Анна Шиман
Draft translation. This text was translated automatically and has not been proofread yet — if something reads oddly, it does.
Ascendant in Libra — Descendant in Aries.
Relationships on credit. How the “good girl” mask leads to bankruptcy
Any deep exploration of the human soul inevitably confronts us with a paradox: what society is used to calling virtues — gentleness, compliance, the knack of smoothing over sharp edges and endless patience — often turns out to be the most refined way of destroying oneself.
This article is written for those who are stuck in the script of the “accommodating, good girl”. For women who for years smooth over conflicts, keep quiet about their hurts, are terrified of open conflict and of their own anger, and then sincerely cannot understand why their life is turning into a disaster and their partners coolly take advantage of them.
Welcome to the sign of Libra on the Ascendant and the mask of the “ideal, fair-minded person”.
In this article we will look at the deep psychological mechanisms of Libra on the Ascendant. Her obsessive wish to be flawless, ideal and endlessly accommodating in the social world.
The psyche of a person whose Ascendant falls in this air sign is tuned to social interaction from the very start. These are born lawyers, who inwardly always know exactly what is right, what is beautiful, what is fair. But this airy, rational, mental flawlessness often hides an early flight from themselves.
The ruler of Libra, Venus, is responsible for social interaction. That is why the “Libra person” is from the start more attuned to others than to themselves. And so, little by little, a person’s attention drifts out into the outer world, dissolving in other people’s expectations.
Behind this outward splendour the repressed Shadow of the sign of Aries always comes to light: healthy self-centredness, impulsiveness, primal aggression and the ability to say a firm “no”, all buried deep in the subconscious. But since childhood the child was taught to hide this Aries, and the psyche simply repressed and split off this “wrong” part. Aries is a huge “I”, whereas Libra is “You”.
When a person betrays their own essence, their subconscious starts looking for someone who will act out the blocked anger for them. This is how an unconscious “bankruptcy contract” is set in motion.
What destructive consequences this credit leads to, why dirty feet are bound to land in the clean lace bed of all-forgiveness, and how to take back in time your responsibility and the strength to rewrite the script — read on in this piece.
Part 1. A suit that has grown too tight
Let us lift the mask of ideal Libra a little and look at the script of a woman’s Ascendant in Libra with the Shadow repressed in Aries, on the axis of the 1st and 7th houses.
Look closely at a person who learned a rigid programme from early childhood: “To be loved, you have to be accommodating, sweet, predictable and endlessly agreeable.” Jung called this the Persona — the social mask that the psyche creates as a protection, to survive in the parental family. Such a woman masterfully guesses other people’s wishes, keeps quiet about her own hurts and manages to feel guilty for every conflict that is not hers. In the astrological chart her Persona is coloured by the energy of Libra, the sign that stands at the peak of social interaction. She is totally attuned to the outer world; she has literally run away from herself and depends entirely on what the people around her think.
It seems to her that this tight, perfect “good girl” suit protects her vulnerable Ego from pain and injustice. But if we look into her unconscious, we will find the repressed Shadow there: a wild, brutal and thoroughly uncivilised Aries, ruled by Mars, who in truth could not care less about any social conventions. And as long as this true, impulsive “I” of hers, her strong will and healthy aggression are driven into the unconscious, a script starts to unfold in the woman’s real life — the one I take apart in this article.
Part 2. Projecting the Shadow, and a suitcase without a handle
The human psyche cannot stand a vacuum. Everything we fiercely repress into the Shadow and forbid ourselves to live out, we begin to pull in powerfully from the outer world. This is not magic — it is physics! If a woman is welded shut inside a mask of peacefulness, her unconscious starts looking for someone who will act out her own suppressed anger for her.
That is exactly why “good girls” with the Ascendant in Libra are so desperately drawn to “bad boys”, men in uniform, fighters, or men with harsh, self-centred and utterly uncivilised behaviour. In their uncompromising nature and their ability to think only of themselves, the woman subconsciously sees her own blocked part.
She gets stuck to such a partner like a wasp in watermelon juice, because something inside her suddenly gives a sweet “jolt” at his Martian strength and boldness. The woman melts and gets “carried away”. The partner starts treating her openly unfairly. He violates her boundaries, devalues her interests, and her “good girl” puts up with it. Her unconscious holds on to this man with a death grip, making her agree, cry, sob, throw fits, check up on him, now and then lose her mask of perfection — yet stubbornly go on serving someone else’s selfishness.
Part 3. A loan of patience and a visit from the debt collectors
Trying to hold on to the pretty picture of an “ideal relationship”, the woman makes the main economic mistake at the level of her essence: she starts buying love on credit. Instead of openly stating her boundaries, she goes and does all of her partner’s psychological work for him. She endlessly harmonises the space around her, bends over backwards, holds back her impulses and represses her own spontaneity. She borrows energy from herself.
An example from life (the collapse of an illusory bank):
Imagine how this codependent contract plays out in everyday life. Her partner flops into her clean lace bed with dirty feet. The woman grinds her teeth in fury but stays silent — after all, the picture has to stay pretty. Behind that silence stands a dyed-in-the-wool, shadowy pride: “It will be the way I see it and want it! I will explain it to him and he will change.”
Tomorrow her partner brings strangers into her home; they drink her collector’s cognac and eat pizza in front of her expensive television, dropping crumbs on the expensive carpet, while she again and again calls her inner bank in her head: “Hello, give me one more loan of patience, I’ll keep quiet a little longer!”
The bank trusts this gentle mask — after all, Libra looks harmonious and inspires trust in authorities and institutions — and it issues new tranches of energy. But the limit is not endless. And when one fine day the woman finds this character tumbling about in her bed with three mistresses, her plugs finally blow. There is nothing left to pay the loan back with, a nuclear bomb of anger accumulated over years explodes inside, and fate’s debt collectors come for our heroine.
The woman puts on a grand show of smashing dishes and screaming, demanding that her partner compensate the damage. But do you know what the most paradoxical thing is? The man is genuinely frightened and feels deeply deceived! After all, it was she who set this level of all-forgiveness from the very first day and taught him that she has no boundaries. And he never signed anything with any “banks of fate”, never took out any loans. If he embodies the Aries archetype, he tells the woman where to go and swiftly leaves her life. He is furious! He is offended and feels betrayed! After all, it was she who wanted and provided for a relationship with a handsome guy like him. And now she is behaving terribly!
Both are right. And there is no relationship.
Are you still here?
Then let us go on and look at the Libra — Aries axis through a woman’s Sun in Cancer.
The Cancer archetype on its minus side often carries an infantile wish to grab everything, stuff it into its dark little den and guard it! Cancer also tends to take psychological ownership of people through narcissistic extension: “These are my people, this is my tribe, my family!” And when a partner openly takes advantage of her, throwing him out of her “tribe” is, for such a woman, like cutting off her own hand. Instead of a firm, adult outward action, she keeps giving him a second, a third, a tenth chance, with no idea at all of the terrible price she pays for these illusions of safety.
Part 4. The laws of enantiodromia and leaving the children’s sandpit
Why does psychology explore these harsh scripts? Why do I show and talk about all this on our Symbolon cards course?
We do it not to programme reality magically for eternal happiness. Our aim here is to gently pry your claws off your destructive script, to show that the mask is only a costume and the stage set of your image of “I”, your defence mechanisms, while your true essence lies elsewhere.
Pop psychology loves to give advice along the lines of: “You have a Libra mask? An Ascendant in Libra? Well then, start expressing it even more, be even more diplomatic!” But in practice I see that this advice can work out either as a huge plus or as a total minus. If a person is at a low level of awareness, blindly following the mask will simply make them give up on themselves for good and get stuck fast in the negative pole of their life scripts.
Thanks to the law of enantiodromia (a term from depth psychology meaning that any extreme sooner or later turns into its opposite), a person who has made concessions and false compromises to the limit will still explode one day and show their real emotions. As a rule, they are destructive and harmful. So wouldn’t it be simpler to make this process manageable?
The way out of this vicious circle lies through psychological growing up. As long as we sit in the “children’s sandpit”, we are run by the “inner three-year-old princess”, who wants total power over the world, stamps her little foot and believes that people are obliged to guess her wishes and give her what she wants. Rather than giving it to herself.
The adult position, on the other hand, calls for a completely different approach — a move to the level of clear structure and agreements made up front:
- Get to know and accept your true character by bringing Aries out of the Shadow. Allow yourself to feel anger, aggression and spontaneity. Work with it.
- Stop staging secret “loyalty” tests for people after you have put up with things for a long time. There is no need to send your expectations by secret carrier pigeon or wait for a mounted courier to deliver them in 10 years.
- You have to open your mouth and declare directly to your partner your rules of life, values and expectations: “This is what I expect from you, and this is what I give in return. If you break our original agreement, penalties and late fees kick in.”
A relationship is always a balance of “give and take”, and an equilibrium. And if your partner does not respect your law, does not do their part of the work and does not pay their bills, you must be ready to make difficult, unpopular decisions and close this credit line for good. If you respect yourself. Because nobody in this life has cancelled the basics of psychology and personal boundaries. If there is no “law” inside you, you live in the “big sandpit”, you do not know how your resources are distributed and you endlessly take out loans for love — then I have bad news for you. You are still at rock bottom. You are a victim of fate, of the absolute and of other people.
Today we have seen the flip side of the all-forgiving Persona of the Ascendant in Libra.
Ask yourself:
- Have you caught yourself trying to rack up “loans of patience”, keeping quiet about hurts for the sake of a pretty picture in your relationship?
- Are you ready at last to take charge of your “inner three-year-old princess”, stop waiting for mercy from fate’s debt collectors and start openly declaring your rules of life?
If so, I invite you to our projects: the Symbolon course “Initiation by Symbol” and the closed, paid Kontekst club.
Anna Shyman, psychologist.
