Here's the moment you've been waiting for.  We're going to talk about your love life!  On top of that, we're going to use astrology to do it.  I know it's a little hard to hide your excitement.  Because let's face it -- if you've been around astrology for even a little while, you know it can be powerful stuff. 

In this article we'll look at Venus, the planet that symbolizes your style of relating with others, and the kinds of love experiences you tend to attract.  You’ll learn not only how Venus influences your love life, but how Venus is important in the way you relate to EVERYONE.  We don't usually learn much in school about what Venus can teach us.  Venus lessons usually happen in our friendships, our families, and especially in our love relationships, where we learn what works and what doesn't work in relationships, what we like and don’t like, how we treat others and how they treat us.

Here’s an example.  Suppose a friend loaned you a sweatshirt, and you lost it.  You agreed to pay her for it, but before you could do so, she went out and bought herself a sweatshirt to replace it that cost $40 more than the one you lost.  She expected you to pay for the new one.  What would you do?  Some of us would pay for the new sweatshirt and go without lunch money for a week.  Others would pay the friend but yell at her angrily while doing so, or secretly vow to get even with her.  Still others would pay her back but then talk about her behind her back to all of her friends so everyone would KNOW what she had done.

The smartest person would probably tell her, “Look, I’ll pay for the cost of the sweatshirt that I lost, but I’m not willing to pay the extra $40.”  Makes sense, right?  Yet how many of us would handle a situation like this so sensibly?  Whether it’s owing money, owing an apology, talking to people about difficult subjects, or expressing our emotions at the right time, situations like these arise every day with people we know and care about.  Yet most of us are not naturally skilled in knowing how to use our Venus energies to solve these problems. 

Sometimes, in fact, the most intellectually gifted among us are the least Venus-smart.  Recently, a group of San Diego high school honor students decided to spray paint "1999", their year of graduation, in large numbers on a wall at their high school.  What they didn't realize is that doing this on public property is now considered a crime in California.  They were required to pay a large fine and clean off the paint, and were also prevented from attending their graduation ceremony and activities.  You might say these were harsh penalties, which perhaps they were.  But think about it -- these were honor students much like those you may know in your own school.  They held student council offices and were respected and well-liked by their friends and teachers.  What were they thinking?  They had plenty of "book smarts" or scholarly intelligence of the type we discussed last month -- plenty of A's on their report cards -- but as far as knowing how to act intelligently in this situation is concerned, they were not so smart.

Consider also the case of a young woman I know, who recently spent two days crying to her friends and boyfriend after she received her first traffic ticket at age 18.  She is smart, popular, accomplished, and on her way to a good college, but receiving a traffic ticket threw her for an emotional loop.  It cut into her other activities for a few days.  Don't get me wrong -- traffic tickets are unpleasant and tears are a release of emotion that we all need from time to time.  But had this young woman been more experienced in handling potentially upsetting situations like this one, had she some insight into her emotional nature that the Venus sign can provide, she may have been able to make it through her traffic ticket experience with more composure.

In another more personal example, when I was a first-year student at Stanford University in the 1980s, my roommate would get up early from our dorm room and go down the hall to shower before her 8 a.m. math class.  Then she would creep back into our room while I was still asleep, leaving the wet towels she had used to dry off after her shower at the foot of my bed.  I would find them an hour or so later when I woke up.  I don't think she meant to be mean by doing this.  It was simply the most convenient empty space she could find to put them in a small dorm room.  But it bothered me that she left them there, and I wished she wouldn't.  Though I had been an honor student, top athlete and Senior Class President at my California high school, I found it NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE to ask her not to leave her towels at the foot of my bed!  And you thought Alicia Silverstone was Clueless!  It took months of conflict in my head about what to do and trips to campus advisors before I could even begin to approach this matter with her.

Then there are those people -- and I'm sure you know some of them -- who, rather than not knowing quite how to act in social situations, act by being loud, dramatic or surprisingly violent.  Consider the terrible events of the past few years that have occurred on school grounds, such as the killings at Colorado's Columbine High School in April 1999.  Though it is tragic that no one was able to stop Eric Harris and Dylan Kleibold from their shooting spree, it's also tragic that no one, including these young men themselves, had much insight into why they were frustrated and angry enough to kill.  The birth charts of both Harris and Kleibold show Venus in a difficult relationship to the planet Pluto.  This is much like having Venus in Scorpio, which at its worst can be angry, destructive, hell-bent on revenge, and have a cold, hard, “nothing to lose” attitude.  This terrible coldness enabled these boys to laugh cruelly at those they killed and follow through on their destructive plans. 

Their difficult Venus-Pluto placements also gave Harris and Kleibold potentially explosive personalities and a tendency to view themselves as either better or worse than everyone else.  As is typical of the dark side of Venus in Scorpio, these two did not like anyone weak, female, well-liked, or popular, and they generally killed people who fell into one of these categories.  They killed both those they felt superior to, and those who they thought had some advantage over them -- those who were "insiders" in a way that Harris and Kleibold were not.  Without knowing much about what was going on inside of these two young men, nothing was done in time to ward off their actions.  Imagine if Harris, Kleibold and their friends, parents and teachers had known from the start that they both had very difficult astrological placements of Venus.  Imagine how they might have learned to express their anger and frustrations, let off steam, and accept people who are different from them.  Maybe in time, they would even have learned why treating others with kindness is important.

Now all this talk of tragedy and destruction may seem kind of heavy, when we were only going to talk about love!  But love is more than daisies and chocolate-dipped strawberries.  It's learning why you treat people the way you do, and how you can treat them better.  It’s knowing what your needs are, knowing how to meet your needs and those of the people you love.  Studying the position of Venus in the birth chart is a great way to begin to do this.  To find your exact Venus sign, you will need a copy of your individual natal (birth) chart.  Venus can be in one of FIVE signs at your birth, unlike Mercury, as we saw last month, which can be in one of three.  For a general clue to which five signs may contain your Venus, look up your Sun sign in the first column of Table 1.  Then read across to the right to determine your possible Venus signs.  As you can tell, it's a lot more fun when you have a copy of your birth chart and can find your exact Venus placement.  In the meantime, you can have fun speculating which Venus sign seems to fit you best. > >