Much of my wider astrological practice relies heavily on traditional astrology: Vettius Valens, Sahl ibn Bishr, Masha'allah, and the broader Hellenistic, Alexandrian, and medieval traditions. Relationship astrology is the area where my approach draws much more strongly from modern psychological astrology.
Ancient astrologers wrote about marriage, partnership, and comparing two nativities, but we do not have the same kind of detailed manuals on synastry and composite charts that modern astrologers have developed. For relationship work, I therefore rely especially on the psychological understanding of the birth chart and on careful observation of what happens when two charts meet.
Liz Greene has been one of my most important influences in this area. Relating: An Astrological Guide to Living with Others on a Small Planet, Relationships and How to Survive Them, and Astrology for Lovers gave me an invaluable way of thinking about personality, relationship patterns, synastry, and the composite chart.
I also draw heavily from John Green's Do You Love Me? The Astrology of Relationships. John was one of my teachers at the Mercury Internet School of Psychological Astrology, and his work offers a very clear framework for natal relationship patterns, synastry, the outer planets, timing, and relationships beyond romantic partnership.
I also value Linda Goodman's Sun Signs. Its style is lighter and sometimes almost gossipy, but its observations about how different types of people behave and react can be remarkably perceptive. Books like these helped me understand that the signs are not just lists of traits. They describe very different ways of approaching love, conflict, closeness, freedom, and everyday life.
WHAT RELATIONSHIP ASTROLOGY CAN HELP WITH
Relationship astrology can help you understand:
- what each person activates in the other
- where you naturally understand one another and where you may have very little in common
- whether emotional and physical attraction is mutual, one-sided, or difficult to sustain
- why the same arguments, anxieties, or misunderstandings keep returning
- whether the relationship contains enough support, warmth, and structure for the long term
- what a parent, partner, friend, relative, or colleague awakens in your psyche
- what kind of period the relationship is moving through now
This is not a test that produces a compatibility percentage or a grade. I cannot reduce two people to “80% compatible” and tell them whether they should stay together.
Different people enter our lives for different reasons. Some relationships become lifelong partnerships. Some teach us something, awaken a neglected part of us, or bring a difficult pattern to the surface. Some are extremely important without being able to last.
People usually seek relationship astrology when something has become confusing, painful, intense, or difficult to let go of. If a relationship is working easily, most people do not ask an astrologer to explain it. The important question is often not simply whether two people are compatible, but what this person has awakened in you and what the relationship is asking you to understand.
WHAT I NEED FROM YOU
For a relationship reading, it is important to have the other person's date of birth at minimum. An accurate birth time and place are much better because they allow me to calculate the houses, angles, Moon placement, and a complete comparison between the charts.
Without an accurate time, useful work may still be possible, but some parts of the analysis will remain uncertain. The more complete the birth information is for both people, the more specific the reading can become.
MY APPROACH
I begin with the two natal charts. Before comparing them, I need to understand each person individually: what they need from closeness, what makes them feel safe, how they communicate, how they express affection, what they fear, and what kind of person they are likely to seek.
Then I look at:
- synastry between the two charts
- the composite chart, where accurate birth times are available
- transits and progressions affecting each person
- transits and progressions affecting the relationship itself
- broader timing techniques when the bond is entering an important phase
The natal charts show the two people. Synastry shows what they activate in each other. The composite chart shows the relationship as a pattern in its own right. Timing helps explain why the relationship has become especially important now.
SYNASTRY
Synastry compares one birth chart with another. When one person's planet touches another person's planet, angle, or house, something in the second person is awakened.
Some contacts feel supportive and familiar. Some create emotional understanding. Some create physical magnetism. Some bring conflict, fear, responsibility, instability, or an intensity that is difficult to manage.
There are also some relatively concrete things synastry can show. Two people may have strong physical attraction, very little physical attraction, or a connection that is much stronger for one person than the other. They may understand one another emotionally while wanting completely different lives. They may communicate easily but struggle to feel safe together.
The aim is not simply to collect aspects. It is to understand what those aspects are doing in the lives of two actual people.
THE SUN AND MOON
Contacts between the Sun and Moon are often important in long-term relationships. They can create a sense that one person's identity and direction are connected with the other person's emotional life and instinctive needs.
Meaningful Sun-Moon contacts appear frequently in lasting partnerships. They do not guarantee happiness or permanence, but they can give the relationship a basic sense of relevance and recognition. This is one of the things I look for when considering whether two people can build a life together rather than only experience a temporary attraction.
VENUS AND MARS
Contacts between Venus and Mars are among the clearest indications of physical attraction and magnetism. They can show how one person expresses desire and how the other person receives it.
This connection is not always mutual in exactly the same way. One person may feel the attraction much more strongly, or the two people may want different forms of closeness. A relationship can be emotionally supportive while lacking physical magnetism, or physically compelling while offering very little emotional safety.
Attraction by itself does not make a relationship stable, but its presence or absence can still provide useful clarity.
SATURN AND LONGEVITY
Saturn is often important for commitment, endurance, responsibility, and the ability to remain together through difficult periods. Many long-term relationships contain significant Saturn contacts.
But more Saturn is not automatically better. Difficult Saturn contacts to the Moon or Venus can create inhibition, criticism, loneliness, rejection, or a feeling that one person continually limits the other. A relationship often needs enough Saturn to give it structure, but not so much that warmth and emotional movement become impossible.
The question is not simply whether Saturn is present. It is whether the two people can live with the particular kind of responsibility and vulnerability that Saturn creates between them.
THE OUTER PLANETS
Contacts from Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto to personal planets can make a relationship feel much larger than ordinary life.
Uranus can bring excitement and freedom, but also instability, distance, or anxiety. Neptune can bring tenderness, idealization, and longing, but also confusion or disappointment. Pluto can bring extraordinary intensity and attachment, but also obsession, jealousy, fear, or struggles around control.
For example, one person's Uranus on the other's Moon can make the emotional connection feel electric but difficult to settle. Pluto contacting another person's Sun or Moon can make the bond feel overwhelming or impossible to ignore.
These planets often introduce experiences that feel almost beyond the scale of the personal planets. They are not automatically bad, but they can be difficult for an ordinary human relationship to contain without awareness, honesty, and space.
THE COMPOSITE CHART
The composite chart describes the relationship as a third thing: not simply one person or the other, but the pattern created between them.
It can show the emotional atmosphere of the relationship, how it communicates, how it appears in the world, what holds it together, where it becomes vulnerable, and what kind of development it asks from both people. Liz Greene's Relationships and How to Survive Them has been especially important to how I understand and use this technique.
The composite chart does not replace synastry. Synastry shows how two people affect each other; the composite shows what the relationship becomes when they are together.
RELATIONSHIPS BEYOND ROMANTIC PARTNERSHIP
Relationship astrology can be used for parents and children, siblings, friends, colleagues, business partners, and extended family, not only romantic relationships.
Sometimes it can explain why two family members repeatedly provoke each other despite making an honest effort to get along. Strong Moon-Mars contacts, for example, can make one person's emotional reactions and the other person's anger or assertiveness continually set each other off. If the same pattern runs both ways between the charts, the conflict can become extremely difficult to settle.
Astrology does not mean that people are required to keep trying forever. Sometimes the chart helps us understand why a relationship needs firmer boundaries, more distance, or an honest ending. Letting go can occasionally be more realistic than repeatedly trying to create compatibility that is not there.
TIMING IN RELATIONSHIPS
Relationships have timing. People meet, commit, separate, return, marry, move in together, or enter periods of crisis under particular astrological conditions.
I look at transits and progressions in both natal charts and, where possible, in the composite chart. When the same relationship themes become active in several places at once, it usually shows that the bond is entering an important chapter.
Timing can help explain whether a difficult period is temporary, whether the structure of the relationship is changing, or why a particular person has entered your life now. It cannot always tell us the exact form that the change will take, but it can show when the relationship is under unusual pressure or becoming more important.
CAN ASTROLOGY TELL YOU TO STAY OR LEAVE?
Relationship astrology can show support, incompatibility, attraction, instability, long-term structure, and periods when the bond is changing. It can help you understand what may be workable and what may continue to cause pain.
But I will not give a mechanical instruction to stay or leave based on one aspect or a compatibility score. Two people can have difficult astrology and still work thoughtfully with it. They can also have beautiful synastry and still be unable to build a healthy life together.
If a relationship involves violence, coercion, threats, or abuse, your safety comes first regardless of what the astrology says. Astrology should never be used as a reason to remain in a dangerous situation. Seek appropriate help and support, and contact emergency services if you are in immediate danger.
Outside those clear safety concerns, the reading can help you judge the relationship more honestly: whether there is enough warmth, mutuality, stability, and willingness to keep building, or whether the same pattern is likely to keep causing harm.
WHAT YOU MAY LEAVE WITH
After a relationship astrology reading, you should have:
- a clearer understanding of what each person activates in the other
- insight into emotional connection, physical attraction, conflict, and compatibility
- a realistic sense of the relationship's long-term structure
- an understanding of the relationship as a whole through the composite chart
- greater clarity about difficult family, friendship, or professional relationships
- an understanding of the relationship's present timing
- a more honest sense of what can be developed and what may need distance or release
In short, relationship astrology is not about reducing two people to a compatibility score. It is about understanding what happens when two charts meet, what each person awakens in the other, what kind of relationship is created between them, and whether the bond has enough warmth, truth, structure, and life to keep building.