Welcome to my Astro Advice Column! If you subscribe to my Astro-Kats or Star Kids Club groups you are able to ask me questions about astrology for this advice column.


Hi Ace! Do you have any advice for being with someone that has a Mars in Libra? It’s part of a grand square and I feel like it makes conflict very hard for my partner. I feel like I get stuck seeing the negatives of the placement (such as defensiveness, passiveness, or even a hyperviligent desire to appease). What can be some more mature expressions of this placement? What are the benefits that I’m missing?

(For reference I have Mars in Cancer but it’s my chart ruler and is supported by other placements. We have a great relationship but we get very confused when there’s conflict or an argument because we experience it so differently)

—Mars Advocate


Hi Mars Advocate! What a great question. It’s amazing that you’re so curious and present with your partner to want to know more about their conflict style.

Conflict is one of the hardest things in a relationship because it is so vulnerable. Unfamiliar conflict can be a little like the early days of dating when you’re not sure whether or not someone will still be there for you when you do this or that, when some people tend to flinch away because they’re so uncomfortable getting closer or showing a feeling, and other people feel like they need a response right now or they’re going to burst.

Unfamiliar conflict is new vulnerability. It’s an opportunity to choose to deepen a relationship or not yet.

Conflict serves an important purpose in relationships. It allows us to change when it’s doing its job. When we feel as though we cannot have conflict, it makes a relationship stagnate. Relationships that refuse conflict are unable to change with us.

A Mars in detriment is a Mars that engages in conflict without a plan. It doesn’t know what to do with conflict. It lets things happen.

I didn’t see that in your original question—what would make conflict creative for you? Ask your partner this and tell them what creative conflict feels like to you. Talk about that out loud with your partner. Does conflict need to feel jokey for it to feel flexible? Or, maybe, humor feel dismissive and unsafe? Maybe you need to touch physically when you fight or maybe you want distance?

You’re trying to show up with your partner in conflict as yourself. You are. Not someone else—you. So, only you will be able to tell your partner what you need in conflict. This is necessarily because you are one half of the relationship. When you talk about how nurturing and exploratory conflict can be for you, you invite your partner in.

In your question, you mentioned witnessing passiveness, defensiveness, and even a hypervigilant desire to please. These can be incredibly painful states to be in. Hypervigilance is this extremely activating and afraid feeling. Defensiveness too. Passiveness is a little different. Passiveness is about disengaging and disengagement can be a normal regulation tool, as long as there is choice around it.

How does your partner respond to aggression? How do you respond to it? How does your partner feel when they find themselves feeling aggressive? You? Aggression doesn’t always feel safe to everyone even if it is a healthy and normal emotion.

What about fear? What does your partner do when they’re scared? What do you do when you’re scared?

These are some of Mars’s most immediate expressions—anger and fear. These are very activating emotions. But Mars is about any type of emotional expression. What does your partner do when they are joyous and creative? Do they feel comfortable reading a poem they wrote out loud? What about you? How do you feel when a feeling that you have is out there, naked, and vulnerable?

That is what conflict does to us. It makes our feelings naked out there and vulnerable.

Go to two sides of a room and walk slowly towards each other. Imagine that the other person is angry with the other. Talk about what sensations arose for each of you during the imagination exercise and how you wanted to react. Did someone want to run away? Look down? Beg for forgiveness? Cling tighter or to demand an immediate response?

What are those emotions telling you about your responses to anger and what could offer yourselves another choice?

The best way to work with a debilitated Mars is to give it choice. Give it the choice to engage with you, to take space when it needs to, and give it the choice to deepen a relationship with vulnerability. I’m talking about both your partner’s debilitated Mars as well as your own.

Mars is about strategy. When we feel locked into a certain emotional strategy, when we feel as if we have no choice but to choose that one strategy whether that is trying to get a response from someone or burning a bridge, we become more emotionally brittle. Mars always needs a choice because it always needs a flexibility of strategy.

There’s actually nothing wrong with any emotional strategy. The ones you described—detaching, defending, and vigilance—these are actually all normal strategies. When we’re worked up, we sometimes choose to get away for a bit. We sometimes choose to push back a bit. We sometimes choose to watch a little closer because we are scared. These are painful strategies but they are also normal ones. It’s possible to realize that we’re choosing to cope a certain way and to also give ourselves the choice of another coping strategy.

This choice of choosing a less practiced coping strategy sometimes happens when we are assured and supported and it sometimes happens when we decide that we’re ready to lean past a defense with courage and will.

Choice isn’t often protected in our world. Choice comes when we feel empowered and safe. I believe that you and your partner have the capacity to build choice together. But, how many times did you not have choice in conflict when interacting with a manager, a family member, or even a friend? Our bodies remember and respond to those experiences, sometimes, even when we are faced with a relationship where we can build choice together.

So, basically, ya gotta talk to your partner! It sounds like the two of you have a relationship that gives you a lot of space for holding differences in strategies. Talk about how you feel when you see your partner distance. Talk about how you feel when they defend and try to please you. Talk about how they feel.

Then, give yourselves the choice of engaging, of distancing, and of deepening. You will need all of your strategies to be available in order to make a choice.