This personal essay explores the author's lifelong yearning for romantic love and how her belief in astrological signs shaped her dating experiences. From childhood fantasies to navigating the complexities of modern dating, she delves into the impact of societal expectations and the search for a soulmate.
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 hook-ups 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. Still, I spent a lot of time retreating into myself, fantasizing about my life as an adult with a husband and what our life would look like together, even doing something as simple as going through our morning routine. It was like a movie that I would play in my head every night. Yearning for romantic love has always felt intrinsic to who I am, almost as if it’s 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 the 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 fairytale I craved, even when I did experience some romcom-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 a terrible match 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 match, 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 twenties, I feared being single at 30. It felt shameful and humiliating, a truth I preferred to keep from anyone outside of 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 journe
Astrology Love Dating Relationships Self-Discovery Pisces
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