The Attraction of a Realist and a Philosopher

Because you possess a civilised and realistic temperament, placing high value on reason, clarity and a sound relationship with the material world, you are probably deeply appreciative of your partner's own lively mind and his ability to challenge and stimulate you on the mental level. There is potentially a high degree of intellectual and spiritual harmony between you, for both of you are inclined to deal with life's problems through the powerful tool of logical thought, and tend to share similar values of integrity, fairness and consideration in your interaction with others. You also both need to communicate, and can find a ready listener in the other. But where you believe in only what you can see and touch, John Kerry relies more on intuitive perception and imagination; and you and he may easily find yourselves in conflict about your definitions of what constitutes reality. Your essential truths are more radically different than you might realise, for your strengths lie in the outer world, while your partner's lie in the inner. You may both admire and envy your partner's ability to trust in what you cannot see or logically explain; but you may also feel threatened by and therefore critical of what you interpret as the irrational or gullible side of his nature. He in turn may experience you as too earthbound and conventional, and too patronising in your dismissal of the invisible side of life. What complicates this is that your partner may eventually resort to unconsciously manipulative behaviour in order to get a stronger response from you, because he finds your cool detachment hurtful, and also because he has his own difficulty in asking for necessary space for himself. The positive side of all this is that John Kerry can learn a great deal from you about detachment and independence within a relationship, while you can learn a great deal from him about expressing human need and vulnerability.

A Redeemer Cometh

Your partner is likely to experience intensely idealised feelings about what you symbolise for him -a paragon of kindness, courtesy and humanitarian ideals. To him you embody all that he longs to become, and this deep need and longing may cause him to play a kind of chameleon-like role in an effort to become what you desire, so that he will not lose you. You in turn probably have strong feelings of loyalty, generosity and protectiveness toward John Kerry, as though you can sense that you provide him with a source of energy and meaning. But there is an idealised and elusive element in your attraction which may at times leave you feeling deeply disillusioned and disappointed. You may be a little too enchanted by your partner's extremely romantic way of courting you, and perhaps not understanding enough of the deep vulnerability and unconscious envy which lie behind such a performance alongside the love he feels for you. If he tries too hard to act out some unreal fantasy of a perfect lover in the hope of keeping your affection, he may eventually let you down or betray you out of a sense of anger and failure; and if you are too in love with the feelings of strength and confidence which his idealised love inspires in you, you may find yourself caught in playing the part of the redeemer at the expense of your own very real needs. There is a kind of emotional fog or confusion which sometimes settles on you both, a mass of superhuman expectations which can be a recipe for considerable disappointment. Yet if you can learn to be more realistic with each other, John Kerry can offer you a deeply poignant and unselfish love, and you in turn can offer him the strengths of your unique personality as support and inspiration.

Where There's Life There's Hope

Your innate decency and fairness arouse generous and downright noble feelings in your partner. Without trying, you make him want to offer his best to the relationship, and you also stir his sense of optimism about the future, expanding his horizons and giving him greater faith in himself and his potentials. It is as though you stir the spirit in him as well as the heart, and the quality of friendship and mutual consideration inherent in the attraction between you makes you both better people. In turn John Kerry brings a quality of vision and meaning into your life, for his adventurous spirit and creative mind give you a sense that life is bigger, broader and much more interesting in his company. The two of you bring out some very refined and idealistic feelings in each other, as well as a deep spiritual sense that life is essentially good and will take care of itself; and even if this makes you both a little too stylised, grand and extravagant at times, it also ensures that the sense of fun, adventure and hope will rarely be absent between you.

A Relationship with a Romantic Soul

The keynote of your relationship with John Kerry is erotic feeling. The word eros, which comes from the Greek, is not necessarily the same as sexuality - although it is very likely that you and your partner are both powerfully affected by the ambience of sexual attraction which permeates your relationship. Erotic feeling also encompasses qualities of sensuous affection and natural courtesy and kindness, and can also include a deep appreciation of beauty, harmony and style. All these things are likely to be present in the emotional tone of your partnership. The attributes of good taste and aesthetic feeling help to give the relationship a gloss of grace and even glamour in the eyes of others; for there is probably a kind of constant courtship occurring between you and your partner, invoked by the erotic qualities of the bond, which makes you both want to be desirable for each other and act in kind and considerate ways. Others can also see the brightness and creative energy inherent in this relationship, because as a couple you tend, consciously or not, to project an aura of friendliness, tolerance and communicativeness to the outside world. This partnership carries a persona of liberal thinking and openmindedness about it, and whatever emotive issues might be erupting between the two of you, it is not likely that you will air these in public. The image of reasonableness and civilised behaviour is likely to stand firm before others even if you and John Kerry have had a hot quarrel fifteen minutes earlier; and the pleasant and open style of this relationship in social situations will always attract the interest and support of others.

You may find that the sensuous and even indulgent tone of the relationship propels both of you into shopping sprees and a greater concern for outer appearances, because the love of beauty and the need to look beautiful for each other are likely to be important components of the bond. The relationship may make you and your partner both delight in the feeling of being in love and beloved - a need for the heightened rituals of romance which usually belong to literature more than to ordinary life. Any pursuit of joint creative projects, as well as travel and the exploration of philosophical and spiritual terrain, can help to enhance the sense of closeness between you. At its best, the erotic qualities of your relationship can bring a little of the fairy-tale world into both your lives, and can keep the spark of romance alive despite increasing familiarity and the passage of time.

2. Your Relationship and Yourself

The following sections describe the effect of this relationship on yourself. While the previous sections of text always spoke to both of you, you and your partner, the focus here will be on your side.

A Stirring of the Heart and the Passions

Your relationship with John Kerry is likely to activate particular aspects of your personality very strongly, and this includes first of all a stirring of your emotional and instinctual nature. The ways in which your passions, your needs and feelings, your sexual responses and your inner sense of self-worth and lovability are aroused - sometimes happily, sometimes through conflict - all contribute most powerfully to the transformative effect the relationship has on you.

Ties That Bind

Your sense of happiness and self-worth may sometimes be undermined by the obstacles and constraints inherent in this relationship. Although you may have coped perfectly well with the limits of other partnerships, this one has a way of eroding your belief in the joy of love, and you may sometimes find yourself feeling quite unaccountably depressed, isolated and low in spirits. You may even feel that all your romantic ideals are somehow being crushed beneath the weight of the external obligations or difficulties which the relationship has brought into your life. Probably others may see you becoming a more serious and less spontaneous person as a result of this relationship, and you may make the mistake of believing that your partner is somehow responsible for this change. But it is the relationship itself which is challenging your ideals of love, demanding that you deepen your understanding of what it means to commit yourself to another person. Your relationship with John Kerry does not have to take away your joy in life or your belief in romantic love. However, if you let yourself be worn down by a perhaps unnecessary sense of disillusionment, or take the inherent limits and restrictions of the relationship as a personal hurt or rejection, you may find yourself becoming increasingly unhappy. You probably need to find a workable balance between establishing your right to personal pleasure and enjoyment and respecting the necessity of patience and effort to build something lasting and real.

You Can Never Have Enough Chocolate Cake

The vital and expansive qualities of your relationship with John Kerry can contribute enormously to your sense of self-value, making you feel more attractive, more lovable, and more worthwhile in your own eyes. You are likely to both have more fun and be more fun through the enthusiasm for life which the relationship invokes in you. Because your heart is stirred and your feelings of romantic love strongly constellated, you are also likely to feel more generous, affectionate and sympathetic toward others, and your sense of beauty, harmony and aesthetic appreciation is also likely to be enhanced. Although this extremely positive and enjoyable dimension of the relationship will not spare you having to cope with all of life's usual dilemmas, nevertheless this partnership has the power to make you feel more creative and more loved; and you are therefore much better armed to cope with conflicts because you believe in yourself more.

3. Your Relationship and Your Partner

The following sections of text describe the effect of this relationship on John Kerry.

An Activation of Your Partner's Creative Potentials

Your partner can also benefit from the relationship on a creative level, for it is likely to activate his imagination and creative abilities as well as his capacity to express himself in the world.

Healthy Food

The emotional warmth and rapport which this relationship offers can act as a strong trigger for your partner's creative expression and sense of individual uniqueness. The partnership provides him with a quality of support and containment which allows him to feel more confident and more truly himself; and because he experiences validation and affirmation of his own values and identity, he will be more able to pursue creative goals in the world. This relationship, whatever conflicts might arise within it, is a kind of home for John Kerry, for its particular emotional ambience is in harmony with his own nature and offers him a sense of roots and nourishment which he would find very difficult to relinquish.

The Joker in the Pack

This bond may bring great changes into your partner's life, particularly through the reactions it invokes in other people. He may experience quite a lot of anxiety when the two of you enter the social stage, and he may fear that the relationship is somehow unstable or disruptive. But it is really his own ambivalence he is experiencing, for the partnership somehow makes him more aware of his own need to break free of the conventional structures of life. If he fears the reactions of the collective to the unusual qualities he senses in this relationship, and the changes which are taking place in his own outlook on life, he may become defensive and cool, and may even withdraw from the bond - or drive you into doing it for him. But if he is honest with himself, he will be able to enjoy the benefits of the mental and spiritual awakening which the relationship could offer him.

DEEPER ISSUES ACTIVATED INSIDE

1. Basic Relationship Patterns within You

The transformative potential of your relationship with John Kerry may be greater than you realise. Every important human bond activates many levels of the personality, and some of these levels are unconscious and unrecognised. All of us bring our own inner issues and preconceptions into a relationship with another person. A relationship involves not only the chemistry between the two personalities, but also our unconscious images of what it is to be a man or woman.

The Eternal Girl Within

Whatever you may consciously define as feminine, there is an image within you of woman as adventuress, playful companion and eternal girl. This image is powerfully activated in you by your relationship with John Kerry. The image of the eternal girl is best portrayed in myth by the Greek goddess Artemis, mistress of the Moon and of wild nature. This goddess personifies an untamed feminine spirit which can love and be joyful yet belongs to no man as wife or chattel. The mysterious and changeable nature of this mythic figure reflects a quality which is part of the fabric of your feminine self. Even if you have denied it in your life, your inner image of woman is not the stable, responsible figure of the wife and mother who presides over home, family and domestic duties. This may present you with certain conflicts about committing yourself to your relationship with John Kerry, whether you are conscious of such ambivalence or not. You have a longing not only for freedom, but for the feeling that life's potentials and possibilities will always be open to you, and that you will throughout life be in a process of becoming, never of crystallising or stagnating. Satisfying this longing while at the same time honouring your emotional need for stability and continuity within your relationship may require a delicate balancing act.

2. Basic Relationship Patterns within Your Partner

John Kerry also has within him images and patterns of response which are activated by the relationship. Thus your partner is also receptive to the transformative potential of the bond; and even if this sometimes involves conflict and uncomfortable self-confrontation, he could experience deep and positive changes as a result.

The Warrior and the Lover

Whatever your partner may consciously define as "masculine", there is an image within him of man as warrior and champion, and sometimes as aggressor. This image is powerfully activated by his relationship with you. In mythology, it is best described by the great heroes such as Herakles or Theseus, who battle with dragons and champion the weak and defenceless. Sometimes, out of control and run amok, such heroes trample over all those who stand in their way. This callous wilfulness is also a facet of the heroic image. Whether or not John Kerry is conscious of this ancient and archetypal image of manhood, he has within him a powerful competitive drive and a strong will to achieve. This potent force is part of the fabric of his inner world, even if he tries to disown it. It is most important that he has some consciousness of it and can provide positive vehicles through which to channel it. The most creative face of this inner image is the courageous fighting spirit it offers your partner, and the ability to remain confidently loyal to his values and his vision regardless of whether the rest of the world disapproves.

There is a strong element of the noble knight in your partner's inner image of manhood. This figure has dreams and poetic vision as well as fighting spirit, and provides John Kerry with a code of honour and ideals toward which he can aspire. The knightly qualities of his image of masculinity tend to make him somewhat uncompromising and impatient with what he might consider weakness - particularly his own. And even if he does not consciously identify with such a traditional image of manhood, you can probably tell him quite a lot about just how dogged and self-righteous he can become when he feels his independence is being challenged or his ideals compromised. The problem with trying to be heroic all the time, particularly if John Kerry is unconscious of it, is that he can be trapped by his own pride. For stubborn pride is the darker face of this powerful inner figure, and it will probably loom large in the conflicts which might arise in your relationship because it is so very difficult for your partner to admit that he has made a mistake, botched it, or lapsed into ordinary human frailty.

During your partner's childhood he may have experienced a more difficult face of this fighting spirit in his father, whether through overt aggression and competitiveness or through repressed anger and covert control. As an adult John Kerry may find it difficult to acknowledge that he has such a spirit within himself, and he may encounter some inner conflict in his efforts to express it in a positive and individual way.

In short, the dilemma which confronted your partner's father in his efforts to express his potency as a husband and father are also the issues which now confront John Kerry as a man. The heroic quest in myth often reflects the personal search for a new relationship between father and son. On a profound level this recognition of a shared masculine challenge can help to heal your partner's sense of disconnection with his father and with the larger masculine collective of which both of them are a part.

Your partner has probably drawn on other positive attributes or resources within himself to find a sense of confidence in himself as a man. But some of these resources, however valuable in their own right, may be compensations for confusion or insecurity within, and may not provide him with the kind of courage he really needs to be true to himself.

Astrological Technique

To create the Relationship Horoscope, three astrological charts are examined - the natal chart of both partners and the composite chart calculated according to the midpoint method. For the compilation of the interpretation text, the following main astrological factors are taken into account: cross-aspects between the two natal charts, dominant themes in the composite chart, aspects between the composite chart and the two natal charts, and certain themes in the two natal charts which are triggered by either the partner's chart or the composite chart.