Photo: New Africa / Shutterstock
What the stars had to tell me about my affair partner.
By P.D. Reader
Last updated on Feb 02, 2024
If you've had an affair, astrology can provide some good insights about it. Being attracted to someone else when you’re already in a relationship can wrench your heart in two. And, if that isn’t bad enough, finding out someone you trusted has cheated is one of the most shocking and painful things that can happen to anyone.
Come to think of it, being the third party isn’t much good, either. No wonder so many of them are desperate for answers that they start consulting astrologers. Now that my disaster with a married man is firmly in the past, I can tell you a lot more about my experience with astrology during that rollercoaster time and its miserable aftermath.
Here's what astrology says about affairs:
1. The good
If you're only looking to elucidate character traits of two (or three) people in a relationship, and patterns of relating that are likely to spring up between you, astrology is great for that. Your natal and relationship charts can be so descriptive of your character and how you behave in relationships that seeing these things spelled out in your chart can help you make some very wise decisions.
I grew up with a mom with Borderline Personality Disorder. The constant family upheaval I lived through led me to spend most of my life reading books by therapists on mental illness, codependency, toxic parents, love and relationship addiction, marriage, and relationship dynamics — you name it.
So, when I saw codependency being diagrammed in a horoscope chart, I knew what I was looking at. And I knew what questions to ask my affair partner. So, when I saw the same information in a horoscope chart, I knew the truth had already been affirmed.
The biggest thing that stood out to me in my and my affair partner’s relationship charts, for example, was an aspect called Moon Opposition Neptune (Moon Opp Neptune), which reflected that there would be a lot of dishonesty in the relationship. "Well, of course!" you say. "It was an affair!" But, believe it or not, that wasn’t what this particular Moon Opp Neptune was referring to.
Although Moon Opp Neptune deception can reflect anything from willful crime to being two-timed by a malignant narcissist, in this case, it was telling me the guy I was in love with was a terrible codependent, which was confirmed by his natal chart and his personal history (alcoholic mom.) What Moon Opp Neptune tells us is not only that one person is being deceived, but that that person doesn’t want to see the truth. And, the deceiver is also at least partially deceiving himself.
This was absolutely the case: My guy had such low self-esteem, that he would bend himself into a pretzel for someone else’s approval, and not even realize for ten years that he wasn’t happy with what he had agreed to please the other person.
This was what I gleaned when he spoke about his relationship with his wife. And when I looked at their relationship charts? They had it, too: Moon Opp Neptune! What that told me was that, if we stayed together, our relationship stood an excellent chance of turning out just like theirs, partially because I was as controlling as his wife was! And I wouldn’t say I liked hearing that about myself at all. But it was true.
2. The bad
The bad comes when you try to make predictions. I’ve had a fair number of things I saw in these charts, and in the chart of my late husband, come true. I predicted when my late husband was likely to pass away. I was one week off. Not only my astrologer, Alice Portman of Adelaide, Australia, but also myself, predicted I’d hear from my guy again in October of 2017. This also happened.
At the time, I was taking an astrology class locally. I rushed in the week after, so excited that this was in the charts — and it happened! In class, my teacher and my more experienced classmates pulled even more aspects out of the charts than either Alice or I had seen, consistent with this happening. But you can’t always predict events in the horoscope, even when the charts are screaming that this or the other really should be happening in life. Why not?
3. The ugly
The truth is that horoscope charting does not determine what happens in our lives. We do. And, this can be misleading. Our natal charts talk about the highest potential we could reach in our lives and, when the time comes, our transits might talk themselves blue in the face about it.
But I’m coming to understand that most people don’t reach their highest potential in life. For instance, right about now, my chart is on about how I’m supposed to reach some success in writing in the next three to five years, and possibly change my career to something I’ve always wanted (which, yes, would be writing.)
However, my two novels made the shortlist on Wattpad this year — but no one reads them. My last one gets nothing but bad comments. You cannot be a self-supporting writer without an audience. So, if that prediction comes true over the next three to five years, I’ll eat my hair. I have several transits over the same period describing me missing the mark, which I appear to be doing now. And I don’t expect some violent streak of genius to blaze through my mind and steer me suddenly off of my current course. (I’ll let you know in five years.)
Similarly, my affair partner has a ton of transits coming up over the next four years, describing him waking up suddenly and killing it with his codependency, growing up, making tons of progress, and ending his 60s a whole new person. But, the other outcome is detailed also, where he makes no progress and ends his life as a very sad old man.
He’s still in that marriage and he’s quit lurking on my website finally, so if improvement happens, clearly it’s happening without me. But, I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t happen at all. Just as I have no storytelling genius, this guy has no guts. So, you can be seriously misled by a horoscope’s glorious tales of a person’s highest potential. I’ve seen that life is tough and many things can sidetrack a person.
So, if you’re looking through horoscope transits scouting for a good ending to your difficult relationship and you see one, don’t count on it. And don’t ever use it as a reason to wait on someone, especially when transits are there that describe a sad alternative. I did that and, now, I see that it’s time to give up and move on.
At least I spent the time mopping up old childhood wounds. I would never have been ready for a relationship anyhow until all that was cleaned up. So, it wasn’t a total loss. If you’re struggling and looking for answers, you could include astrology along with your therapy and any books you might be reading. In my experience, the two complement one another nicely. I’ve made more progress faster with them than without them.
More for You:
P. D. Reader edits and writes for the Medium publication Unfaithful: Perspectives on the Third Party Relationship and is the author of Struggling In or With An Affair? A Guidebook.