Saturn in Scorpio ~ Dealing with Intimacy Issues

Building and maintaining intimate relationships is very important to our emotional health, yet so many of us have fears and issues which can get in the way of feeling close to others. Saturn in Scorpio* presents us with an opportunity to acknowledge the defensive barriers we put up which get in the way of true intimacy and work to improve our most important relationships.

Here’s an excerpt from Saturn in Scorpio: Your Guide Through The Dark, which explores this subject:

It is universally agreed that emotional intimacy plays a central role in our life experience.  We seek it out because we need it. Those we are emotionally intimate with (not just lovers, but family and friends) provide us with our tribe and fill us with a sense of belonging and the feeling of being loved and cared for. Intimate bonds are formed when we share our secret thoughts and expose our hidden desires and when that sharing and exposure is reciprocated. This self-disclosure leaves both parties vulnerable, but it is, or should be, a healthy vulnerability, based on mutual respect. 

With Saturn in Scorpio, it is a good time to explore intimacy more deeply. Do we truly have intimate relationships? If not, what barriers have we have put up that prevent us becoming intimate with others? Why do we have those barriers? What happened in our early life to make us defend ourselves so strongly against letting others get too close? Were we betrayed, hurt or rejected in the past and is this preventing us from forming new bonds? These are big questions indeed.

What kind of intimate relationships do we have?  Saturn in Libra’s lesson was around creating and maintaining healthy boundaries in our relationships. It was about finding the right balance of give and take. We learned that a healthy intimate relationship is one where there is a strong emotional attachment, a feeling of closeness, but at the same time an awareness of separateness, where both parties are good for each other without being totally dependent on each other.

When the balance of emotional sharing isn’t right between two people, the relationship can easily become unhealthy. The person who dumps all their emotions on the other is felt as needy and smothering. Conversely, the person who holds back comes across as cold and controlling. Jealousy and possessiveness also gets in the way of an intimate relationship.

Saturn in Scorpio is our guide through these more shadowy aspects of intimate relationships. We have defined intimacy as a relationship where both parties disclose ‘secrets’ that could make them vulnerable. A partnership or friendship quickly becomes problematic if one or both parties use those vulnerabilities to control or manipulate the other, or to cause emotional pain. When this occurs the relationship cannot sustain itself and the intimacy quickly breaks down. Even if the couple stays together physically, emotionally the bond is damaged.

Problems can also occur when one person opens up a lot more than the other, leading to an unbalanced relationship, one that is not truly intimate. This can be down to a number of reasons. Perhaps one person opens up too quickly, before the other is ready or sure that they want a close relationship. The wary partner is easily frightened away at this tender stage which can leave the person who has opened up feeling hurt and rejected. It takes a fair amount of emotional intelligence and awareness to read this type of situation correctly. Intuition and experience need to be used to make a judgement on whether to persevere, pull back and slow down or whether to simply lick one’s wounds, let go and move on. It’s hard not to take it very personally when we feel rejected and it’s easy to take that feeling of rejection forward to the next relationship.

Perhaps the other person doesn’t open up because, consciously or unconsciously, they can’t face it? Becoming intimate with someone means that we expose our shadow. This puts us in danger of being rejected if our physical desires or emotional needs are exposed as too dark or too extreme by our partner. For some, Saturn in Scorpio will bring a need to face your fears around releasing control, sharing your feelings and letting yourself trust someone enough to expose your true desire nature.

Strategic relationships also belong in the realm of Saturn in Scorpio. This is where one person gets close to someone else because they want something from them. Marrying for money or status is the most obvious example. Sometimes one partner isn’t aware of the strategy and comes away feeling used. Often, the using is mutual, even if it is not openly acknowledged. In these kinds of partnerships both stand to benefit in some way. The danger is that these relationships tend to be fragile and easily break down if there is a disagreement or misunderstanding, or if one partner loses the thing (be that money, looks, youth or power) that the other wants or needs.

Finding true intimacy requires us to be willing to let down our emotional barriers before fulfilling bonds can be formed and sustained. We need to be empathetic, compassionate and understanding, with ourself as well as with our partner. On the path to intimacy Saturn in Scorpio can be a harsh teacher, often making us experience that which is not genuine intimacy so that we can better recognise the real thing when it comes along.

*Saturn moved into Scorpio on 5 October 2012. On 23 December 2014 Saturn enters Sagittarius. Then, on 15 June 2015 Saturn in retrograde re-enters Scorpio, before finally settling in Sagittarius on 18 September 2015 (all dates use GMT time zones).

An excerpt on Keeping Safe, another theme of Saturn in Scorpio, is available to read at Donna Cunningham’s Skywriter Blog here>

Saturn in Scorpio: Your Guide Through the Dark is available at Amazon on Kindle or direct from Astroair Astrology in PDF format. Click on this link to find out more about what’s in the book, plus details about to purchase.