FYI: For our purposes, “dating” can also be read as seeking out new friends or hobbies. Hooking up (so long as you aren’t secretly wanting more) would be symbolized by transits to Mars, the planet of lust and bodily urges.
Last week I wrote about how there’s no such thing as a good or bad time for dating, but also some Saturn transits are not exactly a great time for dating. Yes, that sounds like a contradiction. It is. It isn’t! It’s complicated.
In any case, Saturn is just one of the planets whose transits can affect how dating feels and whether we like that feeling. Saturn is also the least important of these planets.
The outer planets, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, move around the zodiac much more slowly than Saturn’s 29.5 year orbit. Uranus’ cycle is about the length of a modern human life, while Neptune and Pluto are so far away that no person could survive through their entire orbit.
Some Uranus transits happen twice in lifetime, but Pluto transits are rare enough that not everyone gets the same ones. All transits from the outer planets last a long time, from one year to three, and leave us permanently altered.
Of these three, Uranus, the planet of surprises, is the most dating-friendly, producing weird attractions and sudden open-mindedness.
Like if you always date older ladies, under Uranus transits to romantic natal placements (the sun, moon, Venus, the ascendant and the 5th house primarily), you may be crushing on boys just out of college. Or if tragic Romeo-Juliet romance has been your thing, you could realize what you truly want is a drama-free cerebral connection. Maybe a friend with whom the chemistry hadn’t seemed on before becomes your new super-interest.
Uranus is about being present for the excitement of right now. Hence, fun as getting married in an Elvis chapel would be, it’s not a great time to enter legal love contract. Or to irreparably fuck over a long-term sweetie. You just can’t know which of these new affections, needs and identities will be there once Uranus has gone on its merry way.
Uranus like brazen honesty. It likes equal playing fields. It loves experimentation. It can also be really stressful.
As fun as it is to abscond with the adorable man-child who’s just grown his first adult beard hair, any new relationship style comes with a rolodex of new anxieties. Will it last? Is it real? Is it appropriate? Why can’t your friends accept the new you? What are you supposed to do about those sad voice messages from your ex?
Uranus transits last about a year. As the dust settles, you’ll find you’ve made some dumb decisions and some terrific ones; that you’ve freed yourself from traps of your own and society’s making; that you owe someone or multiple someones an honest and sensitive apology; that you are more awake and ready for what life brings, even if it’s what you least predicted.
Uranus-born relationships can last for years but a lot of times they don’t. And that usually feels okay. These are the relationships that are there to teach us about what we might want, who we might be, what we could have.
For lots of people, a Uranus relationship is their one where they told their sweetie the truth, the first time they weren’t terrified, or the first romance where both people were on equal footing. Other times, a Uranus relationship is the first time you spot the red flags early and are willing to let go.
Dating under Uranus doesn’t always feel rewarding. This is life, after all. But even in really crappy situations, Uranus shows us a glimpse of independence that sticks with us long after the transit hands.
Neptune transits sweep us off our feet. Into love, into heartbreak, into sparkling fantasy.
I wrote not long ago about how everything deemed romantic, from music and poetry to mood lighting, IS Neptune. So is the dopamine-bath of falling in love. So is not telling someone you like them out of shyness or fear of ruining the beautiful mystery.
There’s lots, lots more in that post, including how tips for loving and accepting your ambiguous relationship needs when you have a strong Neptune in your birth chart. Suffice it to here that dating under Neptune transits can be messy, but messy isn’t bad. (Here at Seagoat Astrology, we really don’t believe in “bad.”) Messy is just not-knowing.
The challenge under a Neptune transit is to hang onto the fact that you don’t know, you can’t know, even when a pharmacy’s worth of fabulous chemicals are flooding your brain.
The same goes for awful, sad, heavy chemicals—equally likely under Neptune.* If you heard “not-knowing” and immediately interpreted that as “shit, I’m going to get dumped???”, I’m looking at you. Worry is a way to try to know what can’t be known.
Basically, Neptune transits are a trust fall. The thing to trust isn’t another person, because people will stumble, it’s life itself (or god or the universe or whatever). Life is what keeps going, the big backdrop against which you are so small.
People who like not knowing and are comfortable there may find their best (read: most flexible, malleable, changeable, mysterious) relationships are those that begin under Neptune’s radiance. For more goal-oriented, the ambiguity may be too stressful and these transits can teach you to let go with love.
If Pluto were a person it would totally wear a black cape and speak in a creepy whisper. But also be sexy?
Pluto is the OG of the zodiac and its transits are rare, intense periods that leave you forever altered. Whatever happens under a Pluto transit, you will tend to emerge with a lot of your B.S. burned away and with a deep sense of connection to your inner self.
Under Pluto transits, desires are overwhelming. Compulsive. Sex and sexual fantasies are either heightened to the point of addiction or an iced-over pond at the bottom of a well.
Even if dating under a Pluto transit were a bad idea, you would do it anyway. If you wanted to. If you didn’t want to, you couldn’t be persuaded, not even by a herd (a flock?) of saliva-dripping lions.**
Dating under Pluto is all-or-nothing experience. You will meet the love of your life or fuck every available option in a thousand-mile radius or take a vow of silence and close yourself in room to contemplate every person who has every hurt you and plot revenge on them or on yourself for being such a sucker.
I’m exaggerating a little. (But just a little.) You can exert self-control over Pluto-triggered obsessions. If you want to.
Say you’re crushed out on a creep in cape, or your boss, or student, or abusive ex, or a person who, in any one of the possible ways, is not (in your estimation) a good idea. You might try avoiding that gorgeous, caped mysterio. It probably won’t work. Repression under Pluto leads to explosions. What does work is channeling the obsession into an outlet, be it professional, creative or sexual.
Dating under Pluto transits can be AMAZING. When it’s good, it tends to be really good. Also really hard.
Pluto pulls what’s buried to the surface. Old habits come out. Your needy inner child makes an extended cameo. The ghosts of your exes dangle from the ceiling. Fears show.
A relationship that welcomes ghosts and brutal, deep honesty is a site of healing. What is outgrown dies off and you learn to love, to connect, in a new way. These relationships tend to be intense and all-consuming, the subject of the 2-ish years that the Pluto transit lasts.
Afterwards, you may find that same intensity exhausting and decide to part ways. Or, if an intense, deeply honest relationship is what you both want, the relationship born under a Pluto transit can last for years, surviving the damage and difficulty that long-term love always brings, coming out the other side renewed, deeper, more connected, more honest.
*Hot tip: getting high or drunk or buzzed under a Neptune transit makes it much harder to keep track of reality.
**These hypothetical lions, apparently, have strong opinions about your dating life. Don’t ask me! Maybe they work for Tinder!
Image sources: dude, bulb, balloons, mask, symbol.
For tips and solace on life under a major transit, hmu for a Depth reading. There, you and I will explore just how the planets in the sky are setting off the constellations of your own, special natal chart.