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Love Stories is a series about love in all its forms, with a new essay each day through the week of Valentine’s Day. This year we are focusing on astrological forces. Love is a messy and mysterious thing, but is your romantic destiny written in the stars?
Admitting this might be grounds for expulsion from the queer community, but I’ve never been that into astrology. Sure, compared to the average person, I might be fairly zodiac literate; I have the CoStar app on my phone, and I knew exactly what it meant when my friend recently complained that her new baby was “already such a Scorpio.” But among my queer and trans friends, many of whom are devoted to poring over their birth charts and a not-insignificant number of whom are literal astrologers, I’m basically a remedial astrology student for not even knowing my Big Three. (Is it my fault that my parents can’t remember exactly what time I was born?)
I vaguely remember exchanging astrological signs with my partner when we first met almost three years ago, but they were just two pieces of information in the cascade of trivia that is so often revealed when two people go on a promising first date. I didn’t know many, if any, stereotypical Virgo traits at the time, but as we got to know each other better over many, many FaceTimes and long-distance visits that eventually turned into IRL dates once I moved to Los Angeles, I started to understand. My partner’s organization, energy, confidence, focus, and skillful ability to take charge? All wonderful Virgo traits that continue to make me feel cherished, protected, and safe in his company—and if they’re occasionally accompanied by a certain amount of stubbornness and inflexibility, well, everyone needs a flaw or two, right?
After regularly studying my horoscope for weeks in a row, I’ve been able to glean some of my own sign of Cancer’s so-called problem areas: We’re allegedly hypersensitive, moody, prone to weepiness, bad with money and criticism, quick to anger, and also quite stubborn. Unfortunately, these Cancerian stereotypes describe some of my lesser qualities: I’ve never met an innocuous comment I didn’t scrutinize for some negative hidden meaning; I cry every time I get into verbal conflict with someone (including the staff at the Delta ticket counter, who I am still angry at for losing my bag); and I maintain it’s elegant for a girl about town to be in possession of a soupçon of credit-card debt.
When my Virgo and I moved in together a few months ago, we turned what had previously been a two-bedroom apartment into a couple’s nest of love, romance, and frequent squabbling over chores that sometimes feels akin to an extremely gay, therapy-language-heavy reboot of The Odd Couple. Once we began cohabitating, I suddenly felt as though we were participating in some kind of astrologically oriented reality show where the objective was to keep a home together without constantly infuriating one another with our disparate levels of cleanliness. (This is a polite way of saying I’m a slob.)
Even when the dishes have been done and the trash has been taken out, my partner and I still find ourselves semi-regularly at odds over what I would call “organizational differences.” While he would never dream of booking so much as a one-night hotel stay without doing diligent consumer research beforehand, I’m so travel chaotic that when I quickly booked a flight home from Indonesia last summer on what turned out to be a 100% fake scam airline, I knew exactly what to do because this had happened to me before. (If you’re curious: Call your bank. Don’t even bother fighting with the airline itself because, again, it is a scam.) That particular incident, and my partner’s incredulous reaction to my impulsivity, led me to wonder: Are our wildly different astrological profiles a sign of something bigger we need to examine in our relationship, or am I giving way too much credence to the zodiac? Is it okay to be only vaguely aware of our astrological compatibility, or will I someday regret not reading both our horoscopes daily?
For guidance on this matter, I turned to Kendra Austin, one of my favorite queer writers and astrologers and the creator of The Realest Oracle Deck: Finding the Magic in the Mundane. Austin immediately validated some of my pain points as the girlfriend of an ultimate earth sign, telling me: “A Virgo will passive-aggressively complete every house chore before you even wake up on Sunday morning, all while looking over their shoulder wondering why your lazy ass didn’t receive the memo.” (Yep.)
“Cancer and Virgo are both overly perceptive—perhaps too sensitive at times—and quite rigid about assuring emotional safety and consistency,” she counseled. “As for living with a Virgo, the advice could not be simpler: Make a chore chart.” While I’m somewhat humiliated to admit that this advice hadn’t occurred to me, I implemented it immediately. Has the chore chart changed everything radically and forever? No, but at least we have the elements of a plan in place—and I love that this extremely practical recommendation came to us courtesy of the head-in-the-clouds world of astrology.
I may be full of anxiety-related magical thinking, but when it comes down to it, I’m not too worried about the fate of my match. My Virgo partner and my Cancer self could have a 0% chance of making it work according to the stars, and I’m confident we would still press forward in building a home and life together; after all, we love each other and we’re working on accepting each other’s foibles while celebrating each other’s strengths.
We recently became pet co-parents to an eight-pound Maltipoo puppy named Frankie, who needs his Virgo dad and his Cancer mom to work together in order to fill his life with orderly routine and spontaneous joy—and his bizarrely expensive preferred brand of chewy bones, for which we may eventually need to recruit a third partner merely to keep affording. No Geminis, please!
