At least not at first, at least not for a while.

Maybe I’m shooting myself in the foot, especially since right now, I’m getting more requests than usual from people who just met someone and started a pandemic romance and want to know if it’s “meant to be.” The answer is probably no, because almost all of your romances aren’t “meant to be” as in “meant to be lasting,” but also because this isn’t a great time to meet someone new when desperation and loneliness run high, and social isolation means a limited range of experiences and observations as well as an impaired ability to see where the relationship will go once the world opens up again.

But think about that, because it’s true, even if we hate it:

Almost all of your romances aren’t meant to last.

Almost all of your crushes and episodes of unrequited love will remain that way.

Almost all of your missed opportunities and blown chances will remain missed opportunities and blown chances.

Almost all of your moments of great compatibility, terrible timing will still have bad timing.

Almost all of the times you laid in bed crying over someone who wasn’t worth it will not magically, alchemically change into moments in which you’re laying in bed in bliss with that someone.

And why?

Because to love and be loved is a lifelong process that requires you to grow and change and requires you to have met that someone at the time they have grown and changed enough so they can love you as well, and that you can love each other in a way that you both understand and need to be loved. That’s not like picking a shiny red apple off a tree and biting into it, for Life is not the Garden of Eden, and I would argue that Adam and Eve could not have truly loved each other while in the Garden at all, and that it was struggling together in the real world and accepting each other’s failures that brought them close. After all, with no change, there was no time in the Garden, and without time, there is no growth.

Centuries of oppression have taught women both that 1) they shouldn’t trust their instincts, and 2) if they do what they’re told and don’t listen to their instinct, it’s their fault if they get hurt. Fuck that. Trust your instinct FIRST.

Reading a birth chart is not instinct. Dropping someone’s data into a computer program or app isn’t instinct. If you feel that you need someone’s birth data right away before you’re willing to pursue a relationship or indulge their interests, then guess what? That’s your instinct telling you that you’re not ready.

When women do this, it’s because they’re trying to guard themselves against getting hurt, but what they really ought to be doing is figuring out how they feel right now and honoring that. The problem is that when you cover a dissociation with instinct with astrology, you have the possibility of convincing yourself you should like someone you actually don’t, and because you lack objectivity, you may overlook red flags in that are not only in the chart, but clearly showing up in his profile and DMs.

Trust your instinct. If you’re on the fence about someone, there’s a reason for it.

It’s dehumanizing to him.

Judging a guy based on his birth chart early on says that you’re not interested in giving him a chance to show you his best side and that this is a privilege only reserved for you.

Regardless of the irony of women being able to dehumanize men now with their celestial shapes and symbols, in practice, people just don’t like to be dehumanized. Even if he’s familiar with his birth chart, even if he is an astrologer himself, making a judgment about his worthiness to talk to you based on that tells him that you’re not interested in getting to know him as a person and all the things a mere birth chart can’t tell you, like how his experiences have shaped him, what we hopes for the future, and the way he has learned from his mistakes, These are of no interest to you. It tells him that you’re not interested in talking to a human, that you are looking for a transaction in which you’ll get your money’s worth.

And of course: no one wants to waste their time, but frankly, if you’re on a dating app, you’re already wasting your time, and if you think otherwise, you’re lying to yourself. The entire point of these apps is to put in time in order to gamble on getting a reward, and the reason you have to pay for premium services for all these apps is because in order to get out of trading your time, you’re giving the company money instead.

If you don’t want to potentially waste your time on a man who doesn’t turn out to be worth it, you’re better off just spending that time focusing on yourself.

Chart compatibility isn’t a full picture, especially synastry.

There’s more to a relationship that comparing charts to see if there’s attraction. There is attraction because you’re trying to get his birth data. You’re signaling to him that you’re interested just by doing that. But that’s just the beginning, and unless you’re going to hunker down and spend hours and hours creating progressed composite charts (or you’re willing to pay me to do it, and I will), you’re not going to really see how this relationship could progress, and where is the romance and the excitement in that?

Especially since the older a person is, the more variation you’ll find in the energies in their charts. For example, a Mars in Capricorn guy can be lustful and player or serial monogamist (is that worse? I wonder.) when he’s younger, but as he ages, he also learns things the hard way as Capricorn does, and you can believe that by the time he’s 40, unless he’s still immature and breaking hearts, he may actually be interested in a long-term relationship that gives him room to breath and with whom there is always some semblance of a slow, steady seduction. And you know what? That’s fine, because these guys usually aren’t very much good for women romance-wise until they’re in their at least in their 40s anyway when Mars progresses into far less selfish Aquarius. However, if you’re just taking a cursory look at his birth chart, you may not even think about that.

You can totally end up falling in love with a chart and not the real person.

I’ve written about this before. I stand by it. Just because you’re compatible on paper doesn’t mean that the time is right or that you should even pursue it. Some soul mates intended to get away from each other in this life. And sometimes we crush so hard we forget that the other person has a life of their own.

What if you’re both astrologers?

There’s an exception to every rule, right? If he’s fine with it, yes. But frankly, I would think I dodged a bullet if I found out that after I gave my birth data to some guy, he dropped it into an app on his phone that he lost interest because it told him that because his Sun is square my Moon or whatever, that we’re not compatible, and now he doesn’t like me anymore.

But here’s a good rule, I think:

Don’t ask for his birth data if 1) you can’t articulate what you find, and 2) you’d be embarrassed to tell him what you’re going to do with it.

So, if you’re going to be slippery and ask for his birth data but you don’t want to tell him that you’re going to drop it into an astrology app or that you’re going to text your astrologer friend in the middle of the night to ask if she thinks you guys are compatible, then don’t ask him for his birth data. It’s not good to start a relationship with lies and hidden truths.

And I will admit that in the past, I have told friends to stay away from a guy, or that they’re not compatible without even looking at the charts because I was annoyed for being woken up or interrupted at work with something so not important at all.

And I’m still not sorry. If it was meant to be, love would have found a way, and I’m currently having a mad love affair with sleep, especially if I have to be in court at 8:30 the next morning.

Also, if you’re not able to articulate what it is you find, it’s just good practice not to ask for it, especially if you’re going to have to admit that you don’t really know what you’re doing if in fact, you don’t know what you’re doing, because then you just look like a whack job.

But isn’t it important to be astrologically compatible?

Yes and no.

First, if you’re compatible in real life, there’s something in the charts that reflects that. It’s always interesting to see how you are compatible, and frankly, if you have his birth data, go ahead and see what you find, but just don’t do the wrong thing and make him aware that you’re doing a QC test on the relationship first.

Second, most relationships work because of a mix of idealism and realism. We idealize our partners to some extent while being realistic to some extent and accepting their flaws and humanity while choosing to focus more on their good qualities.

However, some relationships work because one or both parties are just delusional about the other person. For example, the women who marry or get with men who are demonstrably violent and antisocial but insist that deep down, these men are misunderstood angels, or they just don’t care about what the men do to other people so long as they don’t direct it at the women themselves are not so much in love as they are just batshit fucking insane, and if there was a god at all, none of these women would be able to have children, but you know, with strong delusion comes strong desire, and if not for these crazy bitches, many of us wouldn’t have been born.

But anyway.

On the other hand, some relationships are so duty-bound that it’s difficult to remember what it was that initially attracted you to the person. In these relationships, the passion and attraction dissipate and the two end up roommates and co-workers. This is especially true in those kinds of relationships where the two end up together because of social expectations, the kind of off-and-on relationships that serve a lot of things but the souls of the people involved.

In fact, if you’re in an on-again, off-again relationship, may I suggest you just end it now? Life is short, and if what you really want is true compatibility and love, then you deserve that, all the time. If what you really want is the freedom to pursue your goals, then you deserve that without having to also worry if that makes you flawed or unlovable. It doesn’t. But using each other as a time filler, a distraction, as a placeholder until someone better comes along, or as a way to make the people around you more comfortable with your previous break up means that neither of you will ever truly get what you want.

Okay, so when CAN I ask him for it?

Good question. I suppose the answer is when you think he’d be comfortable giving it AND when you’d be comfortable sharing what you have found. I think the best time to ask for it is when you’re trying to get it so you can do their astrological chart out of curiosity and edification, the way that we tend to exchange this information with our astrologer friends.

I particularly like getting people’s birth data nowadays to see if I can predict their rising sign and figure out what karma we have, especially when people find me through my blog. And I’ve only been single for eight months now (and psychologically not quite ready to get involved with someone, but perfectly happy to talk to men now, especially since I’m not sure how much longer I’ll call the Midwest home), so looking at different charts in general helps me figure out what I may want at 40 and who we become after 40.

If you’re studying astrology, it’s okay to ask someone you know for their birth time so long as you actually know them. Just make sure they’re not going to be a fucking bitch about it and demand you tell them who they are on the spot and then listen to them systematically tell you everything you say is wrong. You don’t owe anyone a parlor trick.

But if you’re going to meet a guy on Tinder and ask for his birth data immediately, you deserve to be left on read.