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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 the astrological forces that may or may not be ruling your love life. Is your romantic destiny written in the stars?
Growing up, I was the definition of a late bloomer. I didn’t have my first kiss until the night before I left for college. Meanwhile, my entire friend group had graduated high school with boyfriends. In college, I started getting more attention from guys, but that attention never led to dates—let alone a real relationship—only hookups that left me feeling disposable.
Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to be in love. By third grade, I was filling pages of my pink lock-and-key diary with stories about the boy I had a crush on, chronicling our every interaction. This wasn’t just about innocent crushes, though. Love consumed me. It was the first thing I thought about when I opened my eyes and the last thing I thought about as my head hit my pillow at night. I didn’t necessarily dream about having a wedding, but I spent a lot of time retreating into myself. I fantasized about my life as an adult with a husband, even imagining something as simple as our morning routine. It was like a movie that would play in my head every night.
Yearning for romantic love has always felt intrinsic to who I am, almost as if it were woven into my DNA. As a teenager, reading the monthly horoscopes at the back of my favorite magazines, I learned it was also written in the stars. As the 12th sign of the zodiac and ruled by Neptune (the planet of dreams, intuition, and fantasy), Pisces are the dreamers and hopeless romantics. For us, anything less than a transcendent, all-consuming, merging-of-two-souls kind of love simply won’t do. I quickly fell in love with astrology because it affirmed the parts of me that felt unseen.
All I wanted was to be in a relationship, yet love evaded me year after year.
When I moved to New York City after college, I finally started going on actual dates and loved fantasizing about what life could look like with each new man I met. There was the record-label executive I met at a friend’s Christmas party. Maybe he would take me to the Grammys? But he ghosted me after six weeks. Then came the commercial director, who was only interested in something casual. I spent weeks crushing on a flirty Russian barista from the coffee shop two blocks from my apartment. We hung out for two months, but he never liked discussing feelings. When a new owner took over the coffee shop, I went on a few dates with him, too, but he ghosted me after our second date.
Nothing about dating in New York City felt like the fairy tale I craved, even when I did experience some rom-com-worthy meet-cutes—like the time a Swedish guy hopped out of a cab and sprinted down the block to convince me to have a drink with him. Most of these connections, however, were fleeting. They all seemed to fizzle out as quickly as they came, and I couldn’t help but feel that this was a reflection of my lovability—or rather, the lack thereof. It didn’t matter which signs I dated either. Despite their reputation as terrible matches for Pisces, I was often drawn to Geminis, though they always seemed emotionally aloof. Even the Cancers and Scorpios, who were supposed to be the perfect matches, didn’t stick.
I watched friends effortlessly fall in and out of relationships and start getting married. It felt like everyone else had discovered some secret formula for finding love and left me out of the loop. With each passing year of my 20s, I feared being single at 30. It felt shameful and humiliating, a truth I preferred to keep from anyone outside my inner circle. So while I desperately wanted someone to make me feel worthy of love, I started to pretend it wasn’t a priority for me. It was easier that way, and my busy career in fashion also proved to be the perfect cover. In my mind, the only explanation for my unfortunate situation was that I was deeply flawed or somehow undeserving of the love that, according to my sign, was supposed to be central to my nature.
My worst fears came true when I turned 30 and was still single. At the time, I was preoccupied by a situationship with yet another emotionally unavailable guy who I was convinced I was meant to be with. Imagine thinking you deserve a man who doesn’t like you enough to show up for your birthday.
I resolved to look harder at the questions plaguing me: Why wasn’t I worthy of anyone’s love and consistent attention? I had already been in therapy, but I found a new therapist who specialized in attachment issues, hoping he could help me confront my dating anxiety and fears of getting my heart broken. I met a tarot reader at a metaphysical bookstore in the Lower East Side who became my spiritual mentor and helped me navigate my self-healing journey.
Instead of feeling as though I was doomed to live a life of eternal solitude, he gave me greater insight into how astrology might offer a path forward. Astrology validated my confusion about my self-worth (why could I feel so confident and capable at work but not in relationships?) and my timeline (am I destined to be alone forever?). When I had my birth chart read for the first time just a year earlier, I learned that I wasn’t just a Pisces Sun. My Venus, the planet of love and beauty, was also in Pisces, and my Jupiter, the planet of good luck and abundance, was there too. It was like my Pisces energy was amplified threefold. No wonder I was so hopeless yet optimistic about love.
With Scorpio on my descendant (a point that represents what you admire or are drawn to in a partner) and south node (a lunar point that represents our karma and past lives), it made sense that I often experienced power struggles with men and why relationships, while deeply transformational, could also feel all-consuming and destructive. I felt a sense of relief when my astrologer pointed out that I had Saturn—the planet of discipline and responsibility—in a placement that often signifies marrying later in life and learning profound lessons through relationships. The astrologer also called out my tendency for short-lived flings with foreigners (guilty!). My chart reading reflected many of my strengths and helped me see the more challenging aspects of my journey in a new light. There wasn’t anything wrong with me. This was all just a part of my life’s path.
But how late was “later in life”? I took several years off from dating and read every book I could find about self-love and spirituality, from Pema Chödrön’s When Things Fall Apart to Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements and Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. I curated a book collection that was fit for any self-help guru’s starter pack.
Just after the pandemic, I finally felt ready to dip back into dating. I met a man while traveling for work and started another long-distance relationship. After four months, he admitted he couldn’t commit to the distance. But in that relationship, I did something I’d never done—I voiced my emotional needs—and that felt like progress.
Four months later, while living in London for the summer, I met a man 10 years younger than me. Despite his age, he was notably more mature than many men my age. I knew he wouldn’t likely be a long-term partner, but I couldn’t resist. After two months, I found myself spiraling over his waning texts, and eventually we decided to part ways. It felt like I’d taken a step backward, but it also taught me more about what I needed from a relationship.
The stars finally aligned in my favor in the summer of 2023 when I matched on a dating app with a man who would become my first boyfriend. We could not have been more different. He was a teacher, living and working in the English countryside. He was literally rooted: growing vegetables in his backyard and attending organic-farming conferences. I never stayed in the same place for more than a few months. We bonded over our love of the outdoors and a devotion to spirituality. He indulged me in my astrology practice and made me feel desired and adored. Our time together was always fun and easygoing. But I also had to reconcile the fantasy of being in a relationship with the reality of it. He didn’t bring me flowers randomly or commit to knowing all my likes and dislikes and wanted to take things slower than I felt was necessary.
Nevertheless, for the first time, I wasn’t hypervigilant, constantly searching for signs that he might leave. Without all that mental noise, I could stay present with my thoughts and needs. After 10 months together, I realized that while my boyfriend was a really special person, something was missing between us. It took more courage than I knew I had to walk away.
Now, just a few weeks shy of my 39th birthday, I’m still single, but my perspective has transformed in ways I couldn’t have imagined 10 years ago. I’m no longer chasing a fairy-tale romance because I don’t need someone to save me from myself. Those fantasies were an escape, and I no longer need to escape my life. This nearly decade-long journey has taught me how to show up for myself, how to stop abandoning myself in the pursuit of someone else’s affection, how to infuse romance into my everyday life, and that my worth isn’t dependent on whether or not I’ve been “chosen” by a man.
I’ve spent the past few years building a life I genuinely love—one so fulfilling that the fear of being alone forever has finally dissolved. My birth chart was right: Relationships have always been my greatest teachers. Though they didn’t look how I once imagined, they still held immense value, revealing parts of myself I might never have discovered otherwise. In the end, love wasn’t about filling a void; it was about truly knowing and embracing myself—exactly as I am.