Archival Gems

The Eternal Triangle

by Liz Greene - Part 2

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The family triangle

Family triangles do not finish in childhood, but have repercussions throughout life.

Family triangles do not finish in childhood, but have repercussions throughout life. If unresolved, they may secretly enter our adult relationships. If a family triangle is unhealed, we may recreate it, once or many times, hoping on some deep and inaccessible level that we will find a way to heal or resolve it. Freud developed the idea of the Oedipal triangle - also known as "the family romance" - in a very specific context. In his view, we attach ourselves passionately to the parent of the opposite sex, and enter into a situation of rivalry and competitiveness with the parent of the same sex.

Depending on how the Oedipal triangle is resolved in childhood - and this includes the parents' responses as well as one's own innate temperament - our later relationships will inevitably be affected. If we unequivocally "win" and get the exclusive love of the parent of the opposite sex, we suffer because we never learn to separate or share. We experience a kind of false infantile potency because we feel that we have beaten the rival. We are all-powerful, which may open the door to a later inability to cope with any kind of relationship disappointment. And one's relationships with one's own sex may also be disturbed accordingly.

If, for example, a boy sees his mother and father in conflict, and "wins" the Oedipal battle by becoming his mother's surrogate husband, he may experience deep unconscious guilt toward his father. Also, he may lose respect for his father, whom he has apparently pushed out of the way with great ease. The boy's image of father may then be of someone weak, impotent, and easily beaten, and somewhere inside he will fear this in himself, because he too is male. This boy may have to keep affirming his Oedipal victory later in life by turning every male friend into a rival, and relating exclusively to women.

Such men do not connect with other men, but only to the women who are attached to other men. The bond with his mother will have cost this man his relationship with his father, which may mean he has no positive internal masculine image on which to draw, and no sense of support from the community of men around him. His sense of male confidence and male sexual identity must rely entirely on whether his women love him - and the more, the better. That is a very insecure and painful place in which to live. We could apply the same interpretation in the case of a woman and her father.

If we entirely lose the Oedipal battle - and the operative word is entirely - we also suffer. Absolute Oedipal defeat is a humiliation which can severely undermine one's confidence in oneself. By "absolute", I mean that the child feels that no emotional contact of any kind has been achieved with the beloved parent, and a profound feeling of failure ensues. One simply cannot get near the parent, who may be incapable of offering any positive emotional response to his or her child. Or the other parent is always in the way.

Later in life, such an emotional defeat can generate a gnawing sense of sexual inadequacy and inferiority. It can contribute to many destructive relationship patterns - not least the kind of triangle where one is hopelessly in love with a person who is permanently attached elsewhere. One may become the unhappy Instrument of Betrayal, forever knocking at the closed door of a lover's marriage. Or one may become the Betrayed, helplessly repeating the Oedipal defeat in the role of the established partner who is humiliated by the greater power of the mother- or father-rival. With both unequivocal Oedipal victory and unequivocal Oedipal defeat, we are unable to establish a psychological separation from the beloved parent, and a part of us never really grows beyond childhood. We may then become stuck in repetitive relationship dynamics where we keep trying to "right" the original difficulty through a triangle.

Freud thought that the healthiest resolution of the Oedipal conflict is a kind of mild defeat, where we get enough love from the beloved parent but are still forced to acknowledge that the parents' relationship is ultimately unbreachable. We may then learn to respect relationships between other people, and build confidence through establishing relationships beyond the magic parental circle. We are here in the realm of what Winnicott called "good enough" - a good enough parental marriage, a good enough relationship with both parents, and sufficient love and kindness for the Oedipal defeat to be accompanied by a reasonable sense of security within the family and a knowledge that one will continue to be loved.

Sadly, many parents, themselves emotionally starved and resentful in an unhappy marriage, do punish their children for "stealing" the partner's love.

It is also important that we do not fear punishment from the parent-rival. Sadly, many parents, themselves emotionally starved and resentful in an unhappy marriage, do punish their children for "stealing" the partner's love. We need to recognise that we cannot supplant one parent in order to have the other, but we also need to know that we will be loved by the parent we have tried to overthrow. Naturally this is an ideal which few families can achieve. A great many people suffer from one degree or another of excessive Oedipal victory or excessive Oedipal defeat. What really matters is what we do with it, and how much consciousness we have of it. And nothing is quite so potent an activator of consciousness as a relationship triangle.

There is considerable value in Freud's psychological model, and there do seem to be many situations where absolute Oedipal defeat or absolute Oedipal victory are linked with a tendency to become involved in triangles later in life. But there are serious limitations to this model of the family romance. The parent to whom we attach ourselves is not necessarily the parent of the opposite sex. The parent may be one's own sex. Oedipal feelings are not, after all, "sexual" in an adult sense, but have more to do with emotional fusion. So, in fact, do many of our apparently purely sexual feelings in adulthood; sexuality carries many emotional levels which are not always conscious.

An Oedipal defeat or victory involving the parent of one's own sex may have equally painful repercussions, and be equally conducive to later relationship triangles. One may feel dislocated from one's own sexuality, because the beloved parent is a model for that sexuality and the bond is too weak or negative to allow the model to be internalised in a positive way. A man may forever try to win his father's love by proving how manly he is. He may then unconsciously set up triangles which are not really about the women with whom he becomes involved, but are unconsciously aimed at impressing other men - or punishing them for the father's rejection.

And a woman may try to win her mother's love and admiration in the same way, or punish other women for her mother's failure to love her. The rival in an adult triangle may be secretly far more important to the individual than the apparent object of desire. We have only to listen to the obsessive preoccupation the Betrayed and the Instrument of Betrayal have with each other to recognise that the situation may be psychologically far more complex than it seems.

Helpful Oedipal hints - Venus as a parental significator

The birth chart can tell us a lot about our images of our parents, and the experiences we have encountered through them. When we look at a chart, we may find some helpful Oedipal hints. The parental significators usually show up very powerfully, and in such a way as to involve one's emotional and sexual needs and one's image of oneself as a man or woman. We might find planets in the 10th or the 4th house, which immediately suggests the parent is a carrier for or representative of something mythic and archetypal.

Having no planets in the parental houses does not mean there are no conflicts with the parents, or no subjective image which we project on them. But it is often easier to perceive the parent as another person, another human, however flawed. When planets occupy these houses, the planetary gods appear with the parent's face, wearing the parent's clothes. A piece of our own destiny, our own inner journey, comes to meet us in very early life, disguised as mother or father and passed down through the family inheritance. While this is not "bad" or "negative", it does imply something powerful, fascinating, and compulsive about the parental relationship which requires a greater degree of consciousness and a greater effort at integration.

Repeating triangles in adult life are frequently linked with planets in the parental houses. Often we will see Venus in the 10th or 4th. Venus describes what we perceive as beautiful and of value, and therefore what we love, both in ourselves and in others. If a parent appears in the birth chart as Venus, that parent is going to be a symbol of what we recognise as most beautiful, most valuable, and most worthwhile. That in itself is not negative. But it may mean that we project our own beauty and worth on the parent, and a lot then depends on how the parent handles such a projection. We see deeply lovable, worthwhile qualities or attributes in the parent and we fall in love with the parent because we are in love with the attributes.

Venus is not known in myth for her emotional generosity. She is a vain goddess and is repeatedly implicated in love triangles.

Hopefully, as we mature, we eventually introject these things, and recognise that they belong to us as well as to the mother or father. This process can help to create a lasting, loving bond between parent and child - a mutual valuing of the other for qualities which are shared. But not every parent is free of hidden agendas regarding his or her children. If the parent is too hungry for love and admiration, he or she will unconsciously work to maintain the projection and remain forever Venus in the child's eyes.

Venus is not known in myth for her emotional generosity. She is a vain goddess and is repeatedly implicated in love triangles. If we leave the Venusian image projected on the parent, we may never recognise it in ourselves. Then we will keep looking for parental surrogates on whom we can place this image of all that is worthwhile and desirable in life, and we will keep finding Venusian love-objects who seem worth so much more than we do ourselves. Or we may try to reclaim Venus by playing her ourselves, pitting one lover against another in order to convince ourselves that we are really of value after all. Where Venus is, we love.

Rivalry is one of the most characteristic attributes of Venus placed in the house of the parent of one's own sex. We may wind up feeling a lot like Snow White a good deal of the time. With Venus in the 10th in a woman's chart, there may be deep and painful rivalry between mother and daughter. From the daughter's point of view, the mother may appear to be very jealous, although the jealousy may be expressed covertly as incessant criticism or subtle undermining of the daughter's feminine confidence.

Sadly, the jealous or competitive mother is often an objective reality. But it is one's own Venus in the 10th, and one must sooner or later acknowledge one's own jealousy as well. If Venus is a same-sex parental significator, then Venusian attributes are shared between parent and child. The archetypal love-goddess, who must be the fairest and best-loved of all, is an image which has passed down through the family line. This image needs to be individually expressed and not forever relegated to a battle as to who will win the love-object. In this case the love-object may not be as important as beating the rival. Rivalry and envy are closely related, and when Venus is a same-sex parental significator, we may see beautiful, enviable qualities in the parent and wish we had them ourselves. Then we begin to compete in order to prove that we are Venus too - a bigger and better and more beautiful Venus.

Parents may also feel a sense of sexual threat when confronted by a child who is growing into sexual maturity before their eyes. This sense of threat may be based on heightened sexual awareness. When Venus is a parental significator, it may not be felt purely on the parent's side, but may happen in both parent and child. Recognising that erotic feelings may be shared between parent and child does not constitute an excuse for child sexual abuse. Nor does it imply an "abnormal" relationship. But children can be very seductive, in a childlike way. They are "trying on" their sexuality. They neither want nor expect an adult sexual response, but they need to discover their own physical and emotional identity through expressing it to the parent. These things are simply part of family life. They are not pathological; they are human, and intrinsically healthy.

The erotic energy that is part of any person's development process in childhood is going to be unleashed in the family because that is the appropriate place for the child to unleash it. It is also natural and appropriate for the parent to respond positively - although it is not appropriate for this to be acted out in destructive ways. Some children may carry more of an erotic energy pack than others; this may depend on factors such as where Venus and Mars are placed in the child's birth chart. Likewise, some parents may be more susceptible than others, and the synastry between parent and child may help to illuminate why this should be so. A reasonably stable parental relationship is important, and also a sufficient degree of consciousness, for the parents to be able to contain this natural process without falling into a triangle. If one is a little girl with Venus in the 4th house, one may well try to split the parents, because father is the beloved with whom one shares some very lovely and pleasurable feelings. And if the parental marriage is insecure, and the mother unconsciously begins to behave in a hostile or competitive way, is her behaviour surprising?

Divided loyalties

Even in the happiest and most emotionally stable of families, one may feel both deep love for and intense rivalry with the parent

Even in the happiest and most emotionally stable of families, one may feel both deep love for and intense rivalry with the parent. One may find, for example, Venus in the 4th and Moon in the 10th. This is the case in the chart of Prince Charles, who has offered us one of the more notorious triangles of modern times. With such configurations there may be a strong identification with the rival. The child may wind up in a position of being the Betrayer as well as the Instrument of Betrayal. That is not conducive to feeling good about oneself, so something is likely to be suppressed.

The young ego simply cannot cope with such ambivalence. If one expresses Venus in the 4th, with all its implications of love for the father, one will hurt and betray the mother. And if the Moon is in the 10th, how can one do this to someone whose feelings one is so identified with? Then Venus may get suppressed, and later in life one may wind up in a triangle without understanding the early pattern which is fuelling it. Or the feelings for the mother may be suppressed. One may become a "marriage wrecker", as they used to call it in the days when there were still marriages. A "marriage wrecker", psychologically speaking, is a person who moves in on an established relationship, not only because of genuine affection and desire for the love object, but also because there is a compulsive need to take on the role of - to literally become - the rival with whom one is secretly identified.

It is very difficult to acknowledge such a pattern in oneself. If we wind up in the role of the Instrument of Betrayal, we like to think that we have truly fallen in love with someone, and the fact that they are already in an established relationship is just bad luck. They made a mistake and married the wrong person, or they married against their will because there was a child on the way. Whatever rationalisations we give ourselves, we may justify our role as Instrument of Betrayal by devaluing the importance of the already existing bond. This may sometimes prove extremely naive, and lead to a great deal of disillusionment and hurt when one discovers that the "unwanted" spouse means far more to the beloved than one has ever been able to acknowledge. One may also discover, to one's horror, that one begins to behave exactly like the despised rival whom one has initially relegated to the "he/she only stays with her/him because of the children" bin. When parental issues are unresolved, the urge to unseat a couple may be extremely powerful - especially if the rival is also one's close friend, which facilitates recreating the feelings of the original family triangle.

We may also see things in the beloved parent which are not so lovely. For example, a man with Venus in the 10th may also have a Moon-Pluto square or a Moon-Saturn opposition, or Venus conjunct Saturn or Chiron. There are two very different images of mother expressed by such combinations, one of which is beloved and beautiful, the other of which is threatening or hurtful. These two attributes tend to manifest in one's later life as two people - the Betrayed and the Instrument of Betrayal. This is what Jung called a "split anima", or the female equivalent - a "split animus". Jung was quite preoccupied with the psychological dynamics of this pattern because he suffered from it himself.

Although his definitions are somewhat rigid and in need of greater flexibility in interpretation, they are useful in helping us to understand why we need triangles, and why the three points are secretly interchangeable. All three people are likely to suffer from the same unresolved parental dynamic. The inner split seems to be particularly strong and conducive to compulsive triangles when apparently irreconcilable opposites appear in the same beloved parent. There are parents in whom the opposites are not terribly opposite, but there are also parents in whom they are very extreme. Such parents are fascinating and often exercise great sexual charisma because they are so unfathomable. The parent is beautiful and beloved, but also hurtful, cruel, unfeeling, devouring, or otherwise indigestible. It is very hard for the human psyche to accept extreme opposites in one package, so one needs two people through whom one can experience the ambivalent feelings. One will get to be Venus, and the other will get to be Pluto or Saturn or Chiron or Mars or Uranus.

Parental images which convey extreme opposites may contribute to a propensity for triangles in adult life. We get involved with someone, and over time that person begins to take on the image of one side of the parent. After a few years of living together, we begin to say to ourselves and our friends, "My partner's so possessive, I just have to have some breathing space," and there sits Venus in the 10th or the 4th, square Pluto.

Or we say, "My partner is so restrictive and conventional, I just have to be free to be myself," and there sits Venus in the 10th with Moon opposition Saturn. We feel we aren't enjoying the kind of beautiful, erotic, amusing relationship that we hoped we would find in partnership. We then justify the lover who plays the role of Venus. The split is acted out, but in fact it reflects two opposite qualities that we have not come to terms with in the relationship with one parent.

Of course such splits connected with the parents are, at the deepest level, concerned with opposite qualities that have not been resolved within oneself. All triangles, including those arising from the family background, are ultimately concerned with our own unlived psychic life. If we were able to reconcile our own opposites, we could allow our parents to be contradictory as well. There is nothing extraordinary about a parent having both a charming, lovable Venusian side and a withdrawn Saturnian side or a demanding Plutonian side. Human beings are multifaceted, and they may both love us and hurt us. But we may find these contradictions in our parents intolerable if the parents themselves cannot cope with their own contradictions. Then we get no help in learning to integrate our contradictions. And some of these, in astrological terms, are simply too extreme to deal with in early life. By this I mean configurations which link Venus or the Moon to Saturn or Chiron - these require a wisdom only time and experience can make available - or to the outer planets, which are quite impossible for a young child to integrate on a personal level.

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Author: Liz Greene

Liz Greene is a qualified analytical psychologist (Association of Jungian Analysts) and holds PhDs in Psychology (1971) and History (2010). She is the author of most of the horoscopes at Astrodienst.

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Images:

• Family: Alexandr Podvalny, unsplash.com
• Street sign with a heart: Nick Fewings, unsplash.com
• Venus: ©Astrodienst

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