Love In The Real World

By Isabelle Ghaneh

Poor Madame Bovary! The scandalous heroine of Gustave Flaubert’s famous novel had her heart set on finding a lover who would resemble the romantic fantasies she held in her mind and imagination. Emma Bovary did not want love in the real world, and thus her pursuit of her romantic fantasies cost her a marriage, and ultimately her life. Novelist Gustave Flaubert had it right long before Hollywood began spooning out cotton-candy romantic movies and chick flicks. He might have chuckled to see today’s TV portrayals in soap operas of endless and undying love.

True love is much more complex than any novelist or screenwriter can imagine. However, just like Emma Bovary, we often spend our time longing for a romantic lover to appear, someone who will guide us, take care of us and also be dashing, sexually alluring, and see to our every need. In essence, we want to discover our other half, our soul mate, our destined lover.

But real love is based on trust, and it usually evolves over time. Our real-life lover is going to be human and have faults, and will not be as perfect as any idealized vision we concoct in our mind. Emma Bovary was obsessed with fantasizing about finding her ideal lover, and she thus made poor choices in her love quest, finally ending up in disgrace and debt. She cheated on her kind and patient husband, a humble country doctor she felt could never live up to her dreams, though he was a good man who truly loved her. Her fictional (though all too real) life story tells us that if we spend our time lusting and longing for an imaginary lover, we may be very sorry indeed.

Gustave Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen, France, a blunt Sagittarius who in his adult life had an unusual love story of his own. He never married, but he did have a mistress, one Mrs. Louise Colet, born in either 1808 or 1810, and herself a noted figure in Parisian society. Gustave and Louise were together for eight years, and had a voluminous correspondence, but ultimately they had a falling out and broke off their involvement.

Louise continued to have affairs, including one with Alfred de Musset, the noted poet, born on December 11, 1810, and a Centaur like Gustave. De Musset also paired with the notorious bohemian writer George Sand, herself no slouch in the romantic relationship department. Sand was born on July 1, 1804, a capricious Cancer, and she was known for her series of relationships with artists, writers and poets. Her most publicized relationship was to composer and virtuoso pianist Pisces Frederic Chopin, six years her junior. Sand was also a good friend of Flaubert!

When Gustave published Madame Bovary in 1857, he fell under the watchful eye of the censor in France’s Second Empire, and he was charged with contributing to public immorality by the government. Flaubert was ultimately acquitted, and of course the tale of the deluded and adulterous Madame Bovary became that much more enticing to the reading public! Flaubert said he was trying to portray life as it really was, and not how we all wished it could be or would be. He famously reported that Madame Bovary was he himself!

Leaving these 19th-century scandals behind, let’s look at something closer to the here and now, as it’s very difficult in any era to maintain a positive and healthy love relationship. Laura, a woman known for her clever mind and sharp analytical ability, is a Virgo, born with a head for figures and a deeply complex emotional and sexual nature. With her Earth-element Sun sign, she has very lusty passions, but as a Virgo she is also very selective, and downright picky at times. She wants to find a lover who will meet all her needs, but that's not easy. Laura does well at her job, and has risen high in her field, but she is lonely, longing for the man of her dreams to come along. However, she must contend with mere mortals, and that is her problem.

Her sister Kathy feels Laura is simply not ready to be committed to anyone, because if Laura truly wanted to be in a settled relationship, she would pick from one of the many available men she has dated over the years. Kathy is also of the Earth element, a pragmatic Capricorn. Kathy reasons that if her sister wanted to find a long-term partner, she has certainly had the opportunity, so Laura herself must have issues she is unaware of that are keeping her back from a settled and monogamous love life.

Kathy has been happily married for many years, and truly loves her husband, a genial Libra, although they have their differences. Certainly the marriage has not always been an easy ride for either of them. Still, Kathy and her husband like each other, they’ve weathered many storms, and they can laugh together. Kathy wishes Laura could find the same companionship as she has, but she suspects Laura is simply too hung up on finding someone who just may not exist in reality. Who is right and who is wrong?

A more familiar story to the reader might be the romantic highs and lows of Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O’Neal, who had a long-term relationship, parented a child together, and yet never got married. When Farrah became ill with cancer, long after they broke up, she turned to Ryan for support and he gave it to her. Neither Farrah nor Ryan were perfect people, and they certainly hadn’t lead perfect lives by the time they found each other, but they did manage to stay together for a long time and they did love each other. Let’s take a look at their astrology aspects, singularly and together, and see what enabled them to stay together.

Tempestuous Charm

Ryan O’Neal has played some very romantic charmers on TV and on the silver screen, but in reality he is said to be very hard to handle in a love relationship. It’s to both his and Farrah’s credit that they hung on to each other as long as they did. Ryan has a reputation as a Hollywood heartthrob, and he was married twice, both times to actresses, first to Joanna Moore and then to Leigh Taylor Young. He has four children, two with Joanna, one with Leigh, and one with Farrah.

Ryan has said publicly that he doesn’t get along with his children. Tatum and Griffin, his children with Joanna, have publicly fallen out with him, and Griffin has accused him of being abusive. Redmond, his son with Farrah, has been in and out of rehabilitation centers since he was 15, and displayed personality problems from a young age.

Ryan O’ Neal was born on the “cusp,” the dividing line between two signs, April 20, 1941, a day when the Sun could be in either Aries or Taurus. Some people think that those born on a cusp are a blend of both signs, but that is simply not true; you are either one sign or the other, and it is the time of your birth that settles the question of which one that might be. O’Neal, for all his hot- headedness, is not a red-blooded, fiery Aries. At the time of this birth at 9:34 a.m. PST in Los Angeles, California (all of his data is from his birth certificate), the Sun had moved into Taurus, so he is most certainly a Bull! His rising sign is in Cancer at 9 degrees and his Moon is at 26 Aquarius.

He has a lot of planets in Taurus, namely the Sun, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. Pluto, the planet of intense emotion and underhandedness, is at 2 Leo, square his 0 Taurus Sun and his 0 Taurus Venus. Both the Sun and Venus are conjunct, giving Ryan O’Neal the appearance of beauty and allure that so charmed women when they saw him cast as the heartbroken husband in the smash 1970 movie Love Story.

Playing opposite Aries Ali McGraw, Ryan won hearts and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor as the lovely to look at, soft-spoken, but also very masculine and athletic Oliver Barrett. Oliver was from the rich upper echelon of society and he fell madly in love with the doomed Jenny Cavalleri, a poor and beautiful girl who, as it turned out, was dying of leukemia.

The movie established Ryan O’Neal as the romantic fantasy to end all fantasies, but in reality his life with his romantic partners was far from picturesque, and was in fact tumultuous. At the time of his Academy Award nomination, he already had a very contentious divorce from actress Joanna Moore under his belt, one which also involved a custody trial for the couple’s children, Tatum and Griffin. Added to that was the fact Ryan was soon to divorce his second wife, Aquarius Leigh Taylor Young, whom he met during their time together on the hit TV series Peyton Place.

O’Neal’s romances have included many famous names from the celebrity circuit, including Taurus Bianca Jagger during the time she was married to flamboyant Leo Mick Jagger, not exactly a paragon of monogamy. When he met Farrah in 1979, she was still married to Taurus Lee Majors, her Hollywood hunk of a husband. Farrah quickly left The Bionic Man for Ryan and moved into his house in Malibu in the fall of 1979. The pair never married, but they did maintain a close though sometimes stormy relationship for 17 years, producing one son, Redmond, who was born on January 30, 1985, at 2:55 a.m. in Los Angeles, California.

Farrah Fawcett flashed to the top of the celebrity world during her one-year stint on TV show Charley’s Angels in 1976, which led to a best selling poster that established her as a pop culture icon. In fact, she reportedly earned more on royalties from poster sales than she did from her salary on the show! According to her birth certificate, Farrah Fawcett was born on February 2, 1947, at 3:10 p.m. CST in Corpus Christi, Texas. Her Ascendant, the barometer of her personality, is 5 Cancer, and therefore conjunct Ryan’s own Ascendant.

Ryan and Farrah, for all their problems with their son Redmond, and from their own combustible personalities, did share a lot of the same values and had a lot of good chemistry. Their personalities blended together in a way that allowed the both of them to maintain the relationship, whether living together or not, for a long time.

Many couples love each other but are simply not compatible. Other couples manage to stay together even under very long odds. Leo Carl Jung, the noted Austrian psychologist, had a strong interest in astrology, and whenever patients would come to him for counseling and analysis he would do their charts as part of his process of getting to know them. Jung noted that often couples who were together for a long time had one partner’s Sun in the same sign as the other’s Moon. Farrah's Sun at 13 Aquarius is of course in the same sign as Ryan's Moon, even though the luminaries do not connect by degree.

The Sun rules our identity and ego, and the Moon rules our emotions and the way we express those emotions. Whenever two people have their Sun and Moon in the same sign, they often are able to work out their differences, since they are coming from the same place, in a manner of speaking. Despite this connection, Farrah and Ryan never married. After their son Redmond was born, the tabloids would often report that a marriage was imminent, but even when sharing a child they could not seem to manage to stay in the same space for an extended period.

Farrah’s Venus is in frisky Sagittarius, and her Mars is in Aquarius, the same sign as her Sun and Mercury. Aquarius is the sign of rebelliousness, innovation, and originality. Aquarius natives have a very offbeat take on life, and they certainly march to their own drummer and dance to their own tune. Aquarius is a Fixed Air sign. An Aquarian distills his or her emotions through the mind, so Farrah often took a very dispassionate view of herself and of her life. Of course, with her Cancer rising sign and her Moon at 4 Cancer closely conjunct her Ascendant, she had very easy access to her feelings, which could be very torrid at times.

The Cardinal Water sign Cancer, on the other hand, is domestically oriented. Between her Sun (her basic identity), and her Mercury, (her mind and imagination), in airy Aquarius; and her rising sign, (basic personality), and her emotional Moon in vulnerable and sensitive Cancer, Farrah may at times have found it very hard to make sense of who she was and what she wanted in life.

She truly had a very yin-and-yang approach to life. Though she appeared to be cool and distant, she would have been very emotionally needy. Such a personality type, one that could swing so much between two different extremes, would certainly have been confusing both to her and to any love partner.

Ryan O’Neal himself has a very volatile and pugnacious streak, and he has said in interviews that he was not a good father, and in fact doesn’t really like all of his children, two of whom, Tatum and Griffin, he has had public breaks with. His Mercury, the planet of self-expression, is in impulsive and fiery Aries, so he is someone who says what he believes to be true, whether anyone else likes it or not. During the time when he was a big box office draw, he did tone down his opinions. But since his star has dimmed somewhat, he may feel it’s okay to state his mind bluntly.

Comparison of Ryan and Farrah’s charts almost immediately indicates a meeting of souls, as demonstrated by their conjunct Cancer rising signs. They may have understood each other in a very real and deep way, and were able to mesh their hearts and minds together. Of course, the differences were there, encased in two volatile personalities, so even though they had a long relationship, they officially broke up on February 22, 1997. Due to their son Redmond, they remained closely connected, and when Farrah discovered she had cancer in September of 2006, they reunited and became close again. In fact, they were even planning to marry toward the end, but she died before it could happen.

He reported that he had asked her to marry him while she was undergoing her controversial cancer treatment in Germany, but at first she said no. Ryan may have sincerely wanted to seal their relationship with a legal wedding ceremony, both for his own sake and Farrah’s, but perhaps she felt too emotionally, mentally, and spiritually drained to agree at that point.

Ryan's Venus is conjunct his Sun and square his Pluto and Chiron, the asteroid of wounded healing. Though his love relationships were certainly tumultuous, since he is such a complex soul, it’s possible that he himself was unsure of just what he wanted from Farrah, or from any woman. Despite that, her health crisis called out the best in him, and he devoted three years to caring for her. Perhaps he felt the marriage on her deathbed would provide closure for the both of them. After all, he is in remission from a chronic form of the same disease that brought tragedy to his fictional romance in Love Story, and is not far from a critical point at which it could return to challenge him.

When Farrah discovered she was terminally ill, she and her friend Alana Stewart began to film a documentary of her struggle. Alana, a Taurus born May 18, 1945, is a fixture on the Hollywood scene and is the ex-wife of both movie star George Hamilton and rocker Rod Stewart. The documentary was broadcast on the television network NBC, both before and after her death, to large ratings. Farrah was comfortable having cameras following her around, even in difficult and traumatic circumstances, and felt that her struggle might be of some help to others.

Farrah’s Jupiter, the planet of excess and extravagance, is in intense Scorpio in her 5th house of entertainment and amusement. The 5th house represents show business. Farrah’s Jupiter trines her Midheaven, the cusp of her 10th house of status and how the public views us. Farrah may have gone a bit overboard in her desire to exhibit herself before others via her graphic documentary. However, she has her Sun, Mercury and Mars in the 8th house of inner transformation and personal power. The 8th house is traditionally called the house of sex, death and taxes, and the natural ruler is intense Scorpio.

Farrah may have experienced a tremendous feeling of freedom and liberation by allowing herself to be filmed in her final hours. By sharing her story with others perhaps she achieved a strong emotional closure to her own personal life journey.

Her son Redmond, an Aquarius like his mother, was shown in the documentary with her, and it appeared they had a close relationship, although Redmond certainly has had enormous problems from the time he was a young teenager. He has his Moon at 24 Taurus, conjunct the fixed star Caput Algol, long considered to be an indicator of extreme behavior in a chart. His Venus and Mars are conjunct at 27 Pisces, so his emotional life is prone to volatility. Mars in Pisces can be a difficult astrological placement, since the fiery anger, energy, and drive of Mars is lost in the watery depths of Pisces.

Redmond and his father Ryan have a strong connection. It probably helps greatly that Redmond's Moon is conjunct Ryan’s Jupiter, the planet of good fortune, and his Uranus, the planet of daring. It’s said that Ryan and Redmond did drugs together, and they seem to behave more like buddies than like father and son, though their relationship is not necessarily an easy one. Redmond has had his troubles (mainly with drugs, which have put him both in rehab and in jail), and in many ways he seems to serve as both a negative and a positive symbol of the unbreakable (though certainly stretchable) bond between his mother and father.

When Farrah passed away on June 25, 2009, the Moon was in flamboyant and dramatic Leo, and Ryan was at her side. While they did not have a traditional love story, Ryan O’Neal and Farrah Fawcett certainly did love each other, and that’s the only thing that really counts, whether at the beginning of life, or at the end.