our rights and our ability to follow through with the work. And so, all of a sudden, boomers kind of had it, Gen X had it, and you, millennial.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            We're the first few generations that have the actual ability to have work and have meaning and be like, "Okay. At 57, I'm going to go back to school. I'm going to keep on growing. I'm going to keep on evolving." I feel like it's very important to keep in mind because when, as a young person—and again, I'm calling you one—you look at older people, you have to keep in mind those cultural contexts.

Danny:            Right. Yeah.

Jessica:            And the truth of the matter is Pluto square to Pluto that you're going through right now is meant to confront you, what you have not transformed fully, what you're still transmitting from your childhood shit, from your maladjusted coping mechanisms.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You know it's a term I use all day long.

Danny:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so it doesn't matter how wise you are. It doesn't matter that you're a spectacular therapist, that you have spent your 20s/30s on therapies. All that that means is that your problems are deeper. I mean, that's all that it means because the more you evolve, the deeper your shit, right?

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            So now you're getting to deeper and deeper and deeper levels. Do you think that's easier? No.

Danny:            No.

Jessica:            But ideally, you have the wisdom and tools for navigating the pain, the uncertainty, and the activation of it. It never ends.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            If we imagine that the birth chart that you and I are both staring at right now is a snapshot of your evolution through this mortal coil, then what we see is it's a damn circle. And for as long as you're on this ride, it is continuing to revolve. It's continuing to spin. So you never stop going through transits, which means you never stop getting challenged, which means you never arrive at a place where you're fully healed and it's done.

Danny:            Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm sorry. That's a bummer to hear. I can tell by your face.

Danny:            I mean, it makes sense, though. It just feels—ugh.

Jessica:            So which part? Tell me. Is this about aging, or is this—because okay. So my Spidey-senses are saying what's activated inside of you around this right now is actually about your relationship.

Danny:            Yeah. I think a lot of it has to do with my relationship and relationship stuff recently. The Venus Retrograde that just passed definitely shook a lot of things up, yeah, kicked up a lot of stuff. That's for sure.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. So you're going through a number of really hard transits that are once-in-a-lifetime events. And so whatever got kicked up in the Venus Retrograde—I mean, that was the most chill of the transits, okay?

Danny:            Oh. What?

Jessica:            The most chill. The most chill of the transits. So let me, instead of giving you all the details—and I can do that in a moment. But let me start here.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            In your childhood, you didn't get boundaries. You got consequences but not boundaries.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You are going through a period that is teaching you boundaries by confronting you with all of the consequences in your mental health, in your psyche, in your spirit, and interpersonally around not having healthy boundaries or not knowing how to navigate other people's boundaries—or, more realistically, both. Another thing that's happening is you are changing. Your structure as a human being is changing. How you communicate is changing. How you listen is changing. What you believe is changing.

Danny:            I see.

Jessica:            And it is, some days, exciting, and it's bringing about, "Ooh, ahas."

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And other days, it's just like, "My nervous system is trashed. I don't fucking know what to do."

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            "I'm going fucking nuts."

Danny:            Yes.

Jessica:            And then another thing that's happening is confronting you, as I said earlier, with shit that you thought you were done with in your 20s that you are 100 percent not done with. And for whatever it's worth, everyone who lives long enough goes through this Pluto square to Pluto where they are confronted with what they haven't healed because nobody—and I cannot say this more emphatically. Nobody in their 20s can heal generations of trauma that were inherited through the relationship they had with the family. That's not a thing. That's a child's way of thinking about it, like, "I'll be better than my mom. I'm going to go to therapy, and I'm going to travel, and I'm going to do some drugs. I'll be better than the way they were. I figured it out. I cracked the code."

Danny:            Right.

Jessica:            These are important steps, but they're not conclusive because the whole point of being alive is evolving. So the evolution is the fucking point.

Danny:            Yeah. I hear what you're saying.

Jessica:            Okay. So I'm going to slow down for a minute. We're going to touch on your relationship in a moment.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            But I want to just see, does that bring up any questions, or does that bum you out? Because it seems a little bit like it's a bummer for you. I'm so sorry.

Danny:            Yeah. I mean, it is a bit of a bummer. It does resonate with me, like the more I unpack—kind of like those Russian dolls. The more you unpack, the more you find. There's just more underneath.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Danny:            So that makes sense to me. That's very relatable. You're putting it into words for me. The other part of it is it gives me something to put in my tool kit. This is a lifelong thing. Maybe I just need to build a bigger, stronger ship with tools and more community.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm.

Danny:            Right? So it's not about thinking that these waves, the storm, will calm. But there's just more work to do.

Jessica:            Let me speak on that. Okay.

Danny:            Sure.

Jessica:            So you've got Jupiter at the top of your chart. You've got Jupiter conjunct your Midheaven in Aquarius. And this is why you've traveled and partied and had fun. This is why you're so identified with youth. You also have Saturn conjunct Mercury on your Descendant, so it's opposite your Ascendant. It's opposite your Moon. And so, for you, it's either liberty or death.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            It's either youth or depression.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's not what you really believe. It's how you've organized your life because there is a part of you that is depressive and equally critical and a lot like the kind of stuck adults that you're trying to not be.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And there's also another part of you that's fucking weird and progressive and willing to take big fucking jumps. And so, as a young person, you did what most people who have this aspect choose to do, which is be like, "I'm going to live fucking large. I'm going to explore the world. I'm going to have experiences." The thing that's really hard about this is that if you're moving, moving, moving, moving, moving, moving, moving, moving, changing, moving, changing, moving, there is a way that you can move away from yourself. There's a way that it brings you closer to yourself, and there's a way that you're kind of evading yourself.

                        And so the problem that I think you're struggling with, in part, with getting older is creating a home inside of yourself that is values-based, that is truly secure and stable, is really, really hard because when you return home to yourself without any fanfare and excitement and dynamicness happening, you confront the harder parts of your chart.

Danny:            Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And those are the parts where you do have resentments, and you do struggle with energy, and it's hard for you to stay positive. You're super positive, and also, you really struggle with positivity.

Danny:            Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            They're both true. Yeah. When people study astrology, they're like, "I don't understand these contradictions." It's like, well, then you're not thinking about this in a human way, because humans are full of contradictions. You are the most positive person—talk to in a minute—and also, you have a heavy nihilistic, existential depressive streak.

Danny:            Yes. That's true.

Jessica:            They're both true. So it's not a contradiction. It's the complexity of a human in a world, in a body, from a family, yada yada.

Danny:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so I'm going to ask you this question. Have you had a lot of long-term relationships, like more than six months long?

Danny:            Yes. There is a pattern there.

Jessica:            Hit me.

Danny:            Something happens at the two-year mark or as we are approaching the two-year mark. My first relationship was five years, but there were some on-and-off periods. However—and she is lovely. We're still good friends. But that ended because I was young, and I wanted to taste all the fruits and nectars of the world and all that jazz, right? And then I would meet other women. Things would be cool, fun, flirty. And then, again, at about approaching the two-year mark, I kind of go a little nuts, or not nuts, but I kind of freak out with the commitment. "What does this mean?" And then I sabotage it in some way, or I hit the eject button in some way, or I say, like, "Hey, this isn't going to work out. I don't see longevity here." So that's what I've noticed.

Jessica:            How long have you been with your current partner?

Danny:            Two years.

Jessica:            So you're there.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

Danny:            So I felt it coming up at the Retrograde, the Venus Retrograde period. But yeah, we were coming up on the two years, and I was having all these, "Oh shit. History tells me that things get a little wonky around this time for me." It's here. It happened.

Jessica:            So let me tell you why that happens.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            You have this stellium in Scorpio. You've got Sun/Pluto conjunction, and it's conjunct your South Node. And you've got a Mercury/Saturn conjunction, and it's conjunct the Descendant. And so that exists. Now, you also have this Venus in Libra. And you also have Jupiter conjunct the Ascendant. You also have Mars square Neptune and a Moon in Gemini conjunct the Ascendant. So what this means is you love love. You love having a spiritual, romantic, fantastical connection with someone.

Danny:            Yes.

Jessica:            You love the beginning. The beginning is your fucking jam. You are the best girlfriend in the beginning. You are romantic. You are dynamic. You keep it fresh. You are so sure at the beginning.

Danny:            You're right. You're so right.

Jessica:            Yeah, I am. Thank you very much, and you're welcome. You are sure, and your certainty helps them out of their shell. And they grow with you.

Danny:            True.

Jessica:            And everything is amazing. And then things become routine, and you're like, "You know what? You know what? I've needed routine. I've needed stability. This is a little challenging for me, but I like this challenge. This is new. Stability, security"—

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            —"this is different." And then it stops being different.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And you are confronted with you. And you—now we're talking about that heavy Scorpio stuff. You don't always like you.

Danny:            Mm-mm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You don't like routine. You're scared that your routines are going to drown you.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And so you start to have the same reaction that anyone would have when they're drowning in the ocean. You fucking—

Danny:            I see.

Jessica:            You start to flail. You scramble. And when you do that, your historical best move has been pull some drama. Do something fucked up. You know what I mean? Am I right? Am I right?

Danny:            Yeah. Oh yeah. The novella happens, you know?

Jessica:            Yes. Yes. Yes.

Danny:            Absolutely. You're right.

Jessica:            Respect. And that more adult you might not do that. You might repress, repress, repress, and then you start to drag your feet in the relationship. You stop being really engaged in the relationship. They say, "What's wrong?" You say, "Nothing." And then they keep asking, and you're like, "Why are you trying to make a problem?" And so more adult you is like, "It's not me. I'm just trying to live." And so there's a more "adult" version—quote unquote. I'm putting very strong air quotes here. You've figured out how to make it her problem.

Danny:            Okay. Yeah. I'm hearing it. I'm listening.

Jessica:            Okay. And if it feels wrong, you tell me.

Danny:            No, you're not wrong. You're not wrong.

Jessica:            Okay. You're welcome.

Danny:            I had to think about it a little bit, and then, like, no, and then all the reasons came back to me. And I thought, "No, yeah, I do do that."

Jessica:            Uh-huh. Here's the thing. And this is a very deep and very real thing. You don't have to be in a relationship if you don't want to be. But you want to be.

Danny:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And if you're going to be in a relationship with a human person, honestly—you tend to be monogamous, yeah?

Danny:            Yes, unless I'm doing crazy shit at the two-year mark. Then—

Jessica:            Right. No, I didn't say anything about cheating.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            You have a tendency towards cheating, I see. You know, I mean, we're just naming facts.

Danny:            Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's never about the person you're cheating on. It's always about the moment. You know, so Jupiter. So Jupiter.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            But here's the thing. You do want to be in a relationship. If you're going to succeed in being in a relationship, then you're going to have to do your fucking North Node. Let's talk about it.

Danny:            Ahh.

Jessica:            Yeah. Your North Node is in Taurus, and it's in the twelfth house.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            So what this means for you is this values-based work that you've done needs more doing. And that is because you have a North Node in Taurus.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            The values-based work is never done when you have the North Node in Taurus because in your most previous incarnations, what you did was burn everything to the ground. You were just like, "You know what? I'm doing my way. I never have to do it your way." And in this lifetime, that's an immature stance.

Danny:            I see.

Jessica:            It's a defensive stance. Whenever you do that, you end up blowing up your life. Here's the thing. If your values don't objectively include nurturing yourself when you feel depressive or nihilistic, cultivating more self-awareness about your relationship to routine so that you can take responsibility for what you choose and why you choose it—if you don't do that work—I mean, there's more to it, but let's stay there—then every woman is going to drive you nuts at a point—

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            —because it's not really about the woman. She becomes your routine.

Danny:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And when somebody becomes your routine—even worse, if somebody becomes your family, then they agitate the fuck out of you because they are the mirror that you don't want to look in.

Danny:            Damn.

Jessica:            And it's not because what you're seeing is bad. It's because you don't have the desire to look and see what is real. That Jupiter part of you, that Neptune/Mars part of you—all that says, "Over there. Over here. Over there. Over here. I can do anything." And the rest of you says, "I actually know that every Friday night, it is assumed that I'll be with my partner. There's no over here, over there, over there, over here. I made that commitment. I set myself up for that. She has every right to expect that of me. And yet I feel stifled." Do you want to do something else? Do you have other plans? No. It's not about that. It's not about that. It's about feeling locked.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            It makes you fucking nuts.

Danny:            Yes.

Jessica:            And so identifying what you're getting out of having an automatic assumed Friday night standing date with your partner—what do you get out of it when you're not annoyed by it? That's an important question for you to ask yourself.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Do you need to take greater responsibility for, "Okay. At a certain point in a relationship, I need to spend more time in therapies. I need to spend more time alone or with friends and shift some of the assumptions in our relationship so that I have"—

Danny:            I see.

Jessica:            —"so that I'm taking responsibility for my need for change"? Your need for change is intense. And sometimes it's actually disassociation, and sometimes it's just you fucking liking change.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And we don't need to pathologize it. But I want to name that it's not always the same because right now what you're going through—okay. Say your full name, and then say your GF's full name.

Danny:            Sure. [redacted].

Jessica:            Is she younger than you?

Danny:            No, actually. So she's one of the only women I've dated that is my age. We are three weeks apart.

Jessica:            Is she short?

Danny:            No. She's about my height, about yay.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Bear with me for a moment.

Danny:            Sure.

Jessica:            I'm seeing—I can't tell if she's younger or if she's just short and slender.

Danny:            She's very, very slender.

Jessica:            Have you been thinking about another woman?

Danny:            Ooh.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay.

Danny:            Yes.

Jessica:            Uh-huh. And is this a woman from your past or a woman in your present?

Danny:            A woman in my present that I met about two years ago. She was in a relationship. I was single. We just—we had maybe four interactions at the place that I work. She was a guest. Nothing could ever be. It was just something in passing, but there was attraction. And at about the two-year mark, this person friend requested me on social media.

Jessica:            So very recently, in the past couple months.

Danny:            Very recently, in the past couple months. That's when everything [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Is she younger?

Danny:            She is.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. So I'm seeing her. So, first of all, let's hold you accountable. I asked you to tell me your name and your partner's name, and I didn't see psychically your partner; I saw your crush. That's fucking fascinating. That's a reflection of you, not of my psychic—I mean, okay, a little bit of my psychic ability, but it's about you.

Danny:            Yeah. I get you.

Jessica:            Okay. And we've already established you have a pattern of cheating or getting itchy at around two years.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And this adorable, young thing comes around at around two years. Are you guys chatting and flirting?

Danny:            Not anymore. We were.

Jessica:            You were. Mm-hmm.

Danny:            It was—okay. So the plot thickens a little bit because my partner and I hit a really rough week, a lot of fighting for three days. At the three-month—I mean at the three days of fighting, I tried to repair. I used everything within me to try to repair, to try to get through. And it was really sad. It was really hard. I walked out of that attempt to repair, and I saw two paths. One, I go home and I feel my feelings, or two, I go to the bar and I drink tequila. And I contemplated the first for a little bit, and then boom, I went with the tequila. And then the rest was just a perfect freaking storm.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

Danny:            No breaks. I wish there were some breaks, but there were no breaks. And in that night is when I accepted that friend request, and it just spiraled really fast.

Jessica:            And you hooked up with her?

Danny:            I hooked up with her that night.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Danny:            I'm not proud of that—

Jessica:            But it is a pattern.

Danny:            —and I can take ownership. And yes, it is a pattern, which is what I meant, in part, when I said I felt like I freaking relapsed into my 20s.

Jessica:            Yep. Yep.

Danny:            Again with the tequila and all that jazz. It was just like classic, old-school [redacted] showing up in the present. And I thought I was past it.

Jessica:            So a number of things. First, alcoholism runs in your family. I can't be the first person to tell you that.

Danny:            You're not the first.

Jessica:            Of course. So, if you're not sober, it's always a little bit of a risk for you that you're going to, in a moment of emotionality, fall back on this because your body screams at you. Your body is like, "You're feeling emotions? Those are stupid. Let's get obliterated." You have one sip of alcohol, and you're in. That's how your body reacts. And so that's a really annoying thing I'm saying, which is it's an interesting thing about you that requires intentionality around how you want to engage with it, with your relationship to alcohol.

Danny:            Right.

Jessica:            That's not what we're here to talk about. Don't worry.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            But a sober path is for sure the healthiest path for you.

Danny:            I have not drank alcohol since that night.

Jessica:            Good for you.

Danny: It scared the heck out of me.

Jessica:            Good.

Danny:            And historically, I can hurt myself. I can take risks with my life. But as soon as it impacts somebody that I really love—

Jessica:            Yeah.

Danny:            —and then another innocent bystander or a person over here who is a casualty of the war that I am in with myself, that does not sit well with me, because I do value kindness. I value humanity. And that was not kind to them or to myself.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Danny:            Definitely not to my partner. So—

Jessica:            You're out for now.

Danny:            I really want it to stay this way. I started a recovery program.

Jessica:            Great. Did you stick with it?

Danny:            Yeah. I'm still in it.

Jessica:            Good. Great.

Danny:            I'm going on 46 days now without alcohol.

Jessica:            Congratulations. Honestly, it's such a profound commitment to yourself. It really is. So I'm so happy to hear that.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And let me come back. Hold on.

Danny:            Sure.

Jessica:            I'm just looking energetically. Okay. There's still longing between you and this other woman. And it's not really about this other woman for you. I mean, I think in moments, it is. But you are not meant to be with that woman. Let me just throw that in the mix.

Danny:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            But I want to acknowledge that some of what you're feeling towards her is just your pattern, right?

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Whether you feel shame or whether you feel longing, both of those things are your pattern. And they're like a pattern of self-harm and distraction. And the truth of the matter is, when you're not in an active drama—because you have a Sun/Pluto conjunction, right? So, when you're not in an active fucking telenovela—

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            —you are left with the parts of yourself that are hardest for you to deal with, which is mundane, day-by-day, hour-by-hour healthy choices that are not immediately satisfying.

Danny:            Yeah. Sounds terrible.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. So what kind of physical activity do you do?

Danny:            I do weightlifting—

Jessica:            Great.

Danny:            —like, intense workouts. I do like walking, but walking doesn't seem to shut off my thoughts.

Jessica:            It doesn't do the thing.

Danny:            It doesn't calm my feelings.

Jessica:            What about combat?

Danny:            Oh.

Jessica:            Kickboxing?

Danny:            I've entertained the idea of doing jiu-jitsu.

Jessica:            Yeah. Capoeira? Would you do that?

Danny:            Capoeira—I think kickboxing sounds more my jam. Kickboxing, jiu-jitsu, or boxing.

Jessica:            I would encourage you to try that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Punch and kick shit. That would be great for you.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            And the reason why—listen. Weightlifting is so good for your health. I mean, it's just—I mean, it's a great thing to be doing at 40. But for—not for your physiology, but instead for that part of you that's just, like, "Mundane, mundane," get in the fucking ring. Get in the ring. I’m not saying with a person. You don't have to fight a person, although that might be fun for you.

Danny:            Yeah. I think so.

Jessica:            But fight a heavy bag. You know what I mean?

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            I want to encourage you to explore, what are things that you can take responsibility for, that you can choose to do for you—

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            —that are not about self-destruction, that are basically neutral or positive distractions? Because you need weird, and you need—

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            —to be constantly growing and changing. And here's the thing. The idea that you have of, "I'm going to hit an age, and then I'm going to be set. Everything's going to be fine. I'm going to be done," is actually your fucking living nightmare. So you say you want it. You believe you want it. But for you, to be set and everything's fine—like your relationship actually was, by the way, not long ago—

Danny:            It was.

Jessica:            Yes. I see that.

Danny:            I thought I liked it. I thought it was good.

Jessica:            The problem is you don't want that as a life.

Danny: I see.

Jessica:            You want that as a relationship. But you do something that is very common—that is very common. You turn your relationship into your life, yeah? Yeah.

Danny:            Yeah. That does happen.

Jessica:            I mean, my generation called it the U-Haul. You can call it whatever you want. But the truth of the matter is you turned your whole, entire life into the relationship.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            So now this woman is responsible for you liking to travel, but that's impossible. You like traveling alone. You like meeting random people and having random conversations. You like being surprised. You like getting lost.

Danny:            Yes.

Jessica:            But you can't ever expect the women you choose to date to want to do that two years into the relationship. They like to do that at the beginning, but you choose women who can be your other half, who are actually really happy to do quiet, chill things at home.

Danny:            Yeah. That's true.

Jessica:            The women you tend to like are really invested in becoming themselves and working—like maybe they're cooks. Maybe they like doing things at home because you're not dating yourself.

Danny:            Right.

Jessica:            You're dating your complement.

Danny:            That's true.

Jessica:            So, when you make your complement your whole identity, and when your whole life is organized around her, your life gets stuck and boring, and you're like, "Wait a minute. I'm not growing." And the problem is you then say, "I'm not growing in this relationship with her," instead of, "I forgot how to be me."

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's actually what this is about. Being you when you were in that emotion was like, "I'm going to get fucking lit, and I'm going to do something stupid." That's a part of you. You could be that part of you. Yeah.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Or you could find adult versions of what worked for you in your 20s.

Danny:            Huh.

Jessica:            So adult versions of, like—in your 20s, you had lots of weird adventures and spontaneous experiences, yeah?

Danny:            Yeah. Yes, I did.

Jessica:            Okay. So now you're a grown-ass adult, and you got a lot to lose, and you've got a career and all the things.

Danny:            I do. Yeah.

Jessica:            So this is why I'm interested for you, as an example, in combat, because when you're with someone—and I'm not encouraging you to go and fucking be in combat this week. I mean, train, train, train, train, train many months, maybe years, and then you hop in a ring and you do it in a safe way and all the things.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            But it's unpredictable. When you're that close to another person—have you ever done any kind of combat?

Danny:            Yeah. I did a Korean martial art when I was in high school, and then I did taekwondo when I was a kid.

Jessica:            Okay.

Danny:            Yeah. And I liked it. I did.

Jessica:            And it's a little different when you're a kid, but when you're physically that close to someone and you're doing it to land a punch or a kick or something, as an adult with a sexuality—it is a very different thing when you're a little kid, right—

Danny:            True.

Jessica:            —because how often do you get that physically close to someone and it's not sexual—

Danny:            True.

Jessica:            —and it's not platonic, and you're not mad at them, but it's all about—you're trying to land physical contact and stop physical contact? It's fun and weird.

Danny:            Yes.

Jessica:            And that's the kind of thing that I actually think you crave. So it doesn't have to be that. That's an example. I love boxing, so that's why I—

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You know. But it's something to play with. You could decide, "I'm going to fucking learn how to do archery." You have Jupiter at the top of your chart.

Danny:            Interesting.

Jessica:            You could decide that you're going to train for a marathon. I'm naming a lot of physical things because when you're too in your head, you get weird.

Danny:            True.

Jessica:            So tracking your body and doing things [crosstalk]—

Danny:            It's weird in there. Yeah.

Jessica:            It's weird in there. It's weird in there.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            So doing things where you exorcise energy makes it easier to then connect to your head.

Danny:            Okay. Interesting. That does tie into what the rest of my life looks like aging. Like, what does exercise look like as I age? And I have been doing a lot of trial and error in not drinking, right, with filling it with different activities. And before I started drinking, my life was sport. And so I appreciate—

Jessica:            Come back to it. Come back to it. Yeah.

Danny:            I appreciate what you're saying because it's helping organize me in what would actually work for me because I think—when I drink, I think what I'm looking for is relief, you know?

Jessica:            You're looking for a feeling, right?

Danny:            Yeah, a feeling, the relief, and also community and people and conversation. But I like what you're saying about the consensual, healthy fighting.

Jessica:            Yes. It can be done through sport. The idea that 40-year-olds, 50-year-olds, 60-year-olds, even 70-year-olds don't have physical lives is—it's a lie that youth teaches. Sometimes, as your body ages, you find, "Oh shit. I need to stretch for an hour instead of 20 seconds. Oh shit. This used to really work for my body, and I'm finding it doesn't work anymore." And then you must adapt. But you don't need to preemptively say, "Well, now that I'm almost 40, I can't be a sporty person," or, "I can't learn how to throw a punch."

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            None of that is true. So this idea of, "Well, what am I going to do now that I'm old?" is kind of like, "Well, what am I going to do now that I'm with this lady and my life is kind of written? I mean, I guess everything's fine, but fuck"—it's you abandoning agency. It's you abandoning agency because you have a hard time pulling yourself up from ruts.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You're really good at, like a cartoon, getting one of those bomp-bomp-bomp-bomp things, and then everything glows up, like those cartoons from the '20s.

Danny:            Yes.

Jessica:            You know how to blow things up. You're really, really good at it, and it's a good skill to have. But you don't want to use it too often. You know what I'm saying?

Danny:            Right. Yeah.

Jessica:            But learning how to have boundaries with yourself and then your partner and then yourself and then your partner—that's a life path. So, if we're looking at your relationship with your partner—I'm going to have you say both of your names out loud again.

Danny:            Sure. [redacted].

Jessica:            She has forgiven you, eh?

Danny:            Yeah, she has.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. She has. She's not lying. She has. You haven't forgiven you, but she's forgiven you. That's good to know.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            It's good to know.

Danny:            That's true.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. I mean, she sees you. She understands what you're doing. You've told her about your pattern.

Danny:            Yes.

Jessica:            She wasn't as blindsided as you were by your pattern, to be honest—

Danny:            Interesting.

Jessica:            —because she has been listening to you for the last couple years, and you told her who you were.

Danny:            Yes.

Jessica:            You have told her who you were.

Danny:            That's true.

Jessica:            She wants to be with you, but she's not—I don't think she's going to parent you through this. I don't think she's going to eat shit on your behalf. She's kind of waiting and watching and seeing whether or not you get your shit together and whether or not you really want to be in an adult relationship.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            I like her. She's tough.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And you don't have to choose to be in this relationship. You don't have to choose to be in a healthy relationship. This could be a healthy relationship.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Danny:            I think so. And I knew that.

Jessica:            Yeah. You're still into her?

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Danny:            I do. Just what happened, blowing it up and it shocking me and making me question everything—I literally started questioning everything. I didn't question her or our future together before everything exploded and before I exploded everything. And since then, yeah, I've been questioning us, her, you know, her family. Are we all aligned—values, belief systems?

Jessica:            You don't need to be.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            They're her family. Whether it's your family, her family, your community, you don't have to be all aligned. You just have to have boundaries where you're not.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            They could think wind turbines are great, and you can think they're an environmental disaster waiting to happen, and you can still be family. You just say, "You don't get to control what kind of ecological steps I take." I'm using a stupid example for a reason.

Danny:            Right.

Jessica:            But what I'm saying is you starting to get really fine-tooth comb about whether or not we're aligned is part of your pattern. So I'm going to be really obnoxious, and I'm going to say bullshit.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            I stamped it with some bullshit. Now, I know that being aligned is very real.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            But what I would suggest is that you don't have to be fucking aligned. You just have to have boundaries.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            So, with your partner, you say you started questioning it after the event. And I'm going to say bullshit. Instead, that event wouldn't have happened if you weren't already questioning the fucking relationship.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            You were just in your pattern of being so shut down that you weren't really processing the relationship. You were kind of in a depressive, frictiony state—

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            —which, again, is your pattern.

Danny:            Yeah. You keep calling me out.

Jessica:            I'm sorry. I mean, I'm really sorry, and also, you're welcome.

Danny:            I appreciate it. Thank you.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. It's both. It's both, because listen. You could do all the work and then, in the end, find it's not there anymore; you don't want to stay together. That's okay. But the only way to do the work is to navigate through your hypercritical tendencies, your pettiness, your resentfulness, the parts of you that are like, "I'm done," because you have a tendency to, when things stop being fun at a certain level—

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            —be done. And what would be truly radical and different for you is to explore that feeling instead of resist that feeling—

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            —because that feeling of being done—it is like a cement block inside of you. I feel it solar plexus and stomach.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You know this feeling from childhood. It is feeling like, "There's fucking nothing I can do except for wait until I can get the fuck out of here."

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And when you were a kid, I'm saying by the time you were 11, you promised yourself you would never do this to yourself again. You would never be stuck that way again. And you haven't been, except that it's a part of you. Right? It's like, on the one hand, you have left every time you've been stuck.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            But on the other hand, you have allowed your nine-year-old self to define what is healthy and what is right for you. And inevitably, there's some wisdom there. And inevitably, it's a child's way of understanding survival. And as a child, you have no choices except for to wait until you're old enough to get the fuck out. Right?

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            That's literally your best bet. And as an adult, you actually have a myriad of choices that you never had any family members model making. They were just like, "Oh, this sucks. I'm going to keep on doing it." "Oh, I'm stuck. Oh, I'll keep on sticking myself." There's a self-awareness without a willingness to change that happened with your family, yeah?

Danny:            Yeah. Yes.

Jessica:            And so, because you've had so many fun experiences and distractions, you haven't realized that you are doing exactly that. "Oh, I'm stuck. Oh well. That's just love, I guess." And so what I would recommend—and do you have a therapist?

Danny:            I do.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. You got a therapist and maybe even a sponsor. We are good. Okay.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            So something to work with is that feeling. Practice sitting with that fucking block of cement, and just sit with it and be curious about what it is. What is that? Because you know how you feel. Every time you feel it, it is overwhelming. It is oppressive. And everything inside of you says, "Get the fuck away from it. Do not sit with this feeling. This is the worst feeling." And so you move away from it, and what do you do? You abandon yourself. You abandon yourself in the worst of your feelings, and then you're in a coping mechanism that is reactive to self-abandonment, not actually to the feeling. And so self-abandonment on top of self-abandonment on top of self-abandonment for 39-plus years—you're going to act fucking self-destructively for sure.

Danny: Yeah.

Jessica:            And so the practice of choosing to sit with the feeling and not abandon yourself is radical. It' really different. And it will make you feel worse as well as better. It'll do both. It'll make you feel worse, and it will make you feel better. It will make you feel better over time, and it'll make you feel worse at first, which is why I asked if you do -- if you have a therapist, because you want to start with a therapist.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            You want to start with somebody who can hold a container and bring you back to yourself when you start to go into trauma patterns.

Danny:            I see.

Jessica:            Yeah. In doing this, what will happen is you will shift, and you will shift internally. And then new things are going to come up, and you will have choices around how you engage with those new things. And this is what the midlife crises are meant to be about. This is it. You have the opportunity to truly transform what you've been unconsciously transmitting from your inherited shit, from your early developmental trauma.

Danny:            I see.

Jessica:            Not everybody has trauma, but we all have shit.

Danny:            That's true.

Jessica:            In accepting that part of what you really don't like about this relationship that you're in and every relationship before it is how you organize your life in relationship to this woman, whatever the woman is—that self-awareness doesn't mean you can just change. It means sitting with the messiness of that self-awareness to understand why. What have you been getting out of it until it stops working? Because if you understand what you've been getting out of that pattern, which—you know, low-hanging fruit around that is you get a sense of family within that relationship. You get a sense of connection and value and meaning, and you get affirmations that you're a good person and that you can be in a relationship.

                        And those things are so valuable to you for a period, and then they start—I don't understand why everyone wants to get married because I just am like, once you get married, then your partner is your family. The second you move in with someone, your partner is your family. Who wants to date their family? Who wants to date their family? The answer is most humans. That's actually the answer. But not you. You do. You do at the beginning, but you don't in the long run.

Danny:            Right.

Jessica:            And so the only way in, for instance, this relationship for you to change that is for you to not play your part because she's actually not requiring it of you.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            If you came to your partner and you said, "I am going to meetings. I am going to make an effort to hang out with my friends. And I'm going to start doing some sort of physical training and being like a weird person. I'm going to try once every three months to do a crazy adventure, like jump out of a plane or something like that. I'm going to commit to doing something locally that's fucking bananas every three months. Sometimes we can do it together. Sometimes I'll do it alone. Sometimes I'll do it with friends. I'm trying to take more agency in my life to be more of myself"—your partner would not be against any of it.

Danny:            No. She's a ride or die. She's down like that.

Jessica:            Yeah. And she likes being alone. She doesn't need you around all the goddamn time.

Danny:            That's true, too.

Jessica:            Yeah. She does not need that from you. I mean, as long as you are being monogamous and you're being honest and you're being respectful, you can do whatever the fuck you want. So the only reason why you're not doing those things is because of you. And those are the things that are in between you and your happiness because you are a little bit of an Instant Pot. You gotta turn the valve so all the steam comes out because you cook quick. You know what I mean? And so play with it. You live in a region where there are endless opportunities for weird adventures.

Danny:            Yeah. That's true.

Jessica:            Yeah. You live a very short drive from snow and desert and all these landscapes that will take you out of yourself. You don't have to leave your state in order to have wild adventures that are pretty affordable, that won't take you more than 24 hours, 48 hours, something like that. And you just have to remember to choose it because doing that is that steam valve that you need.

Danny:            I see. Right.

Jessica:            It'll make your life more fun for you, and you won't have to blow up your life in order to get those things. The thing about the transits that you're going through is that, as I said at the very start, they're teaching you boundaries. So let me just bring that full circle.

Danny:            Yes.

Jessica:            You have had terrible boundaries with yourself, and therefore, as a result, you've had bad boundaries with the women you date. You tell them, "I want to be home at 6:00 for dinner," and at first, you mean it. And then, eventually, you're like, "I fucking hate being home at 6:00 for dinner all the time." And so, because the boundary with yourself wasn't clear, you somehow forget that that's a limited-time thing for you. You don't enjoy it in the long term. You only enjoy it short term.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And you make a promise that no one asked you to make, right?

Danny:            Right.

Jessica:            And you make that promise and never tell them, "Actually, I need to change." And then resentments grow, and you get stuck and all the things. It's identifying, "If I want change in my life, I need to be change. As I age, I get to be more free. I get to be more wild," because the reason why it's more is not in that way that you do in your 20s where you're like, "I'm experiencing things for the first time. Pew-pew-pew-pew," but instead, it's, "I know myself. I've done these things, and they were really fun. I've never done those things, and it's because I'm scared or because I didn't have the resources or because I just haven't gotten to it yet."

                        And you can make choices. Being older doesn't mean you stop being wild and engaged and changing and growing and being challenged and all the things.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            It just means you do it from an adult place instead of from a child's place.

Danny:            Okay. I like that.

Jessica:            The truth is, unfortunately, we live in a world that's not intergenerational enough. And if you can find older women to be friends with—

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            —who are living their lives in a way that you find inspiring or interesting—

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            —let me just throw that in the mix, right? Because you're referring—when I asked you at the beginning of our conversation if you knew older people, a lot of the people you referred to were either family of origin or dead people.

Danny:            There's one, two people that are living, a teacher and a mentor of mine.

Jessica:            Okay. And then a dead person and family of origin.

Danny:            Right.

Jessica:            So that's a very small number of living people that you actually are in active relationship with.

Danny:            Right.

Jessica:            So what about older friends? The idea that older people are boring or you couldn't have anything in common with them is wrong, I'll just say is wrong. Now, lots of older people you wouldn't connect with. Also, lots of younger people you wouldn't connect with. Also, lots of people who are your age you wouldn't connect with. That's nothing to do with age. It's just to do with people.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            I want to encourage you to see if you can find models of people who are living in ways that you find interesting that are older. And if you can't find them in your life because it's hard to make friends, go on social media and start following people who are older than you—

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            —who are interesting, who are thought leaders, or who are creative in some way—whatever—because a pattern that's emerged during our conversation is that you have limiting ideas that you have allowed to shape into your reality, and then you're unhappy with the reality. But those ideas are yours, and you can change them.

Danny:            I see.

Jessica:            Easier said than done, obvi.

Danny:            Yeah. But it does give me a sense of clay that I can play with, you know?

Jessica:            Yes.

Danny:            Like, these came from you. These are mine. And so, because of that, I can play with it. I can mold it. I can shape it in a different way.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Danny:            So that—I like that.

Jessica:            When you think back to 30, my God, weren't you so different than you are at 39?

Danny:            Oh yeah.

Jessica:            It's hard to imagine, right?

Danny:            So different.

Jessica:            And are you more conservative now? Are you less free now?

Danny:            Hmm. No, I wouldn't say so. No.

Jessica:            No. No. You're just a little different.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Same thing will be true at 50, unless you make choices that are bad. You know what I mean?

Danny:            I see.

Jessica:            There's nothing going to force you to become a stuck conservative person. That's a choice you can make or not. For whatever it's worth, in my 40s, I became more radical. My life changed dramatically. I'm now in my 50s, and I have made nothing but changes so far. I'm becoming more myself, not less myself, because all the shit that I was working on in my teens and my 20s and my 30s and my 40s—they're coming together in a new way. And that is not how everyone's life is, but if you're doing the work and you're like, "Motherfucker. Shouldn't I be done with the fucking work?"—no. But the work builds on itself, and you're able to integrate it the older you get because you have more perspective.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            Okay. I just want to pause and see, did we address your core question? Is there anything lingering there?

Danny:            The only other thing that I—which you touched on—if I can look towards my North Node as a true north, so to speak, right? So, if I ever get lost or frazzled or distracted or overwhelmed with my feelings or I start having the thoughts of wanting to rip out of my skin and do something crazy, could looking at the North Node in Taurus be a good guide? And then, also, I've read about it. I've tried to study it.

Jessica:            You're like, "What the fuck does it mean?"

Danny:            Yeah. Exactly.

Jessica:            What books have you read about it?

Danny:            Jan Spiller, Astrology of the Soul.

Jessica:            She's very poeticy. Have you read Martin Schulman's book on the nodes?

Danny:            No.

Jessica:            So I would read Martin Schulman. He's a dick. You know what I mean? He was a great astrologer, but he's real dick, so it really comes across in his writing is why I say that. I have mentioned to other astrologers that I like Martin Schulman's work, and they're all like, "Jessica, really? This fucking guy?" But I really like his work on the nodes. You wouldn't just read about North Node in Taurus; you would read about North Node in the twelfth house and North Node in Taurus.

                        So, if you've looked at Jan Spiller's book and you've only looked at it in Taurus, that's part of why you don't understand, because you have to also look at it in the twelfth house. Okay?

Danny:            Got it.

Jessica:            That's one part of what I'll say. The other part is, yeah, you could think about your North Node as a guiding star, but also, why get conceptual when you can just work on looking at what you're choosing, practicing being with your emotions? Because that's ultimately what your North Node is telling you to do. Your North Node says you have to cultivate a relationship with your own subconscious and psyche. Your internal relationship to your own values and how you embody them is about boundaries, my friend. It's about boundaries with yourself. It's about recognizing that you do feel like shit sometimes, so therefore, you need skills for coping with feeling like shit, not therefore you need to stop feeling like shit.

Danny:            I see.

Jessica:            You know that all people feel like shit, right?

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. But when you're alone with yourself, you're like, "No. If it feels wrong, it is wrong."

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            "If it's hard for me, it's wrong with me." And that is objectively false. Both of those statements are false. What's correct is when you have acted in your life in ways that reflect your values system towards yourself, your life has gone really well. And when you stop doing that, your life blows up, which is why at around two years, you stop knowing how to be in relationship with yourself, and so your life blows up.

Danny:            Interesting. Yeah.

Jessica:            So you can focus on the nodes if that helps you, but I want you to trust that the direction and advice I've given you is the same thing as your North Node in Taurus in the twelfth house.

Danny:            Got it.

Jessica:            So, if you want to study that North Node, again, you may have been missing the piece about the house. The zodiac sign is literally 50 percent. It is not 100 percent. It's—the house is 50 percent, and the zodiac sign is 50 percent. Okay? So you want to really understand that. Now, I'll say, from my perspective as an astrologer, if one has the North Node in Taurus, their whole life is meant to be spent exploring, defining, redefining, and embodying one's values system.

                        So, as you become aware that, let's say, your nine-year-old self has set the stage that you have played your whole life out on—once you realize that, then you have a shift to make: do I say, "Oh well. That's life," or do I say, "Huh. Adult me actually has a lot of information that nine-year-old me could benefit from"?

Danny:            Right.

Jessica:            "I can adapt." And then, if you do strive to adapt, guess what it'll take: fucking therapy for years. But I can tell you, as somebody who's 10 years older than you—11, 10, 11 years older than you—I'm still alive. What I feel now is still valid. When you're 50, you're not going to be like, "I'm too old to fuck. I'm too old to have fun." No. You're still going to want to fuck. You're still going to want to have fun. You're still going to want to change and grow and make friends, and some of your friends will be 30, and some of them will be 80, hopefully. Hopefully, you'll have friends in both directions, not just younger than you.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            When you feel that feeling that has plagued you your whole life and that has come up several times in our reading where you're just like, "Oh God. I can't believe I still have to do this work. Oh my God. The weight of it," it's like there's this overwhelm, this weighted down, and then there's this sadness in it.

Danny:            Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            When that feeling comes up—and it comes up for you a lot—practice identifying that, "Oh, there's that feeling," and breathing into the feeling, hanging out with the feeling, because you have a lot of coping mechanisms for that feeling, and they're all tragic. None of them help you. So the feeling never changes. It just gets a little heavier with time. And you associate that with aging.

Danny:            Yeah. It's true.

Jessica:            I associate that with abandoning yourself, which, by the way, is more consequential the more years you do it. So, in that way, it is related to aging. But it's really just the consequence of carrying stones in your bag for five minutes versus five years versus 50 years.

Danny:            I see.

Jessica:            Practice just sitting with that feeling, and practice understanding what that feeling really is. Some of it is exhaustion and overwhelm, and some of it is sadness. And then, when I actually—like I'm sitting with it right now. Some of it's fear that you'll fail. So your mind says it's fear that it'll never be done. But what's underneath that fear is, "I'll never do it right."

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And that—that little nine-year-old/seven-year-old part of you, "I'll never do it right"—that part of you needs love and guidance and patience and presence. And if you tend to that young part of yourself, then all these things will change as a result. You tend to the root of the plant, and the plant grows differently.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Sorry. I know it's a lot.

Danny:            It's okay. I think this is part of that work that you're talking about practicing and doing, so I appreciate you guiding me through that. And it does feel like a lot of work to be a fucking human.

Jessica:            It's so much labor.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            It's so much labor. And what happens through the midlife crises is that you feel the consequences of everything you thought you were set on, but you were lying to yourself in some way. There's a reason why everyone hates the midlife crisis. You know what I mean? There's a reason why people really pivot and change during it, either—to become more stuck. Now, not everybody. I didn't enjoy my midlife crises transits—zero percent. Zero percent. And now that I'm completely away from them and it's all a memory, oh, I'm so grateful for them. I look at the changes I made—I didn't think I was making changes. I thought they were slow and stupid. But now—they were the foundation to where I am now, which is so much better than where I was then, for whatever it's worth.

                        The work is painful, but life is not all work. But the cool thing about astrology versus psychology is that the astrology tells you, "Yeah, you're in it. You're in it. The next two/three years, you're in it." So, if you're going to be in it, you might as well do the fucking work.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            This is not forever, but fuck, it's for now. And so stay with it. Do this hard work. I mean, you already were doing it before we had this conversation, right? You got sober.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You're working through your shit in your relationship, wherever it lands you.

Danny:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            It's hard, but it's worth it.

Danny:            Yeah. When you say that, do you say that in reference to life and living and aging, or you say that in regards to the relationship?

Jessica:            It's interesting that you hold those two separate. I wouldn't hold those two separate. As you are turning from 39 to 40, you find yourself for the first time in a relationship that's two years old. So how are you holding those two things separately? Why are you holding those two things separately?

Danny:            I see.

Jessica:            As you find yourself in the bridge between 39 and 40, you drank like an idiot 20-year-old, and then you got sober. Why would you hold that separate from aging, from transits, from the relationship? When I say it's hard but it's worth it, I mean all of it. It's all hard, and it's all worth it. Listen. I am not an optimist. You are way more of an optimist than me.

Danny:            Really?

Jessica:            Way more. Way more.

Danny:            Interesting.

Jessica:            I am not an optimist.

Danny:            My partner would not say that, but yeah, okay. I'll take it.

Jessica:            You have a spark of optimism that I don't have. I'll say that. How about that?

Danny:            Got it.

Jessica:            But I am really convicted that we can change and that change is worth it if you don't like where you're at. I believe it with every fiber of my being. I've seen it. I've experienced it. I've seen it, and then I've seen it, and then I've seen it, and I've seen it over and over and over and over again. We can change as individuals. We can change as a collective. We can change. And the process of change is awful, and it's worth it. It's worth it. I just believe it's worth it. I believe it's worth it. Listen. If you were super happy and you loved the way everything had gone in your life, then what would be the point of trying to change?

Danny:            True.

Jessica:            There are things you're happy with. Don't fuck those up. There are things you're unhappy with. Fuck them up. Change them. You know?

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            And understand that some of that is exciting, like maybe you're going to jump out of a plane. And some of that is not exciting, like maybe you're going to sit in uncomfortable emotions and therapy for months on end. They're all worth it.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            There is a part of you that wants a singular answer. You're seeking—and this is what comes up for you a lot. This is another pattern for you. You want a singular answer that is an affirmation that the labor is worth it, whatever it is—about the relationship, about your job, about whatever. This is the thing for you. And that does not exist, because you will fail. And failure is not evidence that you are a failure. If you fail, that doesn't mean you have failed. It means you failed. There's a difference. And what you're trying to do is not make a mistake in which you become trapped.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            And what I'm saying is the most consistent mistake you've made in your life has actually been to trap yourself in a way of being that you don't want, that you don't get value from, to try to keep yourself safe. The only way to shift that is to explore your relationship to failure, to explore your relationship to being stuck, to explore your relationship to freedom, to explore your relationship to what it means to be in a relationship. This is not about the woman you're with at all. It's about you 100 percent. And also, you're with a woman, a real person who you need to be present with, right?

Danny:            Yeah. Absolutely.

Jessica:            They're both true. So there isn't a singular answer. There is a path. And on the path, you will stumble. And on the path, you will get lost. And on the path, there will be beauty. And on the path, there will be birds and they will be cute, and then there will be weird rustles on the ground and you're like, "Oh my God. Is it going to kill me?" All the things exist on the path, and you get to choose to stay on the path, to leave the path, to be on a new path. And it's really important for your brain to remember that you are making choices and that, even if it's hard, you could make a different choice.

Danny:            Yeah. It is hard to make a different choice.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's fucking very hard. It's exceptionally hard.

Danny:            Really hard. Yeah.

Jessica:            If it wasn't really hard, there would be no therapy industry because everyone's parents would be healthy, well-adjusted people. You know what I'm saying?

Danny:            Right. Right.

Jessica:            If it wasn't hard, then life would be radically different. But it is hard. The reason why most people don't do this work is because it's hard and there's no guarantee that your life gets better.

Danny:            I see. Yeah.

Jessica:            And you can see, as now an almost 40-year-old, how motivating it is to not fucking drive yourself nuts and risk not improving anyways.

Danny:            Yeah. Yeah. I do.

Jessica:            But the path is worth it is what I return to.

Danny:            I see. And one last little question—maybe not so little. In regards to my relationship, if I'm understanding what you're saying, working on my shit and the boundaries part and sitting with that cement block in my chest and gut—that is part of the work that I need to do with self to be able to show up as a good partner in the relationship. Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Danny:            I just know that I did a lot of wrongs, and I'm wanting to do the next right thing.

Jessica:            Sure. Mm-hmm. So you're wanting to perform the next right action. That's not the same as doing the next right thing.

Danny:            I see.

Jessica:            The next right thing is you changing.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            That's actually the next right thing. Performing the next right action is bringing home flowers. It's telling her how much you love her and appreciate her. And those are both really valuable and important, but in this conversation, what I've been pointing you towards is being more honest with yourself so that you can be more honest with her.

Danny:            Got it.

Jessica:            And you may choose to listen to this reading with her. Pause it when someone gets activated. You might pause it and be like, "Let me explain. Wait, wait, wait, wait," or pause it when you see a look on her face and be like, "What do you think?" And then this can be used as a form of couples counseling, right?

Danny:            Yeah. I like that.

Jessica:            Yeah. And this can be a way that the two of you explore what's actually happening in your relationship.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            She may be like, "Hey, Jessica got it wrong about x, y, z." Great. You need to hear that. You know? It's not important that I'm right or that you're right or that she's right. It's important that the conversation facilitates a willingness to explore where you're at, what feels right right now, what feels wrong right now—to explore these things without it being, "What is the right thing?" without it being, "What is the answer?" The answer is you try. And whether you fail or you succeed, you learn something. You try because trying is better than blowing up your life, because you've done a lot of that.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And there's been, actually, a lot of great things about blowing up your life that have occurred over the years and also a lot of bad things. And now you're ready for a new thing.

Danny:            Right.

Jessica:            That's all that this is, is you're ready to try something new. And ready doesn't mean you feel ready. Ready doesn't mean it's all worked out. Ready means you know you're not willing to do it the same old way, even though you want to do it the same old way.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And this is what does separate you from your family of origin: your willingness to continue to try. That's not such a bad thing.

Danny:            Yeah. Thank you for saying that part.

Jessica:            You're welcome. Yeah. Aging is hard, but it is worth it.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            It's kind of cool to get older. It's also hard, but it's cool. There's a lot of freedom in it.

Danny:            Yeah. Okay.

Jessica:            Being an elder Queer—I mean, that's a really special thing.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            It's a really special thing. And it is a powerful privilege to learn how to love yourself better and to share that with another person over the course of time. Again, whether or not she's your life partner forever is super unimportant at this time.

Danny:            Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. There's no reason to not keep on trying and being present with what you've got until there is a reason. Then you change.

Danny:            Yeah. I like the way that you phrased that, the way that you put that, because then, again, there's some changeability.

Jessica:            Yes.

Danny:            You know? It isn't fixed—

Jessica:            Yes. Yes.

Danny:            —and this is the way it's going to be forever. This is like—

Jessica:            It makes me want to choke when I think about something like that.

Danny:            Right.

Jessica:            And the cool thing about being Queer is you get to do it any fucking way you want.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You genuinely do. You just have to be forthcoming with yourself and then with your partner.

Danny:            Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's not easy. That's not easy for you.

Danny:            No.

Jessica:            But it is accessible to you. And that's cool.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Just like sobriety is not easy for you, but it's accessible to you.

Danny:            Yeah, it's not. But yeah, it is.

Jessica:            No, of course not. Yeah. It's fucking very hard, very hard.

Danny:            Yeah.

Jessica:            But it's like breaking massive generational patterns to get sober, so good on you. Yeah.

Danny:            Thank you. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's very intense in your family line, so—

Danny:            It is. Thank you for that.

Jessica:            So I wish you the best with this. I know it's hard, but it is good. I know it doesn't feel good also, but it is good. It is.

Danny:            Thank you so much, really. My heart feels just a lot of gratitude for this conversation, for everything that you called out in a kind way, in a necessary way. And hard work, when I know that it's coming, feels a little lighter to have to push and carry. So to know that, hey, this shit is going to keep going and you're going to have rough periods, and you're going to have some nice periods woven in—you just gave me some realness in an organized way that helps me think about aging, getting older—

Jessica:            Good.

Danny:            —in a slightly different way. And then, again, I feel like you helped organized me in the sense of where the work is because sometimes I do look outside, and then I'm hearing that a lot of it is within me. It's also nice to hear that I didn't totally blow shit up with my partner and that—

Jessica:            You didn't.

Danny:            —it's workable and that we can work towards getting to a good place again.

Jessica:            I think you can. I genuinely think you can. And yeah, I mean, you'll continue to have really lovely transits in your life as well as challenging ones. I mean, the next couple years, you're in your midlife crisis. But again, it's like it helps separate you from your childhood. It helps you heal. It's like that's why it happens. And so, as hard as it is, it's a good hard. I think it's a good hard.

Danny:            Thank you so much for everything. Truly feel really grateful to be here with you. Thank you for selecting my question.

Jessica:            Absolutely.

Danny:            It came at a phenomenal time for me in my life.

Jessica:            Yes.

Danny:            So thank you again.

Jessica:            It's my pleasure.