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

Y:                    Hi, Jessica. Well, first, thank you. And I'm going to read my question. So I seem to have big daddy energy whether I want it or not, and it feels like a gift or a curse. Could my chart help me with navigating it from a place of care rather than hurt?

Jessica:            Okay. Let's pull up your chart right away, okay? So we're not sharing your birth information, but for those looking along, we do have your birth chart pulled up. I want to clarify parts of your question because I hear "daddy," and instantly, I'm like, what is Saturn doing? Where is Capricorn in your chart? I want to know more. But before we go into this, how are you defining it? And you're saying being read as having big daddy energy, right? So how are you experiencing it as a curse, and how are you experiencing it as a gift?

Y:                    So, first, I've been told many times that I kind of had dad energy. An I experience it or I understand it as a gift in the way that I am often making sure my people are cared for. I also make sure that—for example, just an example, I worked in bars for many, many, many years. And so I was drinking a lot. And I realized that when I was drinking a lot with a group of people and [indiscernible 00:01:50] when I started realizing that we were all drunk, then I could keep drinking and drinking, but it was almost like something was taking over me. And then I became really [indiscernible 00:02:02] of everything, making sure that people go home safe, that this person doesn't go with someone if they haven't said that they were going to go home with someone that night—so many things like this.

                        So, yeah, a very big caring energy. Also, I think I'm very good at—like if you tell me, "Well, you know, I struggle with drinking water every day," then I'll be like, "Hey, do you want me to remind you?" And then I will probably call you every day and remind you to drink water.

Jessica:            Okay.

Y:                    So a lot of things like this, and probably other ways that I'm not aware of. And it's a gift because it works really well in appropriated situation, like with animals, with kids, sometimes in kinky ways—so, for me, it works really well when it's consensual. But where I find that it's a curse is when, for me, it's not consensual. It becomes a dynamic, like an unhealthy dynamic, and in a way that I am seen as someone who doesn't need care, who doesn't need protection. I think I've got a big protective energy, too. And I think it made me be too many times in relationships where I'm like a daddy for my partner. I date many women, and I'm a daddy for my partner. And it's not what I want. I want to be in a collaborative or even—

Jessica:            Quick question.

Y:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            You said, "I date many women." Do you mean, "I mainly date women gender," or do you mean, "I date lots of women"?

Y:                    I think I date mainly women.

Jessica:            Mainly women.

Y:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. I'm glad I asked. I'm glad I asked. Okay.

Y:                    Don't give me a reputation, Jessica, please.

Jessica:            Oh, I think I'm trying. Okay. There's a lot of things—I know I'm a little bit interrupting, but—

Y:                    No, no problem.

Jessica:            —already, there are some things percolating.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            So listen. You're a Taurus. You've got your Moon in Capricorn. We've got your Rising in Cancer—we're coming back to that.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            But your Sun—you have this Grand Trine in your birth chart. The Sun and Moon and Saturn are all trine to each other. And this gives you a grounded consistency, like you're somebody who can do exactly what you said. Feed the animals in the house at the exact same time. Call your friend and be like, "Did you drink your water? Did you take your vitamins?"

You have this real consistency, and it's not just how you nurture and care for other people. It's how you're organized. It's kind of how your brain works, and it's kind of how your body works. It's just clocks go off inside of you a lot, right? It's Saturn. Saturn is the time lord, right? So you've got that in your nature. You have got Saturn as the focal planet of a T-square. That's where we're going to spend our time. I'm coming back to that, too.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            But you also have a Cancer Rising, which means you have a Capricorn Descendant. So, when things are working, what it means is you get to be your tender, sensey self, and your relationships have a balance of kinds of care. You take pride in management, like the management of care. So you don't actually want the people you date to manage you. You want them to see you, to care for you, to—like, little things. You've got the hammer. You want her to have the feather, right? You want there to be a balance of different kinds of care.

                        But what can often happen is what you're describing, which is like a parental dynamic—and we're not talking about kink. We're just talking about relationships, right? A parental dynamic is inherently not equal because, in the model of a parental dynamic, the parent knows best and the child isn't responsible for themselves. And that's really cute for 15 minutes, and then it gets exhausting and demoralizing and sad. And that is a risk in your birth chart, and it's kind of reiterated in a lot of ways. So are your parents married still?

Y:                    Yeah. I mean, yes, we are, but you know, when you say—I think this is the part where I was like, daddy issue—when you say parents, my nonbiological dad is still married with my mom. And I don't know my biological dad.

Jessica:            Does your mom know who it is?

Y:                    Yes.

Jessica:            And is he alive?

Y:                    I found out only when I was 28.

Jessica:            Oh.

Y:                    Yes. The only thing I have is I have his name.

Jessica:            Interesting. Your biological father and your mother—they dated for a short period of time?

Y:                    It wasn't really—sorry. It wasn't really dated. I think it was adultery.

Jessica:            Okay.

Y:                    My mom was married to my nonbiological dad.

Jessica:            I see. I see.

Y:                    And my biological dad—I don't know who he was with. They got together. My mom got pregnant. And then she hid the pregnancy.

Jessica:            From your father that you were raised with?

Y:                    Yeah. From everybody, I think, until it was too late. And then no one ever talked about it, and I knew the truth only when I was 28.

Jessica:            Did your dad, the dad who raised you—did he know?

Y:                    Yes, he knew.

Jessica:            He knew.

Y:                    Yeah. But no one talked about it. Everybody in my family knew except me and my sister, but no one talked about it.

Jessica:            This is a thing in your family, right?

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You're not supposed to say things. Don't say things. And you have this Mercury sitting really close to your Chiron. It's not exactly conjunct, but it's conjunct-ish, right? I'm going to give it to you because of your life story, okay?

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            This Mercury/Chiron conjunction. And there's this kind of—do you have throat issues? Does your throat hurt a lot?

Y:                    It used to. It used to when I was a teenager. It's less now.

Jessica:            Because you speak up now?

Y:                    A lot.

Jessica:            Yeah. Mm-hmm. The thing in your family—and when I say in your family, right now I'm talking about your mom and your dad that you were raised with.

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah. Don't talk about it, and it's not there. If you don't talk about the clothes being dirty, then they're clean, right?

Y:                    Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            It's just like magic, right?

Y:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            And you couldn't hate that more. You couldn't be less like that. You really have a driving desire to know the truth. Here's the bit "but," and you do have a really big "but" on this. Venus is opposite Neptune in your birth chart. You have Venus opposite Neptune in your birth chart, and it T-squares to Saturn. That's the other thing I said I would come back to.

                        And this Venus/Neptune opposition—it articulates your mom having a secret affair. It articulates that your mom had feelings for your biological father. Your mom's feelings for him were compelling and consuming, right?

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And it doesn't mean that she didn't love your dad, the dad who raised you, because I don't think that one had anything to do with the other. I think she just fell for your biological father, and I don't think she was ever really thinking of leaving your dad, the dad who raised you. Is that what you know? Was she planning on leaving him?

Y:                    Well, what I know is, yes, I think I know that she was head over heels over my biological dad. What I know also is that she thought about leaving, but she went to see a medium, and the medium said, "Do not leave," because my sister was already born. And so the medium said, "Do not leave with this man because your daughter will die," my sister.

Jessica:            Oh my God.

Y:                    Yeah. And so she didn't leave. And no one in my family talked about it, not my grandmother, not my aunts, no one.

Jessica:            That's very odd. Okay. Wait. There's a couple important questions I have.

Y:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            We're going to call the man who raised you your father and your biological father your bio father or your biological father.

Y:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So your father—did he have money or make good money?

Y:                    No, he didn't have good money, but he was steady.

Jessica:            Okay, because that's what the Saturn placement in your chart—so you have that Venus/Neptune opposition in the sixth/twelfth-house axis, and that can indicate the infidelity and the high romance of the infidelity. But the stability of your dad—it was why she stayed. And this is deeply connected to why and how you have grown up to be the man that you are, who's like, "Yeah, and I'm going to be stable because that makes me loved. I'm going to be consistent because consistency can overcome so many other problems in relationships." It was modeled for you. And it's not that it isn't your nature. It is your nature, and it's also a coping mechanism.

                        The loss—so you have a Pluto/Moon square, which speaks to both the devastating loss that your mother went through in falling for your biological father, losing him. It speaks to the crisis around, "Do I keep this child or not? Will this child cost me my marriage or not?" This Pluto/Moon square speaks to ways in which you were incubated in life-or-death, do-or-die kind of feelings, and they permeated much of your early development, so until you were like seven years old. Your childhood became safer after that point. Things kind of stabilized more after that point.

                        But the thing about your parents—so all three of them—I'm actually not going to speak to your biological father because when I see him energetically a little bit out there—so I am psychic. I am a medium.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            So psychic is just knowing shit that I shouldn't know, and medium is talking to dead people.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            I can see your father, and I can't tell what that means. But you look so similar in the head and the face. And I want you to say your full name out loud for me in French.

Y:                    In French. Okay. [redacted].

Jessica:            Okay. You do want to be married, yeah? Or partnered?

Y:                    I think I've wanted it so much, being partnered, that I've burned myself so much that I don't know if I should want—I don't know if it's—yeah, I'm confused about that.

Jessica:            I have all the answers.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Okay. So we can talk about—and I love the optics of talking about the pros and cons of your big daddy energy, but we're really talking about relationships and boundaries. I know I'm always fucking talking about boundaries, but this is what it is. The question of should you want to be in a relationship—yes, obviously. You fucking love being in relationships. You like doing the work of relationships. You like being in love. You like being in like. You like being romantic. You're so good at relationships.

Y:                    Am I?

Jessica:            I'm not saying you don't have problems. No, no, no, no. I don't mean to say you're not also bad at it, but I'm saying you're good at it, right? Some people are like, "Oh, I want to be partnered, but I don't want to do the work."

Y:                    Oh my God. I want to do—

Jessica:            You're actually down to do the work.

Y:                    Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. You like the work. The problem is you pick for short term even though you want long term.

Y:                    I don't even think that I pick. I think I am desperate to feel a love and to build a love that—I don't know. Something that I don't know what it is because I don't think I've received it. I don't know. But I want to build something with someone, but I want to feel safe and loved, and I want this person to be safe, and I want collaboration. And I know I want that so much. I think it makes it that I don't pick because I don't know how to pick.

Jessica:            So you let people pick you.

Y:                    Yeah, probably.

Jessica:            Okay. That was a lot of words to say that you let people pick you. Okay. Okay.

Y:                    [crosstalk].

Jessica:            No, no. It's good. No, no, it's good. No, go, go, go. What were you going to say?

Y:                    It's because sometimes I don't know if it's me liking them or if it's them liking me.

Jessica:            Okay. I have words about that. Venus/Neptune opposition—if somebody has a crush on you, you're like, "Oh my God. What is this? Do I have a crush on them?" You do. You pick up on vibes, and you're like, "These vibes are fun. I'll play with the vibes." And so you do authentically—if someone catches feelings for you, you like the way that feels, and so you feel it with them. Right?

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So, before I say anything else, what I want to say is, do you have a practice of being in your body?

Y:                    Okay. I've been doing somatic therapy for six years now.

Jessica:            Excellent.

Y:                    I feel like I have a very strong somatic intuition. But sometimes it's so much that I don't know—like I get energetically, and I find it really hard to be grounded, I think.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. I agree. That Neptune in the sixth house has you flooded with information, and then you also have the Moon in the sixth house. And so you get flooded with sensory information, and then your emotions get kicked off. And then you're like, "How do I cope? What do I do? How do I cope? What do I do?" instead of, "Oh, wait. I am a boat, and I am on the water. And the waters are rocking." It's not, "What do I do?" It's, "I need to settle down in this boat because it's a boat, and I'm going to be safe because boats are meant for the water."

                        In other words, you get rattled and flooded with so much information, and that kind of—can I call it BDE? I know that there's a different meaning for it, but big daddy energy? Can I call it that?

Y:                    BDE. Of course.

Jessica:            Okay. Cool, cool, cool. So that's when your BDE kicks online.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            And it's like, "I've got to do something. I've got to fix this." So what you do instinctively is you leave your body, and then you stabilize from outside of your body because, inside of your body, you're getting waves of information and it's too much. So you leave as a way to ground. And it's kind of like—have you ever done any weights?

Y:                    Yeah. I try to do it, but I hate it.

Jessica:            I fucking hate weight training. Thank you.

Y:                    I hate weights.

Jessica:            It's awful. That said, I'm going to give you a metaphor, and we're going to see if it works.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            You can lift something heavy from your wrists. You can lift something heavy from your rotator cuff. You can use your biceps or you can use your forearms. Right? There's a lot of ways to lift something heavy. And what you do is the thing that hurts you. The way you lift is you activate an injury. Okay. Are you kind of dating somebody right now?

Y:                    No, but—I'm not dating anyone, but I think I'm connecting emotionally with someone.

Jessica:            I agree.

Y:                    And so I don't know.

Jessica:            You are. No, no, you are. That's who I'm seeing. That's who I'm seeing. Okay. We're going to call her A.

Y:                    But I don't know if she's—

Jessica:            We don't know if it's reciprocal.

Y:                    Yeah. Exactly.

Jessica:            Okay. Wait. We'll get there in a minute. We'll get there in a minute. Okay. Is she straight?

Y:                    It seems like no, but—it seems like no, but it seems like she hasn't had many Queer relationships.

Jessica:            So A—she's not straight, but okay. So, for instance, you spend time with A, and you show up with your BDE, and everything is fabulous. And then she looks at you like a little cue or like a vibe shifts. And then you get flooded with energy, and it's not just her energy. It's also—it's like it disarms you, and then you start getting flooded by world energy and whoever else is in the room with you.

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And then it's like every other time that you've been flooded floods you, and you have an anxiety response.

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And now you just are still interacting with this cute, little person, and—is she short, or is she young?

Y:                    She's younger.

Jessica:            Okay. She's young. She's young.

Y:                    Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            She's young. I'm like, I see what you're doing here. None of this is good. I'm going to come back to it.

Y:                    Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Jessica:            Okay. You're welcome. You're welcome. So now your coping mechanism is now you've pulled away because you're so overwhelmed, and now you go into—double down on the BDE because now what you're doing is you are fix-it guy. You're like, "Okay. I feel fucking dysregulated, out of my body, a little anxious. So now I'm going to be like, 'Well, what do you need, girl? How can I take care of you, girl? What's up with you, girl?'"

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And she loves it because who wouldn't love somebody being super attentive, super focused on them? And then you kind of settle back into this groove inside of you, and you feel better. Now, things aren't better, but you feel better because it's kind of like if I'm anxious and I smoke a cigarette, I feel better. I've actually harmed my heart and my lungs, and it's very bad for all the things. But it's this Pavlovian response. I feel better.

Y:                    Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. So a really core piece—and I'm guessing, if you're already in somatic therapy, you already know this. But a really core piece of you interrupting your part of the pattern where you get into dynamics with women—primarily women, right—where you don't get to be a full person and you always have to take care of them—we don't want you to be in a relationship where you're not getting to play that role, partially because that's who you are and partially because you love playing that role. Right? There's two parts happening.

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            But there's a really big difference between getting to play a role in a dynamic with someone you care about and them not seeing you and there not being room for you. But in order to be able to stop your part of the pattern, what needs to happen is you unfortunately need to be more curious about that anxiety spike that happens—

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            —because sometimes what that anxiety spike is is your system saying, "Something's not right here." With A—say her full name for me.

Y:                    Her name is [redacted].

Jessica:            How old is she?

Y:                    She's 30. I'm 45, and it scares me because for the last three, four years, all the connection that I'm making are with women who are like 30, 31, 32. And I don't understand why.

Jessica:            I do.

Y:                    Okay. Can you tell me?

Jessica:            Yes, I can. I'll tell you right now. You're dating people in their Saturn Return.

Y:                    I didn't think of that.

Jessica:            28 to 33. Boom. Saturn Return. So you're dating people when they're in Saturn crisis, when they're looking, "Daddy, can you fix it? Daddy, tell me how to be a grown-up. I want to be responsible, but I also don't want to be." And you're like, "I know what my role is with these women. I feel at home with these women." The problem with the woman who is going to be able to see you in the fullness of all your parts, public and private parts—you would be completely uncomfortable with her today because you don't know what to do. The overwhelm floods. The emotional data floods. And then you have these coping mechanisms that come online too quickly to fix it.

Y:                    Okay. I'm wondering because—and when you say that, something makes sense because I know that I'm also playful. I'm such a good boy. There's a part of me who really wants to come out, and it's completely different than this daddy energy.

Jessica:            Yes. Yes.

Y:                    I don't know how—

Jessica:            There's not flexibility in the dynamics that you end up settling into or exploring. In your birth chart, you've got Pluto/Moon square, as I said earlier. It gives you really intense abandonment issues. The thing about dating these nice, cute, young women who express interest in you is you know what will break the two of you up at the beginning. You know the end of the book. And so you're not going to get stressed out in the middle of the book when it gets scary because you already know what the ending is. It gives you a sense of control. Fucking Saturn, man. It gives you a sense of control.

                        And so listen. You have a Uranus square to your Mars/Jupiter conjunction. You want to be completely free. This is the part we haven't talked about yet, and it's really important. This is where we can see your biological father in you. You want to be free. You want to be unfettered. You don't like somebody up your fucking ass. You don't like somebody telling you what to do. And again, these young women do not do that to you. They cannot do that to you because the role the two of you have is not that.

                        So, even if they are like, "I need you to talk to me more. I need you to hang out with me more"—need, need, need, need, need, because I see they do do that—you have a role. "I am responsible. I will show up." And you lean into that. But you have Uranus intercepted in your fifth house. First of all, so Queer. So Queer.

Y:                    Yes.

Jessica:            So Queer. Like, not Gay, just fucking Queer, just deeply Queer. I'm not saying not Gay, but it's not about Gay/straight. It's about Queer—

Y:                    Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            —which is interesting to me. And it might just be that I've plucked this one kind of emotional thing that's happening with this person right now, but it's interesting to me that this person A is not super Queer, because you are so Queer. Right?

Y:                    It's really interesting you're saying this because I notice, also, a lot of women that I've been with or that I've—they've been so drawn to the Queerness in me, and often, I've been their first Queer relationship, not always, but often. And I'm confused because—I'm confused.

Jessica:            Okay. You have so much complexity and dynamicism inside of you. And you know how water, over time, shapes rocks?

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You have this really deep groove. You have this really deep groove in you. It's deep like water shaping a rock deep. You are their guide. You show them the ropes. You are safe for them. They experience the kind of unstructured world of Queerness through you, who is like, "I'll hold your hand. I'll make you safe. Don't worry about it." And you love that game.

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            The problem is nobody's blowing your mind. Nobody's showing you the ropes. And that makes you feel safe at first, and then eventually, you don't feel seen or held because you're not getting challenged in this way. And this is why, at the beginning of our conversation, I said, "You're dating for the short term and not the long term," because in the short term, being in dynamic with somebody who is emotionally like, "Ahh," but other than that kind of lets you lead the way—it's a clear, "Okay. Yes. This feels right." But it's not sustainable. You have friends, yeah? Are you a person with friends?

Y:                    Yes. I have less now, but also, I make friends really easily.

Jessica:            Okay. So I'm seeing this woman, and I keep on seeing the color yellow with her. And I don't know why. But she's a friend. She's not somebody that you're dating. And she's closer in age to you. Do you know who I might be talking about?

Y:                    I'm thinking of two people. There is one much closer to my age. She's two years younger than me. And there's one who is maybe ten years younger than me. So I don't know which one you are—

Jessica:            The one who's your age—she's Queer?

Y:                    We used to date. We dated for three years and a half, and then now we've been friends for six years. I was her first. So I don't know.

Jessica:            Are you still friends with her?

Y:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Were you her last?

Y:                    I don't know. We don't talk, like—she's someone who doesn't share a lot.

Jessica:            Okay. This is the person I'm seeing. Okay—

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            —because she's like your mom, right? She's not talking. Okay. And you dated her for a long time. Okay.

Y:                    Three years and a half. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's a long time. I'm going to stick with her. What's her name?

Y:                    [redacted].

Jessica:            Am I seeing this correctly? You tell me. You were together, and you had, like, a life together.

Y:                    Yeah. We were settled.

Jessica:            You were settled.

Y:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            And then it kind of got boring or petered.

Y:                    I fell in love with someone else.

Jessica:            No.

Y:                    Yes, I did.

Jessica:            Were you bored first?

Y:                    I don't know, because I didn't realize I was getting bored.

Jessica:            Is this a pattern for you?

Y:                    To fall in love with someone else?

Jessica:            Mm-hmm.

Y:                    I don't know, but it's a pattern for me to fall in love.

Jessica:            Okay.

Y:                    Easily.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Y:                    But also, the same thing—I fell in love without realizing I was falling in love. Like, I mean—

Jessica:            Yeah. I see that in you. And again, it's that Venus/Neptune opposition. Okay. I'm going to be totally forthcoming.

Y:                    Okay. Go for it.

Jessica:            Not forthcoming. I'm going to be direct, direct, direct. Yeah.

Y:                    Go for it. I'm ready.

Jessica:            Yeah. You're ready. You're ready. There's a very strong part of your chart that speaks to you are romantic. You fall for other people—drop of a hat. Each time you fall in love, it's like the first time you fell in love. It was never so strong as it was this time. This time is different, every time. Okay.

Y:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            I call it Disney princess. Okay.

Y:                    Yes.

Jessica:            So you have the Disney princess in you.

Y:                    I'm a big daddy with a Disney princess.

Jessica:            Yes. Again, very Queer. Very Queer. So that plus the stuff we're calling big daddy stuff, right?

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You've got very deep Saturn vibes. You are just like, "I want stability. I want security. I don't want to be left. I don't want somebody who's unpredictable or unsafe. I want to be the safe guy, and I need them to be safe. I'm going to make myself indispensable to the women I date so they don't ever leave me. I am never the bad guy. I'm always the good guy."

And then we have this part. You've got this Uranus in the fifth house in Scorpio. You like to have sex and romance to be like a fucking project that you dive into and then you dive out of. It's square to Mars, which means you have hot and fast attractions, and then you get bored quick. It's square to Jupiter, so you like to take chances. You are unpredictable. If it's not going somewhere, you feel like you're being suffocated to death.

Y:     Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:      All of these arts of you are real parts of you, right?

Y:     Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So this ex-girlfriend of yours—she was, technically speaking, really marriage material for you. She was trustworthy. She saw you for who you were.

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You were able to settle into stability really quickly. So you didn't have to worry about a lot of things. But there wasn't that unpredictability. There wasn't that kind of wildness that keeps you excited.

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so it's not just that you got bored. I think that's an oversimplification. I think what happens for you if you're going to be in a partnership that's monogamous—because you do monogamy, right?

Y:                    First, I just want to think of being in a relationship where it's collaborative, where we're both happy, and then I can think about something else.

Jessica:            About all that other stuff. Okay—

Y:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            —because when I look at your chart, it looks really messy, whether you want monogamy, whether you do monogamy. On the one hand, 100 percent, you are monogamous. On the other hand, no, you're not. It's both. And part of what this means is that for you—again, I'm going to just be very direct. You play it safe. You play it safe because your emotions are anything but safe. And so there's this way that you choose people who you know who you are with them right away, and that's playing it safe. And they know who you are. They know who you are, giving the BDE. You know who you are. And so then you slip into that deep groove again.

                        So let me go here. We're coming back to A, okay? We're coming back to A. And you kind of had a question about, is this really happening? Is the question, "Does she like me?" Or what's the question about A?

Y:                    The question about A is the fact that she's younger, the fact that I don't know if even dating is good for me now because I've been going in the same circle. Yeah. So there was no question. It was more like—

Jessica:            Okay. Okay, because I have the answer, then, to your non-question, which is you have dated this girl so many times already in your life. You've been in this dynamic already. You know your role. You know how exciting it is at the beginning, and you know how it ends. And it's a real bummer for you. And so this is a great opportunity for you to behave differently than your deep grooves would have you. You are going through a Uranus square to your Mars and your Jupiter by transit. And this makes it a really good time to change your behavior.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            And so do you date online? Do you do digital dating at all?

Y:                    A little bit, but I think what I've been doing since about a year is I've been trying online to meet men.

Jessica:            Interesting. How's that going?

Y:                    Thinking of dating men—and I've been with some men in my life, but it's like they're my friends.

Jessica:            Yeah. I can see it's a fun ride to get on. I don't know if it's like a new life path for you, exactly. That's what it's looking like right now. And I don't think that means stop. It's an experiment, and it's actually really good for you to try something new. But I'm going to give you a different little bit of online dating homework.

Y:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            You try it; you don't try it.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            This is not because I'm saying this one thing will fix everything.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            It's about—kind of like what you're doing with meeting guys online. You're trying something new to see what shifts, right?

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            It's not just about guys. It's about, does this put you in contact with something else? The first thing is—and you're 45, you said?

Y:                    Yes.

Jessica:            Yes. You're 45.

Y:                    Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Let's push that up. 38. Let's say you go online. You look for women who are Queer-presenting, 38 and older. And I'm going to give you homework to, in the next three months, go on three dates with three separate adult women who are closer in age and gayer than you usually date.

Y:                    I hear you, but to be honest with you, the reason, also, why I don't really date online, especially when looking for women, is that I find it, as a Trans man, to be very—

Jessica:            Harder.

Y:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            Totally. Totally. Okay. You may try to do this, and it may not work.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            We're just holding space for saying to the Universe, "Hey, girl." We're just opening up the doors and windows and calling to a high femme—that's—I'm seeing you correctly, right?

Y:                    Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            We're calling to a high femme, and we're like, "Hey, girl. I'm here.

Y:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            And you're just going to try reaching out, DMing or responding to a DM, to somebody who you would typically be like, "I don't know because, because, because." It's just a date. I'm not saying go out for dinner. I'm saying eat an ice cream cone together. Meet at the park and take a 15-minute walk to see if you vibe. Just try—

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            —something where you don't feel confident that you'll be in control with a femme.

Y:                    I struggle contacting women because I need an emotional connection to think about anything else. So I think, for me, going to talk to someone for dating, especially if it's a woman—I feel lost.

Jessica:            Okay. I agree with everything you just said.

Y:                    Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            You do. It's like the pressure destroys your openness. It's like it's not fun. It's not romantic. And that's why you don't do it.

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And that's why I'm telling you to do it, not because I think what will emerge from this exercise is falling in love with the perfect woman.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            Your expectations are part of your problem because you're just like—this is the Disney princess problem. You're like, "I was just walking down the stairs, and I just bumped into her, and then it just happened," right? So what I'm encouraging you to do is to be like, "Okay. I'm going to interrupt fate."

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            "I'm going to"—and listen. Every Queer who is on a dating app knows you might end up with a friend or a date. I mean, that's okay, right? This is not about falling in love.

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            This is not about falling in love. You said "mm-hmm" way too quickly, and I see you. This is not about being like, "I could fall in love with her." This is not about being like, "Oh, I think we could vibe." It's just about being like, "Okay, this person seems like an interesting person."

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            Okay? Sorry.

Y:                    It's just that—okay. Is there a way that my chart can tell me how to not fall in love too quickly? Is there a way?

Jessica:            That's a great question.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            I'll give you two answers.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            One is no, absolutely not. You just fall in love ridiculously. And there is a way that this is connected to your origin story. You were the product of an impossible romance.

Y:                    Oh my God, yes. I didn't think about that. I never thought about it like that.

Jessica:            I know, but literally, right? You were the product of an impossible romance that never could be, that was so romantic but not for this world. And so you are out here seeking an impossible romance that never could be, that is not for this world. And it ends up being really lonely.

Y:                    And sometimes abusive.

Jessica:            Yeah. Oh, I'm sure, unfortunately.

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            I'm sorry. And so the layer that becomes incredibly important is you recognizing, "Oh. Okay. I feel like I'm falling in love with this person. That just means that I have a crush on them"—

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            —because—okay. There are people like me, right? If I feel like I'm not falling in love, I'm actually falling in love; I've felt it a very small amount of times in my life. And there's people like you. I'm pointing my finger at you. And you're just like, "Oh my God. That cat sat on my lap for 15 minutes. I think I'm in love with that cat. Me and that cat have a bond." You go all in, right?

Y:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            And if she has a crush on you—now we're talking women, not cats. If she has a crush on you on top of it—so you're feeling your feelings, and then, because you're so porous, you're feeling her feelings. So now you're double emotional.

Y:                    Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So I have this expression in my head. I call it a rainy day in Portland, and this is what I mean. You know how you're watching a scary movie, and it's dark and it's raining, and the character sees the house, and you're like, "Bitch, don't go into the house. The house—you know there's somebody in the house that's going to kill you, right?" But if the movie takes place in Portland, where it's always dark and rainy, then it doesn't mean the same thing as it would if this movie took place in Montreal, where it's not always dark and rainy at all. So you feeling in love is just another day in Portland. It is not data that you treat it as.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            Here's the data that I want to encourage you to put a lot of weight in. It's that moment that you kind of hate and kind of love after the, "Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God," has passed, where you are having a hard day; you come home. She gets it, and she says or does the right thing. She either gives you space or she asks a question, whatever it is that you're needing in that moment. And then you feel even more vulnerable with her. Do you know what I'm talking about? That moment—it's not completely pleasant for you. It's very vulnerable, not in a way that's romantic. It's in a way that's like, "Oh, I'm in a real collaboration. This person is getting me and holding me."

                        It is in that moment—if I'm being totally honest with you, that's when real companionship begins for you because you're not just playing daddy; you're being held by an equal adult partner. And that's also when you start to get really critical of her and you have a harder time being with her because it's so much more vulnerable. And at the end of the day, as much as you are the most romantic—you are so romantic—you fucking hate being vulnerable, okay?

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So you love it until it gets to a certain depth where you don't know what to do.

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And that's when it's really—it's sad.

Y:                    When you were talking about that moment where I feel held and seen, you know, I cannot remember really feeling that moment. And so my next question is, did I feel that—in your opinion, did I feel that with the yellow—

Jessica:            You did.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            In the first—did you move in together?

Y:                    Yes.

Jessica:            Around six months?

Y:                    Yes.

Jessica:            It was around then?

Y:                    No, no, maybe a little more than six months. Maybe a year.

Jessica:            Okay.

Y:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            So it was, I'm seeing, at around six months you did have a time with her where you did feel that. It was unlike the Disney princess. It was not super romantic. It was not needing to swoon. But there was this level of being held by her that you experienced, and it was not long after that that it became harder for you with her a little bit. This is the thing. This archetypal maleness of father figure never is vulnerable, never cries, never gets seen as a whole person, right?

Y:                    Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And you are desperate to break out of that.

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            But when we look back at that relationship with yellow, when she let you just be this guy she was dating that she really cared about, it unmoored you. There were moments, there were ways, that you felt so good. And there were moments and ways where you're like—it just threw you really off your center because you have this habit of anchoring yourself through the role you play instead of through your somatic body, which is vulnerable and complex and layered and sometimes just doesn't even know what to do.

                        And I feel like this woman—I'm not saying that this relationship was perfect or was sustainable. I want to be really clear about that.

Y:                    Okay. Okay.

Jessica:            And I don't want to idealize this relationship, because there were other things that were problematic.

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            But she met you as an adult person. I feel like she really got you. Now, I think in the last year, that wasn't true anymore for some reason.

Y:                    I think I was missing the passion.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's right. What you experienced with her, with Yellow, is not uncommon for everyone, not just you, but certainly for you, which is there's stability and love and compatibility, and then there's passion. And we have this terrible tendency to be like, "There's that or this," instead of getting it with both people. And what I do see for you that's really important is that you have a weird and surprising sex life. You really need a weird and surprising sex life. And what that means is going to be different in 2026 than it will be in 2029. That's part of the weird and surprising. Whether we're talking about kink or not is not actually even the point. The point is that it evolves, and not just because you make it evolve; there's a spark and dynamic thing.

                        Part of being somebody's first, part of being in a relationship with somebody who's Queer but never really experienced a Queer relationship before, is you get that fucking burst of, "Holy shit. It could be like this. I didn't know." Right? You get this excitement of being their first. The "but" is they have no other skills or experiences to pull from other than you, or maybe you and one other person. And now, I'm not saying you can't like being with people who you're their first is like a bad thing inherently. It's not. It's a pattern. And that's why I'm calling attention to it.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            Dating somebody who's 30—inherently, on its own, whatever. You do you.

Y:                    It's not really—it's not what I want [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Obviously. Totally. Totally.

Y:                    It's not what I want. And it wasn't like this before. It happened in the last—

Jessica:            Of course. Of course, because this is what happens. Let me just true-talk you 2026. Okay. At a certain point—we'll call it your 40s—everybody is fucking tired. We've all done this. We've all gone around the merry-go-round enough, right? And so there is an openness and an ease with a 30-year-old who's just gotten out of her fucking 20s—what does she know—versus meeting somebody organically and having that thing that you crave, that Disney princess thing. It's harder to do with somebody who's in their 40s or their 50s because they've been burned before. They've done it already. And so this is why I gave you the advice of going online and dating three women who are older than your type.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            Again, it's about you—

Y:                    Trying?

Jessica:            —trying and opening up the windows and the doors so that the Universe can bring in something different—

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            —because you have this Capricorn Descendant. So dating somebody who has significantly less experience than you—because what is time? What is age? It's experience. In the context of social and political discourse about sexuality, what I'm going to say is sticky. In the context of your birth chart, it's really easy. You have Uranus in your fifth house. You want to be fucking someone with Queer experience. Okay?

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            So, at a certain point, fucking with people who have lots of experience but maybe not Queer experience—that was Queer for you at one point. That was different for you at one point. But if it's not different for you anymore, it's not going to work for you anymore because that's how your sexuality runs. You like surprises. You like difference. And this Uranus in your fifth house is yelling at me, okay?

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            And it's just telling me it is perfectly valid and cool if your preference is to date straighter women. But because it's not, and yet you find yourself doing that, that's where I'm like, okay, there's something underneath it. There's something subconscious driving you. And so this is why I'm pushing you to do something that is just so uncomfortable for you—

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            —because the thing that's comfortable for you is not what you want. The thing that's uncomfortable for you might actually get you what you want. And the truth is you are not alone in the world of dating, and you feel you are because you're caught in a habit. And in this habit, you keep on going back to the thing you know because it's safe, even though it's not making you happy.

Y:                    I feel alone in terms of dating because I don't know how to navigate, one, being a Trans man. So I don't know how to navigate the Queer world like this. And also, because I think I don't really—I have abandonment issues or whatever. I never really know who is going to want to be with me. I don't know if I have a choice.

Jessica:            Okay.

Y:                    Does that make sense?

Jessica:            Yes, it does. And so I want to say, first of all, I'm looking at your chart. You have a choice. You have a choice. You're making the same bad choice over and over again, but you do have a choice. But part of what I'm starting to hear is you don't live in Queer community with other Trans men, or it doesn't sound like you're surrounded by Queers.

Y:                    It's not that. It's I'm surrounded by Queers who are not identifying as Trans men.

Jessica:            I see. I see. I see. So is there not a world of Trans men where you live?

Y:                    There is, definitely.

Jessica:            Of course there is.

Y:                    Definitely.

Jessica:            Okay. That's my next piece of homework. You need to—I'm not talking about dating Trans men, although go for it if you want to. I'm talking about befriending because you need friends that are Trans men who share your gender, right? It's really important that you have one or two. You don't need 50—one or two guys that can share your lived experience in this way, like how it is to be in the intersection in this particular way, like disappearing in plain sight and being very visible at the same time. It's complex. It's layers. It's complex.

                        But all of this, whether we're talking about Queer community, whether we're talking about Trans community, whether we're talking about dating—all of this comes down to one central theme, which is you are needing to change so that your life can be different. And the only way to change to make your life different in the ways you want is to do things that you're very uncomfortable with. Now, I'm not talking about unsafe. I'm talking about talking to people where you're just like, "I don't know if I want to talk to this person," or going into spaces that you're just like, "I don't know. I've lived in this city for x amount of years. I never go to that place." Try.

                        This is just an exercise. So, if we think of it from an energetic perspective, because of the way that your Saturn functions, you have just deepened and deepened the grooves of how you let your energy move. And the only way to shift that—you can't burrow your way out. The grooves are too deep.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            You don't want to climb out. That's just fucking torture. It's just like labor. It's not how you meet friends or date women, right? It can't feel like that. So, instead, what I'm saying is be a fish flopping on the side of the water. Be uncomfortable. Be uncomfortable. That's all. And so, for you, what that's going to mean is you're not going to be clear about what your role is in an interaction.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            You're not going to be clear about how to be useful and how to be that guy. And you will hate that. I'm just going to be honest. The reason why you're not doing it—you don't fucking want to do it. And also, it will be hard, and it will work. It will be hard, and it will work. So what I'm saying is this is my prediction, okay?

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            You go and you have a social thing, and you're around people who are just different than who you're usually around. And so your role is different. You will go home. You sit on your couch. You're alone. And then you have anxiety.

Y:                    Oh, that feeling's—yeah.

Jessica:            Yes, yes, yes. That's what I'm talking about. You don't have social anxiety. You have post-social anxiety. You have a hangover. And that's what throws you off. It's that feeling of vulnerability, of, "I don't know if I can trust these people. I don't know if I want to do this. I don't know if this is safe. I don't know if this is fun," whereas, when you're around people, you just kind of ride the fucking vibes, right?

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You're good. But then, when you're no longer riding other people's vibes, you're left with your own.

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So, in your somatic therapy, bringing this up and bringing this in will really help you because the reason why this happens is partially because you're vibing, right? You're in the room, and you're vibing. And so you're collecting people's energy. You're filling yourself up with people's energy, and it's fun. It's fun. Everybody's like—it's good. And then you go home, and then you're like, "Oh my God. I took home polyester old sweaters, and I'm allergic to wool, and I have all this wool with me." You're feeling other people's feelings. That's part of it.

                        So there needs to be a process of getting in your body when you get home before you sit down on that couch and being like, "Okay. I'm going to return whatever's not mine with love." Right? It's not punitive. It's not rejecting. It's, "What's mine is mine. What's yours is yours. Let's be tidy." So having a practice of that would be really helpful.

And the other thing is that you don't like being vulnerable, period. I really want to say I don't know how much you identify with this, but this is one of those rare times where I'm going to say you don't like being vulnerable. And whether or not you think that's true, it's something to really reflect on—

Y:     Okay.

Jessica:            —because when you come home and you sit on that couch and you're like, "Was that actually fun? Do I actually like these people?" some of that is just, "I feel vulnerable because I don't know where I stand or what I want or who I am and who they are.  I don't know what comes next.  I don't know how to fit this into the groove." And the discomfort of that is good for you. Developing tools for coping with that is good for you.

                        So, much like falling in love easily—just a rainy day in Portland. It actually doesn't mean you're in love. It doesn't mean she's the most important thing that's ever happened to you. It just means that's how you feel when you have crushes. Similarly, that kind of stressfulness that can happen when you're home alone after being around new people—it's not actually an indication of anything about the people. It's an indication of psychic hygiene.

Y:                    Yeah. And when you say—because I'm struggling with psychic hygiene, and I do meditation. But it seems like I never find the way of being grounded.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. Here's a quick question. Do you know Audible?

Y:                    For the books?

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

Y:                    Yes.

Jessica:            You do. Okay. I have a meditation. I think it's free with Audible. That's why I asked if you have Audible. And it's a meditation for Libra. And what that does is it walks you through an energetic process of clearing energy.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            It's supposed to be a meditation for Libra, but really, it's energy work that I snuck in there.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            So I'm going to tell you to go ahead and try that out and see if that helps because that's a whole practice.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            Okay. There's a couple things I'm seeing. I have never seen this before, and I've never recommended this before, but this is what I'm seeing. When you come home—you live alone?

Y:                    Yes.

Jessica:            And you live upstairs from someone or no?

Y:                    No.

Jessica:            Great. When you come home and you step in the door—I'm not talking about—you know how you can stomp your feet to get the snow off your shoes or whatever?

Y:                    Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            I'm not talking about that. What I'm seeing is you step in the door. You say your name three times out loud or in your head. And then you stomp your feet, one, two—both feet, three times, as a way to ground into the space and just shake off, like snow off your boots, any energy that's not yours. Ground the fuck in. And the reason why we say our name three times as—it's as a way to bring your energy back in. So, straight out the gate, you can feel your energy has already shifted a little, eh?

Y:                    [indiscernible 00:56:35] it makes sense, and it makes me think of a dance on—I want to dance with somebody and I shake a lot. And so I want—

Jessica:            Okay.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            Okay. That makes perfect sense that that's why I'm seeing it for you because it just is—it's you, right?

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            So here's the problem. You desperately want this to be different, right? You desperately want this to be different.

Y:                    Yeah, I'm desperate.

Jessica:            I see it. And equally, there's no fucking way you're going to walk around the world without your best defense. They're both true, right? And so, when you're around people, you're like, "How can I help? I'm here to serve. How can I help? I'm here to serve. How can I help? I'm here to serve." And some of the way you serve is you're like, "Oh, you like your ego stroked. Oh, I can play nice and stroke your ego." Somebody else is just like, "Oh, I like to joke around." "Okay, I'll"—it's not just in a literal service way, right? You're just really good at meeting the moment.

Y:                    Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Another piece of homework I'm going to give you is track that impulse.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            Be aware that you're doing it so that you choose to do it or not, instead of what you're doing now, which is you're in that groove; you have no choice but to be one way because that's the way that you know how to get like and love and care and safety, right? So it's about interrupting the assumptions and practicing being intentional. "I'm choosing to do this right now because it's fun."

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            And recognizing when it stops being fun and whether or not you can stop choosing it.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            If you practice these things, it's not going to magically fix anything overnight, but it will build to change.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            It will build to change. Now, hold on for a minute. So, if you stay with the work, it doesn't have to be exactly what I said or whatever, but if you stay with this work, here's my prediction. You will feel terrible, okay? Sorry. I just want to be really honest. It feeling bad is not an indication that you're doing something wrong.

In fact, it feeling bad is an indication that you're doing something different and you're allowing yourself to feel feelings that you don't know how to process. Remember this is something in your family of origin. It's, "Never talk about the difficult thing. Avoid the difficult thing like the fucking plague so that you don't have to deal with it." And you've been kind of, again, living around this discomfort.

And then this will work. You will find deeper connection that is more meaningful to you. And I do think partnership is a really big deal to you, and I think it is something that you really want and you would be really great at—

Y:     Thank you.

Jessica:            —and great in. And I think you will be partnered. The path is not going to feel good all the time, and that doesn't mean it's bad. And this is part of your work. This is something that you know, but when it's happening, you don't always trust, is that just because it feels bad doesn't mean it is bad. Just because it feels good doesn't mean it's good. We can look at A as a great example of that. A feels good, but you have been on this ride before.

                        So being in the practice of sitting with your feelings, sitting with the discomfort, and not saying to yourself, "What should I do about this?" but instead, "Huh. I wonder what this is about"—that's the shift. It's basically be the friend that you are to other people, but to yourself.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. Now, do you have one last lingering thing that you need to ask me?

Y:                    It was more like about what you were saying. Do the work, and it doesn't always feel good. And what feels bad for you doesn't mean it's bad for you—

Jessica:            Yes.

Y:                    —or what feels painful. But I've suffered so much, and I suffer so much in terms of feeling things in my body, feeling every energy in the room, and sitting meditating and trying to undo the pattern that I don't know the difference between—

Jessica:            I see what you mean.

Y:                    —when it's painful and feels bad and it works, and when it's painful and feels bad and it doesn't work.

Jessica:            Yes. Yeah. So, first of all, fucking million-dollar question, right? For anyone who does the work, I think this is a really difficult question to answer. And I have this belief that there are two kinds of pain. There's the pain of breaking and the pain of healing.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            And they hurt just as fucking much, right?

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            So this is why so many of us self-destruct for the course of our whole, entire lives. We do unhealthy things that keep on yielding the same shitty results, but it's the breaking that we know. It's the devil we know. And so we stick with it because it's less frightening on a level. It's familiar, whereas the pain of healing is confronting you with a problem that you need to solve anyways.

So here's an example. You go to a vernissage where there's a bunch of fucking Trans guys. It's a fucking community event. And there are some very lovely, young 30-year-olds who would love to flirt with you so very much, and it would be the easiest thing in the world for you to be like, "Okay. Let's do that."

Y:     Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            But instead, you have an awkward conversation with some guy that you might become friends with and you might not, and then you go home and you think about the night, and you think about what could have happened, how the night could have gone. It's uncomfortable.

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            That's a great set of pains because you didn't do your typical habit. You tried something new, not because something happened, whereas if you went home that night after getting the cute, young Queer's phone number, and then you're like, "Did I just do my pattern? Did I just do the same thing?"—it's the same pain. Maybe it's less pain to think, "Oh shit. Did I still do my pattern?" But you can ask yourself questions, and you can say, "Is the discomfort I'm experiencing, is the pain I'm feeling, is the insecurity I'm experiencing—are these emotions the same ones that I always find myself feeling? Am I in the same old pattern? Or is this because I don't know what's going to happen next? I don't know who this person is. I don't know who I am with this person."

                        And this is not a forever answer, the one I'm giving you. It's the right-now answer. It's like, over the next two years, push yourself is basically what I'm saying.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            You want there to be an answer. Listen. Child of Saturn to child of Saturn—right? I'm a triple Capricorn. I get it. I always want there to be an answer. And the challenge and the beauty is the same thing. There is not an answer.

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            There's not an answer. The answer is, if you know how to be devotional to me but being devotional to me is at the expense of you being devotional to you, it's a fucking problem. If you are the best daddy that all of your friends and all of your dates could ever ask for, fucking glorious—if you are a good daddy to you. And that's the imbalance that is uncomfortable and scary to correct.

It's like, how do you force yourself to do something that you know you technically should do but you don't really want to do? It's kind of what a dad does, right? How do you say, "No. This is for your best interest. You've got to go do this," even if maybe it isn't for your best interest? You want it to be, and then it didn't work out. You still gotta try, right?

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            And so part of this is trying new things because you believe that that is the correct action, and part of it is recognizing that you are capable of being responsible to your welfare. So, if things turn and they're not safe, you are capable—based on how old you are, you have learned from fucking experiences. You can say, "Oh shit. This has gone from 'I'm uncomfortable' to 'I'm unsafe.'" You know how to get the fuck out. You know how to do that.

                        So it's about trusting yourself. And it's really hard to trust yourself when it's not a deep habit. And you have really deep habits in being trustworthy for me, but you don't have deep habits of being trustworthy for you.

Y:                    Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            So that's what this is about.

Y:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            This is the new practice that you're engaged in, right?

Y:                    Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And this means interrupting your social habits, and your dating habits, I would say, as well, because you already know how to always be responsible to them, devotional to them, but it does come at the expense of being that way to you.

Y:                    Yeah. It's because I know how to be safe for others, but the problem is I don't know how to know if people are safe for me.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Y:                    And this is why it's so hard to do the work.

Jessica:            It is so hard. And here's the good news. You know how to do it. You don't have any practice, but you actually know how to do it because it's the same skills. You are fucking fabulous at showing up, protecting, and taking care. You already know how. You know where the line between codependency is. You know how to do it kindly. You know when to be a little gruff. You know when to be a little nurturing. You already know how to do all that shit.

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You just have no habits of doing it for you.

Y:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You actually have skills. You just don't have habits. And we underestimate the power of habits. So remember this about yourself. You have the skill. You don't have the habit.

Y:                    Okay. Okay.

Jessica:            If you didn't have the skill or the habit, you'd have a bigger problem in front of you—

Y:                    Okay.

Jessica:            —which is part of why I'm like, "You're going to be fine."

Y:                    Okay. Thank you.

Jessica:            If you do the work, you're going to be fine because you already know how to do this work. You don't know how to make the choice. You don't know how to stick with the choice. But those are easier skills to cultivate once you know how to do the fucking being an adulting thing, right? You're so good at adulting. Okay. Good.

Y:                    Thank you.

Jessica:            Yeah. My pleasure. That is where we needed to end.

Y:                    Thank you.

Jessica:            That was the important part.

Y:     Thank you so much.

Jessica:      Oh, it's my pleasure. So great to meet you. Take really good care.