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

N:                    Well, I'm just going to go ahead and read my question. And I titled it "Do I Have a Problem with Infidelity, or in Other Words, Do I Have an Infidelity Problem?" Dear Jessica, I have a pattern of cheating on partners right before splitting. In the moment, it feels inevitable, and in retrospect, there is always a better way to end things. But I cheat on those exes with people who I'm genuinely interested in and want to pursue. In short, they become my next SO. I'm afraid of hurting the people I love, even when they're no longer the person for me. How can I use the knowledge in my chart to combat this bad habit?

Jessica:            And are you currently with someone?

N:                    I am.

Jessica:            How long have you been with them?

N:                    Since November.

Jessica:            Okay. And what's the right pronoun to use?

N:                    He/him.

Jessica:            So you've been with him since November, and did you cheat with him on your ex once or in a pattern?

N:                    No. Just once.

Jessica:            Just once.

N:                    As soon as it happened, I was like, "Okay, I gotta go end this now."

Jessica:            Okay. So let me dig a little deeper, and then we're going to get at your chart. But when you say just once, do you mean you physically sexually hooked up only once, but vibes and energy and intimacy was building for months leading up to that just once?

N:                    Yep.

Jessica:            Okay.

N:                    Absolutely.

Jessica:            Okay.

N:                    There was emotional infidelity leading up to this.

Jessica:            Yeah. And that's the pattern, too, right?

N:                    A little bit, but yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah, because—okay. Let's pull up your birth chart. So you were born December 15th, '94, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at 3:30 a.m. Okay. There's so much to talk about here. So you hooked up with—what will we call him? We'll call him boyfriend. Is that good?

N:                    Yeah. Let's call him boyfriend.

Jessica:            Okay. So you hooked up with boyfriend, and then you immediately told ex, "Oh my God. Ex, I did this thing. We need to end"?

N:                    So, actually, no. Not exactly. So wow. There's a bit of a story to this, but I'm going to try to condense it.

Jessica:            Okay.

N:                    I moved out of my ex's place where he lived with his family. And within the week that I moved out, I cheated on him. And then I was supposed to see him on a Saturday, and the Friday right before that, he calls me when I'm with boyfriend. And he's like, "Hey, can I come over to use the bathroom?" He was out and about with his friends—

Jessica:            Totally.

N:                    —and he was like—yeah. Anyways, and I was like, "Actually, you cannot come by right now." And of course, he pushed, and I said, "I'm with somebody. This is what's happening." And that's when we broke up, which also happens to be a pattern, breaking up over the phone.

Jessica:            Okay.

N:                    But yeah. I meant to tell him on Saturday. It just jump-started a day before.

Jessica:            Okay. So this is all part of the pattern, is you start to pull away because you're already emotionally getting enmeshed with a new crush. Is that part of the pattern in your relationships?

N:                    No. It's actually—I would say that by the time that I cheat on my ex, I'm already feeling emotionally neglected or in some way not emotionally taken care of.

Jessica:            But—okay, because here's the thing that I'm going to push back on as your psychic, is that when I look at this energetically, it looks like you don't just fuck with guys. And you hook up with guys only, yeah? Am I seeing that right?

N:                    Mm-mm.

Jessica:            Oh. Girls, guys, theys, thems, all the people?

N:                    All the people.

Jessica:            Okay. So the people that you're hooking up with when you have a different SO—significant other, for those who don't know—you're not just hooking up with them; you know them?

N:                    Yes.

Jessica:            So vibes are building.

N:                    Mm-hmm. I would say so.

Jessica:            Yeah, because that's the part that I think is a really important piece of this that you're not fully including. And are you asking this question because you want to change the habit?

N:                    I mean, I guess so. I'm a romantic person, so in theory, I would like to not break up with this person. But should that happen, I would not like to hurt that person in that kind of way. I would like to have a healthy breakup for once.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. So that is a lot of words to not exactly say, "Yes, I want to change this habit." Can I pull that out of you? Not if it's not true. If you're not sure if it's true, that's okay. That's kind of why I'm asking, because as I look at you energetically—and it might be partially because you are romantic, and every time you get with somebody, you're like, "This is going to work." But okay. I'm going to pull back a little further, and then I'm going to give you room to answer.

                        What you've described—there's a lot of things in your birth chart that speak to it. I will get there, for sure. But what you've described is an avoidant coping pattern, right? It's, "I'm not really happy with this person. They're not making me happy. And I'm not leaving. Also, I'm vibing with somebody else, and I'm not really owning it. And then I did something to blow up my relationship so it's not my fault I have to go." So all of these things are kind of avoidant, right?

N:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Even though, in a way, it's confrontational because your partner does find out eventually. Is that right?

N:                    Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Because of this, even if this relationship is the only and last relationship you'll ever be in, the coping pattern will get activated eventually, even if it doesn't get activated through being unhappy with this person and infidelity.

N:                    What I'm hearing is I have an avoidant coping pattern, and it's not just infidelity; it happens in other ways. It manifests in other ways. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It's kind of like having a substance-abuse issue is—you know, if you drink too much and your drinking becomes a problem, okay, that's a problem. But then you stop drinking, and the impulses that drive you to drink still need to be dealt with, the underlying issues. It's like that.

N:                    Okay.

Jessica:            And there's a reason why I used alcohol as an example, because astrologically, Jupiter can be related to alcoholism, can also be related to certain forms of infidelity. And you have a Jupiter issue in your chart, which surprised me zero percent because this is usually what I see when people have a pattern of cheating as opposed to a one-off, extraneous circumstances.

                        So I'm going to just come as gently as I can—and you know I'm not the most gentle. I'm doing my best. I'm going to come as gently as I can back to, realistically, do you want to change this about yourself?

N:                    I mean, absolutely.

Jessica:            Okay.

N:                    I want to be a better person, essentially. And I love the people I love, and yeah, it's kind of crazy to think that my last relationship ended the way it did. And I do feel a lot of shame around that.

Jessica:            Do you tend to feel shame about cheating?

N:                    I feel like that should be an easy answer.

Jessica:            No, no. None of this is going to be easy for you. And I want to just hold space for I know people are judgy about cheating. This is a no-fucking-judge zone, and if anyone is hearing me say that and is like, "You should judge cheating," no. That's not what we're doing here at all. I just want to be really clear.

And I just want to hold space for the complexity of this because it's not like you're like, "Fuck the person I'm with. I'm going to do what I want. Fuck everybody." I mean, I know there are those kinds of cheaters. You are not doing that. I want to just acknowledge that. So I'm expecting to ask you a lot of questions where you're like, "I don't know." So I just want to get—

N:                    I'm going to try to answer to the best of my ability.

Jessica:            That's real.

N:                    And then I'll get to the short of it.

Jessica:            Okay. Great.

N:                    So, when I cheat on somebody, I do feel shame and guilt, and I usually end up telling this person immediately about it. I don't try to keep it a secret. And also, I've been told by other people—right? And I always think to myself, "Well, they're hearing my side of the story." But I've been told by other people that, at the end of the day, it's not the worst thing I could have done in context, which always makes me feel a little relieved. But then I'm like, "But again, this is my side of the story."

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So let's start with that. It's not the worst thing you could do in context. Here's why I disagree, and also, of course, it's not the worst thing you could do. I mean, there's a lot of terrible things you could do that you're not doing. Excellent. Okay. Agreed. But the problem with that line of thinking is that it decenters how you feel about yourself. It's, "This person did something bad to me; therefore, I'm entitled to do something bad to them." But that means you're taking the worst behaviors of someone and then holding yourself to that standard. And that's not who you want to be.

                        And as I look at your birth chart, there's a lot of things in your chart that speak to this issue, but let's just hang out with your Saturn/Mars opposition. You've got your little Mars at 0 degrees of Virgo, 37 minutes, sitting opposite to Saturn at 6 degrees and 47 minutes. And this opposition tells me that you have strict morals. You believe that certain things are right and certain things are wrong. This is why I fully expected you to say, "Yeah, I do not feel good about this when I do it. This is not a good feeling for me."

N:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You also have a Mars square to Pluto. And so there's a lot of things that this means, but one of them is you have a really hard time being the bad guy. Now, that doesn't mean you're not the bad guy. I mean, you cheat on somebody, and you become their bad guy. That's just reality. But you fucking hate being somebody's bad guy. And because of that, because you hold yourself to such a rigorous and strict moral code and you have what can, I imagine, kind of build up to being having a hard time consistently standing up for yourself—is that correct?

N:                    Yeah. Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. It looks like the pattern is—so you're dating Joe Schmo. You're dating X Schmo, whatever we want to call them. And you're like, "That's not okay. That sucks. Don't do that." And then, after they do it three more times, you kind of stop being aggressive because you would have to get a lot more aggressive in order to stay in the dynamic. And so it becomes like a power struggle where they're the bad guy instead of you being the bad guy. Am I seeing that pattern correctly?

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. This can happen with that Mars/Pluto square. And it's related to a lot of things, which we can kind of dig into if that's helpful, but let me stay with this for a moment to say, in the moment, in these relationships—and I keep on seeing the number five or six. So I don't know if you've been in five or six relationships in which there was infidelity at the end.

N:                    No, not really. It's kind of mostly two relationships, but it just feels like it happens in a similar way.

Jessica:            Okay. And it might be just—I'm going to leave that because it keeps on coming up. I'm going to leave it over there, and we're going to come back over here. Will you say your full name out loud for me?

N:                    [redacted].

Jessica:            So let me tell you why I asked for your name in this moment. It's because you want to talk about this. You want this reading. This is an issue that's important to you. And also, as I'm starting to talk about this stuff, something in you is kind of getting tight and shutting down.

N:                    I feel the tightness. I'm not sure about the shutting down.

Jessica:            The tightness, I would say, is a form of shutting down. Are you comfortable with me psychic-ing in your nooks and crannies, or would you prefer to keep this more technically astrological?

N:                    No, I'm comfortable with everything.

Jessica:            With the nooks and crannies. Okay.

N:                    With the nooks and crannies.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay, because what I'm seeing is this kind of rigid—kind of going rigid thing. It's like a familiar feeling to you, eh?

N:                    I would say so.

Jessica:            Yeah.

N:                    I barely recognize it.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. You barely even noticed you were doing it. And this is actually a really important emotional coping mechanism that you have that lays the foundation to this pattern because what happens is you're in a situation with a person, and they start doing shit, saying shit, whatever, that you're like, "No. I don't like it. It's obnoxious," or, "It feels bad," or whatever it is. It can be deep or not that deep. And something kind of goes rigid in you, and you're not exactly there anymore. You're a little bit gone from yourself.

N:                    I guess, in a way, because let's say I get the ache, right? I think, when you say gone from myself, what I hear is a little bit like abandoning myself because I think I shouldn't feel this way about this.

Jessica:            Yes, yes, yes. Okay. So you have your Ascendant and your Venus and your Pluto all in Scorpio. And so it's really hard for you to hold, "This is how I feel," without an explanation or a defense for it. So it was easier for you to understand how you kind of abandon yourself by acknowledging that you feel all these complex emotions, right? And I'm not saying—what you're saying is astute and important, and also, you don't need an excuse to feel how you feel and to cope how you cope, you know? Just want to hang out there. Are your parents still together?

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Was there infidelity in their marriage?

N:                    I don't know. I don't think so, but there was a time when my mom suspected it. There was a time I suspected it. But based on a recent conversation with my mom, I'm not sure it happened. But maybe it did.

Jessica:            I guess all we really need is the suspicion, though, right, to just have it be in the mix?

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's what it looks like to me as well. It looks like it's very possible, not like, "Oh, for sure," but looks possible. Ultimately, the pattern that I see is that—and I'm going to just translate what I'm seeing in your birth chart without focusing on the astrology of it, and I'm articulating that because you have Mars in Virgo, and I know that you might really want to know where I get what I get. And if that's the case, you just ask me and I'll tell you, okay?

N:                    Okay.

Jessica:            But for now, I'm just going to synthesize it, and I'm going to tell you that what I see happened is you get into situations with people. You're very excited about it. You're very hopeful about it, very romantic. And you have a little bit of a devotional way of loving. You just pour yourself into people—that good Scorpio "I am going to eat, breathe, sleep you." And it's just delicious. And then everybody gives you the ick eventually, not because there's something wrong with you—because everybody's icky. I mean, come on.

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            You know what I mean? Me, you, we're all icky eventually on some level. So, eventually, somebody gives you the ick, and then dynamics occur. And what I'm seeing as a really more subtle throughline here is that sometimes it's them bugging you. Sometimes it's them offending you. Sometimes it's life just being a pain in the ass. And you kind of go rigid and abandon yourself, go rigid and abandon yourself. And it becomes more and more of a pattern. And they are knocking at the door. They're trying to get your attention. They're trying to get your attention. And then they act worse and worse.

                        This is not your fault. To be clear, this is not your fault. I'm just articulating what I see as a pattern. And it's your pattern, so you tell me if that makes sense or not.

N:                    I honestly don't know if I have felt, at least in the most recent relationship, that sort of banging-on-the-door situation that you described. But I definitely do resonate, I guess, with that—like, the behaviors get worse.

Jessica:            The behaviors get worse from the ex, from the person you're with?

N:                    Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah.

N:                    From the person that I was with.

Jessica:            And the pattern is they get kind of more aggressive, more demanding, more controlling, or—it's like I want an "or" in between all of these words, right? Is that correct?

N:                    Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. So I would call that banging on the door.

N:                    Oh.

Jessica:            It's trying to shake you. It's like, energetically, they're shaking. And listen. Again, bad behavior from other people is their fucking problem, right? But when we see a pattern, there's something really important because at the point where—okay. You were happy. Things were good. And then you were like, "I don't fucking know." And then they start acting in ways where you're like, "I don't know about this. This is not working for me"—at that point is, ideally speaking, when—and this would feel premature to you, which is why you don't do it.

But at that point would ideally be the time when you go off with your diary or a bestie or a therapist, or all three, and start really unpacking, "Is this dynamic working? Am I not showing up in the relationship the way I used to because I don't like this person as much, because I'm not as happy, or is there something else going on with me?" because when you do that kind of work on yourself, you don't stay in unhealthy relationships as long, and you don't need to have a replacement lined up, because that's what you're doing right? You're having a replacement lined up.

N:        I mean, it feels like it.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. I mean, 100 percent. Your friends may be supportive and be like, "That's not what's happening." That's just them enabling. That's, for sure, what you're doing because the vibes are there—in the cases of infidelity, the vibes are there before the hookup. But you don't end your current relationship based on vibes and potential. You do it based on more of a certainty, like, "Oh my God. We couldn't stop ourselves. That's how magical we are."

N:                    I'm so sorry, but that is just so true.

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

N:                    No, it's—oh my God. I love to hear it.

Jessica:            It's so true. It's so true. And this is the thing. In the moment—this is the thing about Jupiter when it's related to cheating. In the moment, you think, "This has nothing to do with ex. This is about me finding love, and this is about me having an experience. This is about me and boyfriend," or whoever the person is. "It has nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with me." That's what Jupiter always tells people who cheat motivated by Jupiter, okay? And there are people who cheat for other reasons motivated by other planets, to be fair.

                        But the problem with this line of thinking is, of course, it has to do with your ex, obvi, because you wouldn't cheat on your current boyfriend right now. No way, because it has to do with the person you're with, right? So there is that. And this is, again, why I disagree with your friends when you're like, "Oh, it's not the worst thing you can do." Sure, it's not the worst thing you can do, but it's not good for you. It's not about the fucking person you're cheating on, although that is relevant.

                        It's about how you're coping with your life and the lies you're telling yourself and which ones you believe. We all tell ourselves lies to get along, right? We must. But for you, inside of all of this is a fear of being alone. Otherwise, you break up with the first person, you be single, and then you explore the vibes with the next person. So when was the last time you were single?

N:                    Okay. So great question.

Jessica:            Thank you. I feel like we're in for quite a ride. Okay.

N:                    Okay. This is why I called myself and the question Messy in Love. The reason why some people say it's not that bad is because my ex cheated on me for ten months.

Jessica:            Oh. And then you cheated on him.

N:                    I didn't cheat on him immediately. I broke up with him, but not before I knew he cheated on me. He told me he cheated on me afterwards.

Jessica:            Wait. This is the ex you just broke up with?

N:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay.

N:                    At the end of 2022, November 5, my ex told me he wasn't sure how he felt about the relationship; let's just take it day by day. By then, we had been together for about five years.

Jessica:            Oh, damn. That's my five. That was my five.

N:                    Oh yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Okay.

N:                    That is—makes a lot of sense.

Jessica:            Sorry. I kept on seeing a five. So you were with him for five years, which is not what I was thinking. I was thinking it was a shorter-term relationship than that. Okay. You were with this guy for five years, which means—how old were you when you started dating him?

N:                    I was about 20.

Jessica:            20. Okay. That's a really big deal.

N:                    Yeah. We broke up, and I was single during that time. And—

Jessica:            For how long?

N:                    Maybe four months before I started seeing him again.

Jessica:            I see.

N:                    And also, the relationship became open between us.

Jessica:            When you got back?

N:                    When we got back together. And also, he had the condition that he didn't want me sleeping with men.

Jessica:            So you were allowed to hook up with other people but not cis men?

N:                    Not even Trans women.

Jessica:            Oh. So this was a body parts, not a gender, thing.

N:                    Yes. It was a body parts, not a gender, thing. And it was a conversation several times, but it was—it never really led to anything other than him saying he's just not comfortable with that.

Jessica:            Who was he having sex with?

N:                    Cis women.

Jessica:            Okay.

N:                    He's straight.

Jessica:            Okay. He's straight. Okay. Yeah. I mean, girl, if ever I psychic'd a straight man, it was your ex-boyfriend. And how long were the two of you together after that four-month break?

N:                    Three-ish years more, I think.

Jessica:            So, for those three years, you were hooking up with other people but respecting the boundary he had around it?

N:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. And back to my original question, the last time you were single, you were 19 years old? So you haven't been single since you were a teenager, really?

N:                    That's correct.

Jessica:            And you're in your 30s.

N:                    And I'm in my 30s.

Jessica:            Okay. Cool. That's important information, right? Okay. So whatever infidelity that we're counting as the other person was when you were a teenager.

N:                    I had a partner in college for about a year or so, and once things were deteriorating, I cheated on them with my most recent ex.

Jessica:            Who you were with for like eight years or something.

N:                    Ten years. Yeah.

Jessica:            Ten years. Shit. Okay. Okay. Okay. And that tracks why I was seeing men, because the first thing, I was like, "Oh, you date men," because you were just with this one guy for so long, and he was such a guy. And you're with a cis guy again?

N:                    I'm with a cis guy again. Yeah.

Jessica:            And you guys are monogamous?

N:                    We are monogamous.

Jessica:            Okay. There's so many layers here. So context is really important, the context you shared about being poly and about his infidelity and all this stuff. Also, I have such personal issues with the particular kind of boundary he had and the messiness of it. That said, were you happy with him post-breakup?

N:                    That's a great question.

Jessica:            Thank you.

N:                    I honestly don't know at this point in time. I want to say yes because I was with him for so long afterwards. But I think there was more unhappiness than happiness or content.

Jessica:            Yeah. It looks like a lot of power struggles.

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            It looks like a lot of power struggles. So, basically, the relationship was five years and then five years?

N:                    Yeah, just about.

Jessica:            Okay. So here are the layers that I want to talk to you about. The first one is we can talk about the context of your last relationship and how you handled it, what you did and what you didn't do, or we can talk about your pattern of kind of cheating to get out. So do you have a preference? Because this breakup is fresh. This is a very new situation.

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            Should we be focused more on the specifics of this situation or hold it more as your patterns?

N:                    I think that it would be really helpful for me to look back at the relationship, as much as I would like to avoid it.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. So what I'm seeing is he was really controlling, and he was really manipulative. And you stayed for five years and several months after you knew that about him.

N:                    I didn't realize until afterwards that he was being controlling. I did realize that his behavior was manipulative, but I gave him always the benefit of the doubt, like, "He doesn't know what he's doing."

Jessica:            Okay.

N:                    And then, more recently, I thought maybe he does.

Jessica:            Okay. So I have a question. If I have a hammer, and you and I are hanging out and we're having coffees, and I keep on hitting you with the hammer, but I'm not really paying attention to what I'm doing and I don't really know what I'm doing, is it okay?

N:                    No. I hope not.

Jessica:            I mean, it's a really obvious example, right?

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            This is really, really important because there are so many harmful things that you can do, that I can do, that ex can do and has done. And whether it comes from unconscious motivations or conscious motivations to harm, the impact doesn't change. If somebody else is holding on to my hand and having me hit you with a hammer, it still hurts you the exact same way.

So, when we first started the reading, I felt you go rigid, and I said, "Oh, you abandon." And you were like, "Well, yeah, I think so, but I wasn't even tracking it." And this is how you spent more than five years with this guy, and you were able to do it making excuses for his behavior and decentering your own feelings and your own needs.

Eventually, you did what makes perfect sense for somebody who's making excuses for their partner and just being like, "You're treating me like shit, but you don't know what you're doing. Maybe I'm overreacting." Eventually, you act out because you're entitled to act out, because you've just been eating shit for all this time.

N:        Yes.

Jessica:            So the thing that's exceptionally important for current you and boyfriend is that you practice—and I'm not saying perfect. I'm just saying practice noticing when you go rigid with him because that really subtle and kind of deeply ingrained pattern of yours is your part of the pattern of being in a situation that doesn't work for you and not recognizing it until you're drowning. And say the current person's name.

N:                    Yeah. His name is [redacted].

Jessica:            What do you call him?

N:                    [redacted].

Jessica:            He's also straight, eh?

N:                    Yeah. He's straight.

Jessica:            Yeah. Do you want human babies?

N:                    I think I do.

Jessica:            Does he?

N:                    We talked about it, and he said—which is crazy, but he did say that he had never really thought about it. And that was a few weeks in. So I was like, "Okay. Good to know."

Jessica:            Okay. You're certain you want babies. He's 30-what?

N:                    He just turned 30.

Jessica:            30. So he's 30, and he's never thought about whether or not he wants babies?

N:                    Yeah. Crazy.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. See, I'm drawn to talk about your current relationship, but I feel like you want me to focus back on the old relationship. And I will do that as well, but let me stick with this new relationship if I can.

N:                    Okay.

Jessica:            Is that okay?

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            So the whole thing about babies—I already knew that you had talked to him about it because this is kind of your move, right? You're all in. So you talk about the future. You think about the future.

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. That's not bad. It's not good; it's not bad. It's just a way of being. Has he told you a number of things about himself, including but not limited to, "I've never thought about whether or not I want children," which is—by the way, I hope you hear this. If somebody hits 30 and has never thought about whether or not they want children, they don't want children. That doesn't mean they are saying, "I don't want children," but wanting children is an active thing. Not wanting children is an active thing. And then there's this third thing, which is like, "I have a boundary, and I will not have children." So I want to just name that, because I feel like it's an important distinction.

                        So that's an incompatibility point. That may change. Maybe he will all of a sudden want kids or evolve to want kids. But are there any other things that you know about him that you're a little bit like, "Hmm"?

N:                    When it comes to work, I think he's a brilliant person. I don't think he's applied himself in the things that he wants to do.

Jessica:            Yeah. When I look at him around work, he looks like a 24-year-old. That's not an insult, but it's not you. It's not what you want. He's not thinking like, "Oh, I just hit my 30s. I'm building and moving towards something. I'm taking this shit serious." Yeah, he doesn't have a building mentality about it. And that's actually really, really, really, really important to you. You have a Saturn/Mars opposition. You like the idea of building things. You like the idea of building a life, of building expertise, of being reliable. These things are actually really important to you, eh?

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

N:                    Definitely.

Jessica:            He's amazing. He's great in so many ways. And he's sometimes not reliable. He's usually reliable, but then, every once in a while, you're like, "What the fuck? Where did you go?" Yeah?

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Here's the thing—these are just a couple things, right? I've just pulled on a couple threads here. That doesn't mean don't date him. That doesn't mean you can't have a future with him. But your patten is to be like, "Lalalalala. I can't hear any of these things. No, no, no, I can't see them. I'm going to ignore them."

N:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And you can do that on a honeymoon. You're great at that. But down the line, this shit's going to bug you—

N:                    Okay.

Jessica:            —because it's ultimately a lack of maturity, or it's a lack of accountability. It depends on the context. He's got some really mature parts to him, and then he's really happy to have his 30s and his 20s look very similar to each other. That is good for him, as far as I'm seeing, whereas I do not see that you have that same attitude towards time.

N:                    Oh. Yeah, definitely not.

Jessica:            No. And okay. So that fist, that tightness, is coming back up. Can you feel it at all?

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay.

N:                    Yeah. Thank you for naming it because, as soon as you said it, I was like—

Jessica:            I know. It's—here it is. It's okay. It's not like a thing you're doing wrong. It's a coping mechanism when you're presented with something that's hard for you to process emotionally. It's hard for you to stay in your body, so you get kind of tight, and you kind of shove everything compact, and then you're gone. And then you're a little confused. You have a harder time focusing. You're gone. And that empowers you to stay with people that aren't a good match.

That empowers you to not say to somebody, "Hey, I'm obsessed with what we're doing. I love dating you. This is going really great. And also, I for sure want kids. I really care about career. Just so you know, these are things about me. And I don't need these things in the next two years, but this is who I am, and this is who you're dating. And I don't get the sense that we have the same kind of long-term goals around that. Does that feel right?" Just go in curious. Go in honest, because when you—oh God. Instantly, we went back in there. We went back to the rigidity part. Did you feel it?

N:        A little bit.

Jessica:            Okay. Cool. You just want to practice noticing it because, when you notice it, you can do something with it and about it. And when you don't notice it, you go into a mode. And trust me when I say this is directly connected to cheating because it's connected to you abandoning yourself when there's still wiggle room and things building up to a point where you feel like there's only one way out, and that's out out. And it's also related to what I'm starting to think of as not a fear of being single, but more maybe a terror, like a really intense resistance to single. Do you have any single friends?

N:                    I have one single friend, and then there's my sister and my brother, and they're my friends.

Jessica:            Right. Totally. Totally. Totally. But they're not the people that you've chosen. They're like—package deal.

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            So the one single friend—are they going through a breakup, or are they single single?

N:                    That's a great question.

Jessica:            Thank you.

N:                    She is messier than I am. And thank you for saying this, honestly, because I think about her often, and I think, am I being the same way? In a different way, but she definitely has a huge discomfort—I can't speak for her, right—around being single and staying single.

Jessica:            Yeah. I see that. There's this compulsive, reactive set of behaviors and impulses around hooking up, pursuing romance and relationships. The two of you are different people. You have different shit. And also, there's a reason why you're friends. You can totally relate. You can gas each other up. You can say, "Yeah, what you're doing makes sense because of x, y, and z," instead of being like, "You're constantly running for your life. You're constantly running for your life. You could actually just take a seat. You could actually just make different choices so your life would be easier." Right?

                        And part of not knowing anyone who's single speaks to how you live your life, right? Not having any single friends is—it's a little surprising. Do you find yourself a little surprised by it?

N:                    Yeah. I didn't really notice it.

Jessica:            And I think it's really important to allow yourself to settle into that awareness and see if you can be intentional about maybe making friends who are single, getting to know people not because they're connected to your date, not because you're flirting with them—yes, I see you—and just because you're getting to know them as people. That's really hard for you. And part of the rub of never having been single as an adult—I mean, again, those four months, they count for something but not for this conversation.

                        And it's so painful, those four months. They were so painful, right? And it's just like that's not what single is inherently. Single is inherently not partnered. It's not inherently good, bad, sad, happy. It's life. And sometimes it's all the things, and sometimes it's none of the things. And so I do want to encourage you to practice connecting with people outside of your partner. And do you have Queer community and Queer friends?

N:                    I made friends through a job, and some of them are Queer. And absolutely adore them. Still friends with them. Yes. He's partnered, and—

Jessica:            Okay.

N:                    But yeah.

Jessica:            So you have one or two Queer friends, and they're partnered?

N:                    Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Great. Okay. A great place for you to start is Queer community. Can you connect with other Queer people? Because it's something you're missing in your life, I'm seeing.

N:                    Absolutely.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's like a heart pain. And the way that you have primarily connected with Queerness is through dating, but that's just like a teeny, tiny part of being Queer or of being Gay. It's not just about sex or dating or flirting. It's about values and community and all the things, right? And so that's a great place for you to start. And as I say it, I see something completely different than what I've seen before in you, like a weird tingle, like a weird tingle in your stomach.

N:                    I'm really resonating, I guess, with what you're saying. I 100 percent see what you're saying and kind of know it already. I don't know. It kind of feels good to hear it, as well as a little like, "Oh fuck." I'm a little nervous about it, too.

Jessica:            Yeah. That makes sense, and I'm going to get there in one second. But let me say this. What I was kind of seeing is a little, like, tingle. What I'm calling tingle in your stomach was it's exciting for you to think about cultivating Queer community. It's a part of you that is deeply underdeveloped because you were in this relationship with a cis dude who's very straight for your whole adult life. And there's a great deal of excitement about expanding your world so that it better reflects you. But it immediately confronts you with, "Oh, I'm in a monogamous relationship, and I wouldn't want to do anything to jeopardize my relationship."

                        So hang out with me here. This is because you are somebody who vibes. You vibe with people. You do. You do. This is part of why you have created an adult life full of couples, because then there's less of a risk of any messiness, right? So the couples are either your friend or your friend's partner, or maybe your friend and your friend's partner or both your friends. But it's your friend and your friend's partner. So it's safe, right?

                        Stepping outside of all coupled, all straight people, you really test boundaries because those boundaries rely on you instead of on these external things, like these people are a partnership, and this is the girl and this is the boy, and I interact with the girl because the girl is safe and not the boy. It's like taking your little caboose off of a track and just being like, "Okay. I get to drive my car any old where." And that level of freedom—you haven't really experienced it because you've been in this partnership with his rules, right?

N:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            His rules look rigid to me. He looks like he was quite controlling. So I'm encouraging you to notice when you go rigid. I'm encouraging you to create a life outside of this man. I almost called him a boy, and I just wanted you to know that. I called him a man for you more than for me, because he's kind of a boy, okay? And this is not a chronology thing. It's more of a—you know.

Creating a life outside of him intentionally and then coming home and being like—or texting him on the way home and being like, "This is what I did. These are my new friends. It was super fucking awkward in x way, and it was super fun in y way"—practicing sharing with him your happiness, exploring having vibes with people that you don't run with those vibes must be love or romance or sex, which—listen. If you all want to be nonmonogamous or polyamorous, that's one thing. But I am speaking to this pattern that is kind of avoidant.

So it's about exploring energy instead of clamping down on energy. And sometimes the way you clamp down is by being like, "This is what the energy is. I have decided we are now best friends. We are now going to be falling in love." Both of those things can happen with you, eh?

N:        Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah, because it's a little bit of—it gives you a sense of control, and that sense of control makes you feel, "Okay. Now I know what I'm doing with this person," instead of, "I have no idea what's happening here. Are we flirting because we like each other as friends? Are we flirting because we're actually like, 'Uh-oh. Shit. I’m attracted to this person'?" You hate those questions. You like to rush to an answer.

                        And so going into space where there's single people and there's single people and there's Queer people, where you are clearly presenting yourself as, "I am in a monogamous relationship with somebody, and I'm looking for friends and connection. I'm looking for community"—that is not something that you have done. And you deserve it. You need it and you deserve it.

                        And none of this will stop you from cheating to get out of a relationship, but what it all will do is help you to build up a relationship to yourself so that your whole world doesn't revolve around your partner. And then, if you are unhappy, you'll have more people and places to run it by, where people are like, "You don't seem happy." And then you'll be able to be like, "Oh shit. Am I not happy?" which—again, it looks like until you're about to drive off the cliff, it's like you don't even realize that you're unhappy. Even when I asked you, "Were you happy in the last five years?" you were like, "I stayed."

                        And so this is really advice that I'm giving you around building up who and what you are outside of your partner. The relationship before him—you were like a little baby. You were 19 years old, right?

N:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. But you cheated on that person. Were they also cheating on you?

N:                    (shakes head)

Jessica:            No. It was just like your way of getting out of the relationship.

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. I wanted to just bring that up. Because you've only been in like two relationships before this current person, it puts you in a difficult position to track a pattern. But I do agree with you as an astrologer that this is a pattern for you. Okay. I see. I lost you again. Okay. I brought up the pattern, and you went rigid and gone.

N:                    Oh.

Jessica:            It's okay. I don't want you to feel bad about it. Do you spend a lot of time alone?

N:                    I don't think so.

Jessica:            I don't either. I think a little bit more time alone would do you good because you've got this beautiful Venus conjunction to the Ascendant. It's such a lovely aspect. One of the things about this aspect is people find you to be very pleasing. It's easy for you to connect to people. You have good social skills. You know how to go to lots of different kinds of places and connect well.

                        The problem with this aspect is that you're good at those things, and the world is always going to give you flowers for being good at those things. And so it can be really enticing to prioritize the relationships you have with other people because you get this external reiteration over developing a relationship with yourself. And when you're left alone with yourself, you have a Pluto/Moon opposition we haven't even fucking talked about yet. Your feelings are intense and roiling, and you are really hard on yourself, and you really fixate on things of the past and potential things of the future. And you really do want to be a good person. And then you get mad at yourself for perceived mistakes and missteps. And it's a fucking mess in there.

                        So it's easier to hang out with people who you know how to act around, and then they treat you nicely as a response. And then it's kind of easier than being alone, with is why I'm going to give you the very annoying homework of spending more time alone, like having date nights with yourself where you're not just smoking weed, scrolling, or watching TV or playing video games. Sorry. I had to throw all the ones in there.

N:                    Yeah. All of that.

Jessica:            All of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. None of that is the thing. So date night once a week—if once a week is unrealistic, once every two weeks—with yourself where you're not doing any of those things.

N:                    Okay.

Jessica:            So what does that mean? Maybe you learn how to—I don't know—make incense. That's my latest obsession. I've learned how to make little cones of incense. Maybe you crochet and listen to podcasts. Maybe you—I don't know. I'm just using hand things right now. I don't know why. But you're a creative person, eh? Do you fuck with arts, arts and crafts?

N:                    Yeah. I'm a bit crafty.

Jessica:            Yeah.

N:                    I like making things.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. So I'm pointing you away from creating art that is intended for other people's consumption.

N:                    Oh.

Jessica:            So, if you feel like, "Okay. My art form is making zines, and I have this homework assignment where I'm trying to get to know myself," then maybe the work is creating a series of animations that you can use in future zines, instead of putting something together for an audience, because that's you spending alone time creating something for other people. It's not like it's martyrdom. You're getting a lot out of it. But this is an experiment.

                        I want to encourage you to feel what you feel when you're alone with yourself and you're not making me a cake. You can spend time alone and bake me a cake, but then you're not really doing the assignment, are you? You could bake you a cake, and you're doing the assignment.

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            So, if I tell you to do this, let me tell you what's going to happen. You're going to be sad. I'm sorry. But that's what you've been avoiding. And if you are to break this larger habit, this pattern, it's because you can be with yourself, and you're choosing to be with him. And when you can't be with yourself, you can't really choose to be with somebody, because you don't feel that you have the option to get out. Had you found this sweet, long-haired man three years earlier, you probably would have left the ex for him three years earlier, yeah?

N:                    Probably.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. You were not that happy with this guy, and you just hadn't met the right person to motivate you to go because you were looking to replace the boyfriend instead of to be free of the boyfriend.

N:                    Wow. It's been something that I thought about in the sense of, like, "Oh, I just didn't meet anybody who would make me think about that, even." And I see now that that was the point of it all.

Jessica:            That's the point of it all—exactly—is thinking that you need to replace him because you couldn't possibly just be single. I mean, genuinely, I could imagine that you would have gotten back together with him after four months for a few months. But if you were really okay with being single, you—those first six months you were back with him were not great.

N:                    No, probably not, because I still felt like he hadn't chosen me.

Jessica:            He hadn't. It was awful. He was being controlling. He was not being totally genuine. He'd really broken your trust. He didn't rebuild your trust. But you were just like, "Well, if you'll take me back. I don't want to do this. It sucks being alone. It sucks being brokenhearted. I am going to make this work." You chose the devil you know. And again, we come back to the question of, was there infidelity in your parents' marriage? And it's like, whether or not it was there, there was the question. And there's something so demoralizing about the question. Your ex fucked up your fucking self-esteem, but you were an active participant in that fucking up, right?

N:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You stayed, and you kept on turning to him for setting the pace and the tone of the relationship. You gave him a lot of power. And this is not something for you to feel guilty or ashamed of. This is something for you to practice being able to tolerate sitting with and holding because, by sitting with and holding that reality, what you can do is recognize when you're doing it the next time, should you do it a next time. Again, we hope that this man is your forevermore. But as far as I can tell in this moment, he does not want the same things as you do—

N:                    Okay.

Jessica:            —for the next eight years, right? He wants the same things as you do over the next year or two.

N:                    Guess so.

Jessica:            Hot tip—when you date someone and you think, "Well, I can change him," it doesn't work. It doesn't work. If anyone ever dated me and was like, "Oh yeah. I'll totally date Jessica, but I really want to change this part of her," those are fucking violence words as far as I'm concerned. Do you hear it? Like if some guy was dating you and he just wanted to change the fact that you wanted kids and he wanted to just get you to get over that?

N:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            That's kind of—I think that's some bullshit. Do you think that's bullshit?

N:                    Yeah, it's definitely bullshit.

Jessica:            Okay. Cool, cool, cool, cool. Good. We agree on that. So he didn't say he doesn't want kids, but he did say, "I'm 30, and I've never thought about it before."

N:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Do you have safer sex with him?

N:                    No, we don't.

Jessica:            I knew that, but I really appreciate you thinking about it first. So okay. If you did get pregnant, what do you think he would do?

N:                    Oh God. It's a question that I ask myself a lot these days.

Jessica:            That's a great question since—are you on birth control?

N:                    Yes, I am on birth control.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Great, great, great. I am of the mind that if you are fucking with a human who could impregnate you, that the conversation of, "What would we do if I got pregnant?" needs to happen because, otherwise—because we know where babies come from, right?

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            We know shit happens, right? Otherwise, it 100 percent falls on you.

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            So it's a great conversation to have. It's a great conversation to have because that's how you take care of you, because that's self-love. It's because you will get to know some really important information about this man: how he emotionally reacts, how he verbally reacts. Does he act defensive? That's important information, and it will inform you for the rest of the time you're with him. Is he immediately be like, "Oh shit. That's a really great thing for us to think about and talk about"? Does he have a very mature, collaborative, "I am 50 percent of this" kind of response? Or is he more like, "Well, what would you want to do?"

                        If he's like, "Well, what would you want to do?" I suppose that could be kind of like, "Well, it's your body." But it's likely to be like, "Well, it's your issue." So you want to listen to what he tells you about himself, not just how he handles the question, but what he tells you about himself, because you're still getting to know him, right? You just take babies very fucking seriously.

N:                    Oh yes. Absolutely.

Jessica:            You take babies very seriously. Because you are post-Saturn Return—you've got that Saturn in the fifth house—it would be hard if you got pregnant to not be like, "This is meant to be."

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And I am not a romantic person, but I will say I don't think that conceiving a child when it is done in a traditional way through certain kinds of intercourse is fate as much as it is biology. Again, I am not a romantic person; do not listen to me. Also, it's a different perspective to be curious about, right? It's more about being intentional about taking care of yourself and potentially a child and planning.

                        Now, I know I've gone off into fucking kids when we're talking about infidelity, but ultimately, this is about how you navigate your welfare inside of a relationship and the ways in which you abandon yourself, big and small, leading up to something that is more calamitous, like, "I fell for someone else," or whatever else it could be. I will tell you this. You are going through a period of great change where you are either going to choose yourself more and more—you're going to be brave enough to get to know yourself and to be assertive about who you are—or you're going to take great pains to not do those things.

                        And I think that when we look at the second act of your relationship with your ex, we know that you are capable of great pains. You can live upstairs from the loudest bar and be like, "What? I slept great." So it's a good thing to be mindful of, like, "How do I actually feel? What is working for me, and what isn't?" And none of this means you don't like the long-haired guy. None of this means it's a bad relationship. But all of this means that if choosing him requires you to abandon you, he's a bad choice, even if you're the one who's creating the condition, even if he doesn't even know you're doing it—

N:                    Ah. Yes. I see what you mean.

Jessica:            —because what I'm talking about is, can you be in a relationship with someone else and not abandon yourself? It's hard to know because you were in this one relationship that took up your whole adult life, but then there's no space in between these two guys.

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            That all said, let's take a hot pause, and let me know—because we've kind of gone in lots of directions—if there are any remaining questions about yourself, about the current, about the ex.

N:                    I want to say technically no. But on another side, I still have this— I don't know what to call it. I don't think it's a curiosity. I think it's something a little more toxic about reflecting on the last relationship. In that relationship, I felt crazy.

Jessica:            Sure. Yes. Yes.

N:                    And I desperately want some type of reassurance that that is not the case, honestly.

Jessica:            Okay.

N:                    But I feel like I shouldn't be seeking reassurance right now about that.

Jessica:            Well, no. I'm actually glad you're bringing it up because what you're speaking to is the consequence of being with somebody who's so controlling and manipulative. So the reason why I'm really glad you brought this up is because, when I said he's controlling and manipulative, I do want you to hear—so he invalidated your perceptions. He took you out for a date at night and was like, "Isn't this a beautiful day? Look how bright the sun is." And then, when you were like, "What? It's nighttime," he was like, "Oh, what is wrong with you? Why do you ruin things? Why are you being dramatic?"

                        So the dynamic made you feel crazy and was very invalidating. There's something about this fear of being alone or being left that he dangled over you. He feels like an abandoner. I know you guys were together for ten years, so obviously he didn't leave. But it looks like fear really motivated you with him.

N:                    When you say fear, do you mean fear of being left behind or fear of abandonment? Or do you mean fear him?

Jessica:            Am I correct in seeing he was not physically violent at all?

N:                    No, he wasn't physically violent.

Jessica:            He wasn't. He was just a really shitty guy.

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            He was shitty to you. And you could have taken him if you wanted to. It doesn't look like you were scared of him on a physical level. I don't think you were scared of him per se. It's that you had such intense blinders on, which—he was like, "Keep those blinders on. Those are good blinders." But you are the one who put the blinders there, okay? So it's this—when somebody is really shitty, they own their shitty behavior. And also, because you are asking me about your patterns, you knew he was shitty. At least part of you had to have known this guy was shitty.

N:                    Yeah. I want to be held accountable for my role in everything, which is not to say, right, that I deserved to be cheated on or some shit like that. But it's more like I need to remind myself that I chose to stay in that position.

Jessica:            Yes. You chose to stay in that position. And a lot of times, when women are with men in bad relationships, they don't have a choice. You had choice. You did have choice. So we want to own that. And also, are you the first or the last person to be in a relationship with somebody who treats them shitty and doesn't know how to get out? No. And is it a fucking sin or terrible? No. But what it is is worth really looking at how scared you are of navigating the world alone or leaving someone. That is motivating for you. And that wasn't motivating for you with your ex. That is motivating for you, period.

                        And the little moments where I kind of spoke critically of your current boyfriend, I could feel that in you. The thing I want to say is, yeah, I'm not surprised to hear you felt fucking crazy with that person because he was very manipulative and invalidating. And you got a lot of Scorpio in you. You got a Pluto/Moon opposition. There is a part of you who's like, "Who was wrong? Who was right? He did bad things, so I'm entitled to do bad things." It's like this tit-for-tat vengeancey, all-or-nothing kind of thing.

                        And okay. If you want to look at it that way, he's the bad guy; you're the good guy. But that doesn't do anything for you, right? It's like scratching an itch that comes back five seconds later.

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            What's really true is he was not a good partner to you. You knew that, and yet you didn't let yourself really sit with it because then you would have to do something about it. And you were freaked out about doing something about it. So, instead, you kind of hung out with the devil you know. And the devil you know was like, "Don't be dramatic. Stay with me. Everything's fine. Stay with me." And you were like, "Okay. Fine. Fuck."

And you don't want to do that to yourself again. You don't want to let someone do that to you, but you also don't want to participate in it, which means what you have to do—and you don't have to do shit, to be clear, but if you don't participate in that kind of dynamic, what you have to do is listen to yourself. What you have to have is a life outside of that partner. So part of having all coupled friends suggests that you probably do a lot of coupled hangouts.

All of this to say it preserves navigating the world and yourself and life in these particular ways, and you—you got something out of it. You got something out of it. And so looking at this question of having felt not right with yourself when you were with him—you weren't right with yourself. I mean, were you crazy? No. Were you wrong? No. But you were doing yourself a disservice. And I mean, there are very few people that can look at their 20s and not say that they did some fucking version of what you did. I've done some version of what you did many times, being with somebody who's just not good for you, but wanting to make it work to prove to yourself that you can make it work.

But when you develop a healthier relationship with yourself, a more authentic relationship with yourself, then it's not just about making it work. It's about seeing whether or not it's compatible. "Do we want the same things? Do we have the same idea"—I can say, "Hey, I want to go get a gray couch for our new apartment," and you can say, "Oh my God. I love gray couches." And then we could disagree on every single shade of gray and every single shape of couch, right?

So compatibility is nuanced. And you were compatible with your ex for a couple years at the beginning. You were. It was great for a minute. And then there was a lot of time where it was just like, man, you were like, "I may be a square peg, but I'm going to fit into that round hole one way or another." You just tortured yourself with it. And again, you're not the first or the last person to do it. But may you have suffered for good reason. May you learn from it is really the move. Does that kind of answer what you were getting at?

N:                    Yeah. What I'm thinking right now is just I guess it feels empowering to remember that I have the choice, and I have the choice to take care of myself and put myself first. And it's just not a choice I always see for myself.

Jessica:            Yeah. First of all, I'm glad it's empowering. And I think it is empowering. And also, this brings us back to my little homework of, once a week, having a date alone with yourself where you're not making cakes for other people and you're not scrolling or playing video games. I mean, if you need to, do that for a period of time, but practice being alone with yourself because, as you develop your relationship with yourself, even if it starts off bumpy, if you had that practice with your ex, it would have been much harder for you to have stayed with him for as long as you did, because you needed to be in his fucking aura of manipulation so that you were constantly struggling against him, right?

N:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And I'm not seeing that this guy is just like that guy in any way. But you're the same person.

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            So this is worth really working on with him, not because of who he is but because of who you are.

N:                    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Cheating is the last stage of this cycle of self-abandonment and unhappiness. It's not the first one, whereas for some people, it's like the first fucking thing they do. For you, it's not. It's kind of like you have a cold, and then the last thing you do is you cough up phlegm. That's what cheating is for you. It's the final stage of the cold, but you've been sick for a while by the time it happens, right? Again, you're not a "I just hooked up with somebody randomly" kind of person. That's not the kind of infidelity you're doing.

                        And the one thing I will say about your relationship is I'm glad you guys are monogamous because I imagine that after that long-term relationship, it's good for you to just have a lot less to navigate so you can focus on who you are separate from this man and who you are with this man without having lots of other players to navigate. So I am happy for that part.

                        So, again, I want to invite you to just take a minute and check in and see, did we answer the question? Is there anything kind of lingering, or did we hit it?

N:                    No. No lingering. Yes, hit.

Jessica:            Yay. Do you dance?

N:                    By myself in front of the mirror.

Jessica:            That's what I'm talking about. That's literally all I was asking about. On your solo dates, I would say have a dance party. Do you know what I mean?

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            So, this week, the vibes are deep and heavy, so it's like a goth dance party. And next week, it's like dance party. And what I want to encourage you to do is to get into your body because that rigid thing that I felt that came up a few times—it's like you're holding your breath, and you separate from your body. So having a practice where you're being playful and having fun in your body means you're going to be encountering that rigidity in a new and better way that's good for you.

                        And also just—I feel like for people who are chronically in relationship, having ways that you are able to enjoy your body separate from your partner is really fucking important. And of course, there's just working it out on your own. But I'm not just talking about sex. I'm talking about the whole package of the meat suit comes with lots of pleasures, and it's important to experience them separate from a partner or from partners, especially because you've been in it.

                        Let me just take one last peek and make sure I'm not missing anything. I'm going to have you say your full name oud loud.

N:                    [redacted].

Jessica:            Thank you. Okay. Are you woo-woo? Do you go woo? Okay. Great.

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            Is there a big tree outside of your house?

N:                    Outside of my parents' house, yes.

Jessica:            It's your parents' house. Okay. But it's like a nice, big-ass tree?

N:                    It's a nice tree. It's not super big, but I planted it when I was young.

Jessica:            Okay. That's why I'm seeing it. On your solo dates, or any fucking time you like, what I'm being shown is get present. Get grounded. Connect your feet to the earth. And then reach out and open yourself up to that tree, and ask it if it is down to help you ground through the energetic connection between its roots and your roots. When I said it, you did it 20 percent. You were starting to do it, and then you got in your head. So you have to breathe because look at you; you're not breathing, right?

                        Okay. So that's your go-to habit that is a maladjusted coping mechanism that you want to be mindful of so you can bring change to. So just make sure that you're breathing and you're receiving, and don't overthink it. It's more of a body practice. So you might need to shake your ass, dance a bunch in your room, and then do it. You can't go from, "I was doing all this shit all day, and I texted with my friend, and now I'm connected to trees," because you'll be too in your head.

                        So, first, meet your body. Then meet the tree, and let the tree help you because this tree kind of showed itself to me as being available to help you to find your grounding, not in a way where you're being controlled or where you get stuck, but instead in this way that is like fucking tree magic. You know what I mean? Like your roots are spreading out in lots of directions. You could break up house foundations with your fucking roots, but you choose to just connect to other trees.

                        So it's that kind of being in your power and being well resourced without having to focus on what it's doing to other people or the power that you are showing other people. It's about the power that you access in yourself. Do you like The Wizard of Oz?

N:                    Yeah. It's my mom's favorite movie.

Jessica:            Excellent. Okay. So what I'm going to have you practice every fucking day is practice, when you're around other people, visualizing Glinda the Good Witch bubble all around you. The outside of that bubble, when you're not sure if you feel emotionally safe around people or if you're physically safe around people, is mirrors. So narcissists, people who would wish you harm when they look at you—they see themselves. They keep on moving.

                        And then, when you're around people that you feel good about, just experiment with, "I'm going to set my Glinda the Good Witch bubble to hot pink," obviously inspired by my colors, or, "I'm going to set my Glinda the Good Witch bubble to a soothing opalescent color." That's the color I keep on seeing for you, opalescent kind of white with golds and silvers and blues and pinks in it. Play with different colors.

                        Again, what I'm encouraging you to do on an energy woo level is recognize that you have a distinct space, and it's yours. So you can be with a bunch of people who are super fucking navy blue, and you can vibe with vibrant yellow. You don't have to match people or vibe the way they're vibing in order to be close to people, in order to be connected. This practice will really help you, so fuck with it.

N:                    That last part really—I feel like I really needed to hear that, too.

Jessica:            Great. I'm so happy. I'm so happy. Yeah, I really—yeah, the opalescents are good for you. Did you feel your system kind of calm a little bit with the opalescent? Yeah. It just—

N:                    Oh yeah. Just hearing you describe that.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

N:                    It's one of my favorite type of [indiscernible 01:10:45].

Jessica:            Oh, it is. Okay. That's why I was seeing it. Well, you didn't just hear me describe it; you did it. That's why you felt better.

N:                    Oh.

Jessica:            Girl, that's why you felt better, because as I was describing it, you were filling yourself up with it. And you felt better. That's why you want to play with this stuff. You don't want to do it. You want to play with it because vibing with color and energy that makes you feel more connected to yourself is energy work, right? That's it. That's you doing it. So you just want to set, reset, set, reset, set, reset. You know what I mean? That's how everybody is.

N:                    Yeah.

Jessica:            So don't feel bad if you lose it. You can be like, "Oh shit. Why do I feel off again? I'm going to bring in my opalescence." And then you'll be in some environments where you'll be like, "Oh. The opalescent doesn't work." So you just play with other colors.

N:                    Thank you so much, Jessica. This means a lot to me.

Jessica:            It's totally my pleasure.