A tale of two aspects: synastry study

Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn had an exact conjunction — her Venus and his Saturn are both at 1° of Aquarius. We can understand the different manifestations of this dynamic through a progression of Taylor's song lyrics.

It can be extremely stabilizing and grounding; Taylor's desire for connection may have felt materially realized with Joe. There's a sense of long term commitment and an ability to responsibly and carefully plan for the future when these planets come together. There's an acceptance of reality and a belief that even the mundane can be sweet and beautiful. Look at some of the lyrics that speak to this:

"I can tell that it's gonna be a long road/ Ill be there if you're the toast of the town,/ Or if you strike out and you're crawling home"

"I like shiny things, but I'd marry you with paper rings"

"You know I'd swing with you for the fences,/ with you in the trenches,/ Give you my wild, give you a child,/ Give you the silence that only comes when two people understand each other."

"The voices that implore:/ you should be doing more/ To you I can admit, I'm just too soft for all of it... All that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothing"

But there is another side to Venus-Saturn. It can be heavy, stifling. It can feel impossible to live up to the expectations the other person has of you - or that you simply feel they have for you, whether or not those expectations are just a projection of your own inner critic or not. Saturn slows things down, cools them off. That's not very sexy. It can create bonds of duty and obligation that sometimes grow brittle and restrictive instead of grounding and real. It can create distance and coldness. Taylor and Joe had physical distance as a theme i  their relationship - he's from London, she's from the United States. She travels the world on stadium tours, he likes to keep his personal life private. And after time, the commitment to the relationship became more real than the relationship itself. Both the physical and emotional distance is also illustrated in Taylor's lyrics:

"We were crazy to jump into the ocean separating us"

"I kept calm and carried the weight of the rift/ Pulled him tighter each time he was drifting away"

"Handcuffed to the spell I was under/ for just one hour of sunshine"

This was Taylor Swift's longest public relationship, and also her most private. It started at a time when she intentionally took a break from the public eye, it yielded a great creative collaboration and output when the two of them were alone together during quarantine — and it also grew cold and distant.

Meanwhile, Taylor had a tight Mars-Venus conjunction with Travis Kelce. Her Mars in Scorpio is at 26° while Travis has his Venus at 26° of the same sign - another exact conjunction. This aspect looks very different - Mars moves quickly and burns hot. Where Saturn is cautious and humble, playing by the rules, Mars acts on feeling, is self-interested, and plays to win. This is evident in how public, sudden, and passionate their relationship has been. There's a directness to it - Travis publicly stated his desire, made it into a spectacle,

I think of Venus and Mars together as symbolically represented by the Cheerleader and Jock stereotype. What's interesting, though, is that Taylor is embodying Mars in this dynamic, while Travis brings the Venus energy. But that adds up when you break down the gender roles in their relationship - Swift is wealthier, more famous, and ultimately more powerful. She is a strategic businesswoman. Meanwhile, Kelce, extremely successful in his own right, is happy to sit back and let her shine brighter. He's the one who pursued her, who was "swooning" over her, in order to lure her in. He even made her a friendship bracelet as his bid for her affection. I think this dynamic is illustrated perfectly by the lyrics to "So High School" - even the tittle alone speaks to this.

"I want to find you in a crowd/ just to hide from you" and "are you gonna marry, kiss, or kills me?/ it's just a game, but really" both speak to the playfulness of this dynamic; "brand new, full throttle... you knew what you wanted,/ and boy you got her" speaks to the direct and impulsive nature of this aspect.

Even though it's still relatively new, this relationship is more public and "buzzy" than what had lasted more than half a decade with her previous partner.

Both of these aspects can be really powerful in a relationship. Venus-Saturn doesn't always end in silent dinners and the shackles of obligation; Venus-Mars can sometimes make a bigger mess than it's worth and fizzle out once the thrill of the chase is over. But aspects this close between two charts are bound to be profound, and the juxtaposition of these two relationships shows us just how different synastry can draw out very different interpersonal experiences in our lives.