Blocks To The Flow of Love: Fire Signs

This is a part of a series: love in the zodiac.

The Moon, Venus and Mars in Fire signs are often big-hearted, direct, and emote more than they actually feel. As in, they might look and seem (even to themselves) that they are more emotional than they are, because their expression of emotion is often bigger or more frequently expressed than it is for other placements. But often the need to express is the feeling! There’s a restlessness especially to these signs in Aries or Sagittarius that generates a lot of heat but it can also be a block to the flow of love. These people can often feel a conflict between the restless part and other parts of their chart. Often these placements aren’t as conducive to long term relationship - they just want to move in many senses, so relationships that include this as much as possible usually work better for them. Aries and Sagittarius don’t necessarily need to go deep on a one-to-one emotional connection sense. They want to initiate together, inspire together, travel together, philosophize together, vision together, do activities together, but they don’t have a huge emotional need in and of themselves. So they can feel, if other parts of their chart suggest more emotional need, stumped as to how to connect more. The movement or need for new stimulation (Aries) or a new quest (Sagittarius) can leave them feeling like they’re not connecting at the level they need or want.

I’ve talked to many people with Venus in Aries especially who feel a conflict between a part that wants to be in a long term relationship and the energy of this placement which often feels to others like it is completely self-contained and needs nothing / no one. So even if a person with this placement wants a long term relationship, that might not come across energetically, which can be confusing and vague territory—a kind of “block” which feels hard to know how to melt or move around.

Here it’s so important to come back to the sacred diversity of human beings, which is held within the sacred diversity of the life on planet earth, and that whatever astrological placements we have are not burdens to carry but instead divine koans to sit with our entire lives, they are the curriculum, they are the offering, what we are here to learn about, and everyone has at least a handful of them, I promise.

There can be a similar energetic dynamic with these placements in Leo—it can feel like a charisma flame which people want to warm themselves next to with all of these fire signs—but it feels hard to know how to touch.

Here I should mention a basic energetic principle of astrology, which is that the Fire and Air signs are more “extroverted,” and put more on energetic terms, the energy moves out from within more often than it moves from the outside in. This is part of the challenge with love with these signs, because the love/ energy coming in is not as familiar, and love between humans as we typically think of it is all about exchange. Water and Earth signs are more “introverted,” as in the energy moves from outside in. Water and Earth signs receive more often than they push energy out. And really with all of this paragraph the key is this is what the signs do when they are in default mode in our personalities. It’s not that we can’t do and be very many different things. We are and we do! I’m talking here about what is default. What happens when we’re not thinking about it. Or when we’re thinking about it too much hahahaha.

Okay so back to Leo. As I was saying it is similar in terms of the energetics of the other fire signs - it’s hard to get close to the flame, etc. But the difference with Leo is there’s less desire for newness and novelty, as it’s a fixed sign. A block to love for Leo is not feeling seen or acknowledged enough and then withholding love because of it, but the other person might not even know they weren’t measuring up. The fixed signs tend to go back and forth in extremes, all or nothing, ride or die. So with Leo there can be grand gestures which can sometimes be overwhelming, or an aversion to vulnerability—an aversion to being the person that expresses love without knowing for sure the love is reciprocated, which can keep them isolated.

With all these signs, the most helpful metaphor I’ve found is tending the flame. Because the bigness of the heat can be a block to love sometimes - it can feel like too much too soon. But the speed of the fizzle out, the fire not getting enough oxygen, can also feel really fast to others, like they had the entire sun shining on them and then it went black.

What practices and tending keeps the flame at the size that supports connection, warmth, relation, if that is what you are wanting? Probably most important of all, what are the ways you can tend the flame of love for yourself into steadiness?