209: Astrology and Infidelity with Karen Hawkwood (Part 2)

Marie Murphy: Hi everyone, I'm Dr. Marie Murphy and I'm a non-judgmental infidelity coach. If you are engaging in anything you think counts as infidelity, I can help you deal with your feelings, clarify what you want, and make decisions about what you're going to do. No shame, no blame, no judgments.

When you are ready to resolve your infidelity situation in a way that's truly right for you, I can help you do it. And there are two ways you can have me as your coach. We can work together one-on-one via Zoom, or you can enroll in my online course, You're Not the Only One.

Whichever option you choose, I'll provide you with guidance and support that respects the fullness of your humanity and the complexity of your situation, and I'll help you find relief and a clear path forward. The whole point of resolving your infidelity situation in a way that you feel great about is to be able to live out a love life that you love and have enough bandwidth left over for the rest of the other important things in your life too. 

When you're ready to get to work, go to my website, https://mariemurphyphd.com/. I can't wait to meet you.

Today, I am going to be talking with Karen Hawkwood, also known as KJ Sassypants, again about astrology and infidelity. If you have not already listened to our previous episode, you might want to go back and have a listen because we said some important things about what astrology is and what it isn't that we aren't going to completely rehash today. 

I've invited KJ back for another round of conversation because I've found astrology to be a particularly useful way to approach the task of becoming intelligible to ourselves. I found the framework of astrology a really useful way to understand the human condition and the human experience. And I've found it to be a really robust means for coming to know and understand and respect ourselves without being overly deterministic about who we are or what we are or whatever. 

And for me, that's a really important balance to strike. We want to be able to see ourselves and recognize ourselves and know ourselves without turning our insights into who we know ourselves to be into a straitjacket of inescapable fates or immutable tendencies.

Another astrologer, Chani Nicholas, talks about understanding astrology as a blueprint of our potential, and I really like how that language succinctly gets at how we might understand the value of astrology. So with all that, welcome back, Karen, KJ. I'm so glad to have you here again. Please say hi to everyone and tell them a little bit about yourself and your work.

Karen Hawkwood: Hey, Marie, it's so nice to be here. I so love, I think it's an especially lovely thing when you have one conversation with someone and they're like, that was so great, let's come back and do it again. So I'm really delighted to be here. This deep complexity of human nature is one of my, I mean, that's my favorite thing. And so I don't get to have these conversations everywhere.

Not everyone is having these conversations. And I love that. So I have been fascinated by astrology since I was 15. I'm 57. That's a lot of years.

I've studied it steadily for 40 years. It's the thing that I've stayed with. I've been in formal practice. I did my coach training with Martha Beck in 2013, 2012 and 13. I did master coach training in 2015, so I do have that as part of my approach and my toolkit, which was really beautiful because it helped me to operationalize the astrological understanding that I've been cultivating for 25, 30 years at that point.

So I've been in practice for 12 years. I do this work with people one-on-one. I do it in groups. I provide, I make things to throw out into the world. I've just started my own podcast, which is called Human Equals Paradox, so I'll be doing that there as well.

Marie Murphy: Cool. Tell people where they can find you in whatever places you like to be found.

Karen Hawkwood: Always a key consideration, right? My website is KarenHawkwood.com, K-A-R-E-N-H-A-W-K-W-O-O-D.com, And Human Equals Paradox is on Patreon. I think you can just search it, Human Equals Paradox. You're not gonna find anything else that sounds or looks like that.

Marie Murphy: Yeah, I bet not. Cool, Thank you so much. So today we're going to talk in pretty broad strokes about some of the astrological things that may be going on when we find ourselves engaging in infidelity. And Here's the example we're going to work from. Sometimes folks come to me and they're not doing monogamy.

They're doing some sort of ethical non-monogamy thing. Maybe they call it polyamory. Maybe they call it something else. So they're already not like, I'm only supposed to have one partner. I'm only supposed to have one partner, I'm only supposed to have one person, I'm only supposed to be attracted to one person.

They're already totally out of that box, but yet they find themselves doing things that count as cheating within the context of their relationships or the agreements they have about what they get to do with other people with their primary partner or other partners or whatever. And they find themselves being like bad at polyamory or something like that, right, In their own words. And so what happens sometimes is folks are like, I don't know what to do about this. And broadly speaking, this is very general just for the sake of not taking up the whole time talking about what I see, but sometimes what happens is we find that the rules are the problem. 

Some people have come to ethical non-monogamy because it seems better than monogamy, but what they actually want to be is a fucking libertine. They just want to do whatever the fuck they want, whenever the fuck they want to, with whoever the fuck they want to, but they're trying to fit themselves into this seemingly cute box, which seems like it's the answer, but it just isn't really the answer for them. 

Other times people are like, no, theoretically, I really want to abide by the rules of the game that I've set out for myself, but I can't do it. And I don't know what's going on. So I'll let you take it from there.

Karen Hawkwood: Okay. I also love hearing what you find because you have such deep experience with this. This is what you do. I will say just quickly at the outset, there are always other considerations that can contribute to this, especially trauma, attachment injury kind of stuff. But you have other ways of talking about that with people. So we're just gonna acknowledge that is also in the mix.

Marie Murphy: There are always so many layers.

Karen Hawkwood: Yeah. Yeah, so many layers. But what I can do is talk about the archetypal, because for me astrology is an archetypal language, which is to say it's a language of human nature. It's a language that articulates really beautifully the depth and complexity of how we work. So one of the most useful things about it that applies so perfectly here is that we are not one thing. We are not just one set of wants or needs.

Marie Murphy: Yeah.

Karen Hawkwood: And We are taught that we should be. We're taught to try to make ourselves that way. We're taught to, if we have what feels like, sorry, a competing set of needs, we really are taught to look at that as all but one of these must be wrong. Like, I must be confused. And if I were doing it right, I would just want one set of things.

And I will plant my flag in this ground. That is not how any of us work. So in the case of the first person, or the first kind of sub example that you give of this, my sense is that if they just really want to be a fucking libertine… And I think of that as kind of as anarchist in a way like no rules

Marie Murphy: Okay, say what you mean by anarchist.

Karen Hawkwood: Well, no rules. Anarchy in a, this is a more applied sense, but in the general sense is there are no rules.

Marie Murphy: Sure.

Karen Hawkwood: Yeah. Everybody does what they want, when they want, whatever. And if somebody does something you don't like, then you do whatever you wanna do about that. But it's total freestyle. And that is, in my experience, a need for freedom that is at the higher end of the range.

Because we all have ranges on all of these sets of needs. And for some people if their slider is set to like between nine and 10, let's say, making this up…

Marie Murphy: Or 11 and 12,

Karen Hawkwood: or 11 and 12 or 15, or whether they've re-machined their slider to go beyond where most people go. What that does is that there is an innate tension and the tension is not a bad thing. And so this is one of the things that I want people to understand if they can. This is the heart of paradox is that there can be tremendous tension between these dimensions of self and that's not bad or wrong. It's also deeply real.

And so when we try to collapse that tension, we try to solve the tension and treat paradox as a problem to be fixed, we get into deep trouble. Because I'm talking about it like it's two sets of needs. It's always more than that. But in this case, I'm highlighting the paradoxical tension between the desire for freedom and the desire for a sustained relationship.

Because for most people, total anarchic relationality doesn't work for them. And that's not a judgment. It's not a judgment on them, and it's not a judgment on the anarchic person. It's just a mismatch.

Marie Murphy: It's also not imposing a model of like, yeah, everyone deterministically needs a certain type of relationship.

Karen Hawkwood: I'm sure you know what I have to say about that. My work is so predicated on uniqueness of each person and all this complexity of each person, not kind of reductive, you know, boxed up way of approaching things is not my gig.

Marie Murphy: No, it's totally not her gig. The reason why I'm calling this out is because I think that what I hear some people saying is that if they want all of the freedom that they want, then they shouldn't want any of the stability that they want, right?

Karen Hawkwood: That's the one thing part.

Marie Murphy: Yeah, yeah.

Karen Hawkwood: Well, if you want all that freedom, but you say you want stability, you must be lying.

Marie Murphy: Yeah.

Karen Hawkwood: Or that can't possibly be true because they contradict each other and that's not, I'm here to tell you it is. That is in fact exactly how all of us work. You can want a freedom slider of 11 on a scale of 10 and also want comfort and stability and a kind of constancy in relationship. And you're not lying and you're not making it up and you're not just in resistance and you're not, right?

Marie Murphy: And you're not just trying to have your cake and eat it too.

Karen Hawkwood: Absolutely not. That's a huge and painful judgment that is applied.

Marie Murphy: And ironically, it's so prevalent within the, I don't know what they would call themselves. There's definitely a scene out there of people who are like, I am an adulterer and I am proud of that. But then they get mad at people who want to have their cake and eat it too within that realm. And I find that to be like the height of irony.

Marie Murphy: It really, I mean, wow. Just look at that and be like, wow. So in practical terms, and I think this is a lot of how you deal with your folks too is when we set aside judgment, when we're not up in here trying to say you're right and you're wrong and you're good and you're bad, what are we left with? We're left with the pragmatics. Does this work? Or does it not?

And that's never a binary either. It sort of works. It works a little better this way than that way. It was working for a few months. Now it's not.

It might start working again in a few months. It might not. That's always the deal. So for a person who has the really intense freedom need and also wants. Because if you want the freedom and you don't want the stable, sustained relationship, that's easy.

Karen Hawkwood: Yep, exactly.

Marie Murphy: And you're not wrestling with paradox. But if you want both of them genuinely, then the solution has to be deeply individual and deeply personal to the situation. But ultimately, the person who, well, the whole, all the people who are relational in that context, the freedom-loving person, their sustained partner, their other partners, however that looks. But the freedom-oriented person in particular has to figure out for themselves, is there a way that I can have this sustained relationship that I want with this particular person in a way where I do have enough freedom that I don't need to go outside of the structure and the agreements that we've made. 

And if the agreements are still confining enough, that person finds themselves going outside of the structure.

Just asking, getting really curious about that and seeing if there's more fluidity and more expansiveness possible without harming the sustained relationship. You know, that's the way that I would start down that road with someone. But if it's going to harm the relationship, then the freedom-loving person really has to sit with themselves and say, you know, how do I get as much of these needs met as I can? What, where's the intersection there? And the more paradox there is in the moment, that often the smaller that intersection is.

And that can be a really painful, super painful place for people. But it's real, it's real.

Marie Murphy: Right, and I think what I would like to have us emphasize from this to the extent that you agree with this is that I think there are astrological signatures that may kind of naturally propel us towards this kind of tight corner. You may have… Yeah, speak to that a little bit more. Where is this kind of tension coming from in astrological terms?

Karen Hawkwood: Well, I'm going to be really careful about getting super technical because it is a whole technical language and I don't want to roll people's eyes back with that. But this is why I emphasize the archetypal piece because there's a tremendous number of little intricate factors in the astrological language, but they coalesce around these sort of figures of human nature that are not actual human people but they're like embodied faces of these needs that we have. 

And so the archetypes that I talk about in my archetypal language as the visionary revolutionary and the adventurer seeker and sometimes the one that I call the curious child. These are the ones that have the highest freedom need. They need really as much open space as they can get and the visionary revolutionary in particular also has this quality of being very principled.

They have beliefs. This is a framework of the way that life and people should be. It's very important to them, very important to them. And when something impinges on those principles, they can get very rigid and feel very defensive because that's important to them. Those values and those principles are deeply part of their identity, their sense of self.

So without going into all of like, well you look here and if this is this and that is that, then you've got a strong visionary.

Marie Murphy: Just a little bit because there are gonna be some people listening who are like, what does that mean in terms of like planets and placements and signs and all that. Just a hint.

Karen Hawkwood: Okay, so this still you're not necessarily still gonna and I'm not trying to be coy, I'm trying to be brief. Yeah, yeah. So you're not still gonna be able to take this and look at somebody's chart and add this up necessarily. But the visionary revolutionary is very connected to the planet Uranus, to the sign Aquarius, and to the 11th house. The adventurer is very connected to the planet Jupiter, the sign Sagittarius, and the ninth house. I would say a little more Jupiter Sagittarius than the ninth house. And the curious child is connected to the planet Mercury at least sometimes and the sign Gemini very strongly to the sign Gemini and to the third house of the chart. So those are kind of the underpinnings.

Now, if we flip it over, there are a couple of different, I would say there are really probably three archetypes in my system, House 13, just how it worked out, that are really relationally oriented and relationally in a way that would create a lot of tension with those first three that I mentioned.

So there's one called the nourisher which is connected to cancer and sign of cancer. The sign of cancer, not the experience of it. I always have to say that. The moon and the fourth house. And I call it the nourisher for a reason because it is so oriented towards this care, this tenderness, and this protection and feeding in all ways of those who need it, of life, of the life that needs that care. And so there's a lot of emotional vulnerability in the nourisher. And when it cares, it opens itself in a way that is more deeply vulnerable on that pure emotional level than a lot of parts of us.

There's also, I'm gonna just because I couldn't go too far I think into this, but I'm also gonna call out the archetype that I call the primal animal. And this is also very deeply emotional, but from a different direction, because a primal animal, again, I use that term to try to evoke the feeling behind it, is passion and intensity. But there is also a tremendous awareness of vulnerability. And much like an animal will fight, any animal, most animals will fight if they have to protect what they love, what they need, what will harm them.

If it's lost, for people with a really strong primal animal, a partner, especially sort of a primary, significant relationship partner, lands in that place. Like you are mine, not in a shitty, patriarchal, possessive way, but in a way of you carry part of my survival, my existence as a being with you. And if something strains or harms our connection, it's like a knife in my heart. So what do you do if you have a really strong visionary or revolutionary and you have a really strong primal animal or nourisher, which is the kind of thing I see in people all the time. That's when that intersection, that overlap is smaller. And then you really have to work with the people according to their individual situation to see how both of those sets of needs can get met.

Marie Murphy: Yes, so what I love about what you're saying is that this gives folks a different way of seeing things that they experience to be really intense conflicts within themselves. And that's one of the reasons why I have KJ on the show, even though I know some of my clients are astrology fanatics. Some people I think have never heard of it, and some people think that it's total garbage. And that's fine. I mean, I'm not pushing the astrology agenda, even though I think it's valuable.

The point is, it's one way of legitimizing parts of ourselves that may seem like they shouldn't exist together, they shouldn't coexist within us. But this is one framework that says, oh yes, they can and they do. And yes, it is challenging to figure out what to do with this when we have interesting tensions, shall we say.

Karen Hawkwood: Multiple interesting tensions.

Marie Murphy: Yeah, but this is just a way of deeming that legitimate and making it more knowable to ourselves, right?

Karen Hawkwood: Absolutely, because when we put these faces, you know, these kind of archetypal faces that then become more personal to us, we can build relationships with these parts of ourselves. When we just judge them, because we're taught to judge them, as being wrong or a part, let's say that you have the visionary revolutionary which wants, which is very anarchic kind of by nature and you have a strong primal animal but you're working within a system of socialization right the values that you've inherited from your family from your broader culture whatever that line up with the primal animal. That's like pair bonding is the only right way to go. And you should cleave unto your beloved unto death and beyond. Which to the primal animal is like, well, yeah.

Like, what else do you do? That's so how it works. It's easy within therapeutic perspectives, within self-help perspectives, spiritual perspectives, to characterize the parts of you that I would talk about as the visionary revolutionary as simply resistance. And that's a problem to be solved, not an actual legitimate, beautiful, difficult, but beautiful, innate part of your being. And that's where I get cranky because I see how much that hurts people.

Marie Murphy: Yeah, I mean, there are so many ideas from so many sources out there that legitimize certain ways of doing relationships, certain ways of loving, certain ways of sexual expression, all of that kind of stuff. And so to your point, it's so easy to legitimize the parts of us that seem more convenient within the social system that we operate within.

Karen Hawkwood: That's it.

Marie Murphy: And the thing that I think is so interesting about this is that like the so-called "traditional" elements of the way that we think we're supposed to run our love lives can come from really, how can I say this, if we do things that way we may be fulfilling some of our desires to a great extent? I mean, we may love being pair bonded with someone and caring for someone and having like a nest with them and all of that. And that's fine. And the question is, what do you do if you also really want some other things? And the starting point we're saying is you treat these competing desires as legitimate.

Karen Hawkwood: You respect them and honor them. Well, you start out by learning not to hate and fear them and judge them. The judgment is the thing that has to go first. Then we start to work on not hating and fearing them and demonizing them. And then we see if we can work into respect, which does not require loving.

You don't have to love that you have these parts and that they need what they need, but you respect it. But what I will say is when we recognize our own complexity, because we all are this complex, all of us are built with paradox. But when we legitimize these needs and we recognize that we do have all of these needs that seem to be competing, they seem to be fighting with each other. And we want to find a way to meet those sets of needs. We need a more complex life.

Now I wanna be careful that I'm not saying complicated. But there has to be more nuance. There has to be more intricacy, even just within our own awareness of ourselves. But a lot of times on that pragmatic level, too.

Marie Murphy: Yeah, yeah, totally. This is what I see all the time. We may have to abandon some of our ideas or maybe even all of our ideas, about like, this is how it should be, this is the one right way to do things, or more specifically, this is the one acceptable way to live out a love life slash sex life slash relationship life, et cetera.

Karen Hawkwood: And that our lives will be simple. Like, simple and clear, and all the pieces will match. And they will resemble the lives of most of the people that we know in significant ways because again that's sort of, I know this sounds harsh and it's not directed in a given person. But we live within a model, particularly in America, but I think in any westernized culture, of this mass-produced sort of mechanistic, blueprinted perspective on everything.

Marie Murphy: Yeah, sure. Totally. The interesting thing, though, is that when we allow our lives to be less quote unquote simple in terms of what our old frame of reference about how things should be was, our lives usually become a lot more simple in terms of our lived experience of them. Which is an interesting paradox, right?

Karen Hawkwood: Yeah. Yeah.

Marie Murphy: Yeah. There's something that I wanna underscore here, but I wanna get your consent that this is correct. But part of what we're getting at here is that some people have a more baked in need for adventure or anarchy or exploration or variety than other people do. And that may translate into how they want to live out their love life, sex life, romantic life, relationship life.

Karen Hawkwood: 100%. We don't, you know, just in my system of 13 archetypes, and there's lots of archetypal frameworks out there, I often will say that it's a bit like rolling up a D&D character.

Marie Murphy: Say what D&D is again. We talked about it last time, but tell people who don't know.

Karen Hawkwood: Yeah, no, it's Dungeons and Dragons. It's a way of making up characters and then playing a game where a game of imagination where these characters are interacting and going on quests and adventures. But the characters themselves, you can't have all the qualities all at the highest level. And so this seems to be also something in human nature that if we have, if we really peg those adventurous freedom-seeking, the ones who love the new, the different, the discovery, as you said, we aren't also probably going to have a lot of the other archetypes as high. So there's these certain strengths, these certain big chunks of nature that people end up with.

And so I am not a person who has a really strong freedom need. I am much more about settling in and deepening into what is there than exploring and experiencing new things. Now a little wrinkle that I'll throw in, because this is something that fascinates me as much as anything in this very complex and interesting world, is that if you carry an archetype that is really different, sort of an outlier to your dominant nature and it's linked to relational stuff in your chart. There's some particular areas and ways that we see people that are very relational. What you can end up doing is rather than leaving it out yourself if you're too afraid to do that or too scared of it, yeah really, to do that, is you'll draw that kind of person into your world.

So I do not have a very strong need for newness and difference and breaking rules and going beyond the edges to see what's there. But I do have that archetype in a very relational area. So guess who I've partnered with, been close friends with, you know. I mean, I sat down and did an analysis after a really big breakup that I went through, and it was kind of embarrassing how consistent this archetype was so strong in person. Interesting.

Marie Murphy: That you've been involved with.

Karen Hawkwood: That I was either lovers with, because I was polyamorous for a lot of years, might still be, I don't know, but primary partners, lovers, and also close friends. Like the really close friends that I have had, even now, I just recognize it more clearly, but even now, I'll have this archetype. It's the visionary revolutionary. I've had so many of these people in my life, and it sits in a place in me where I would rather not see it. I don't like it.

I'm not comfortable with it. It unnerves me because I'm much more of a primal animal person. But here it is, keeps showing up, you know, so then I have to deal with my own complexity, not within me until I became more conscious of it, but between me and them. Oh, that also can happen. That's another place that the paradox, yeah, the paradox of our nature can play out.

So, so sometimes, and again, you know, just sending all the love in the world to people dealing with complex relationship situations, but sometimes when your partner, when you don't feel like you want the freedom and you want the more settled, intimate, connect, whatever, you can be intimate in lots of ways, but your partner really is expressing that desire for freedom, there's a possibility that they may be carrying kind of a hidden or as yet unacknowledged part of you.

That doesn't mean that would be how you would do it if it was up to you. I mean I'm not saying that means that you should just acquiesce to that, but there may be more going on. And when that happens, when a, when your partner's carrying a sort of hidden or an unaware part of you, the polarization, the tension and the polarization that can happen can become extra charged because part of what's happening in the subtext between you and your partner is between you and you.

Marie Murphy: Yeah, I am gonna say something briefly about that that is like, it's like touching the third rail, but I used to work with people who have been cheated on. Now I really don't, and I certainly don't advertise what I do for lots of reasons. But a lot of times what I would find is that folks who were so pissed off and so committed to being in victim mode about having been cheated on, were just not willing to look at major aspects of what was going on with that, right?

Karen Hawkwood: And I agree that it can be touching the third rail in the sense of people can get really upset about this. But because I have a very non-standard relationship history and I've been really open about that for a really long time, I've gotten a fair number, even though that's not my thing that I do, I've gotten a number of clients who've ended up in complex relationship situations, so I've worked with them and I found the exact same thing. And I'm not, nobody is blaming the person who got cheated on. You didn't manifest this. Not that I think you think that, but I want your people to hear me say that too.

Marie Murphy: Yeah, we're just being clear about this. Yeah.

Karen Hawkwood: But it's complex because we're complex. And when someone has this black and white, they're wrong, I'm right, they hurt me, I did nothing, my ears go up. So yeah, I agree.

Marie Murphy: Yeah. Yeah. Let's leave that one there. Okay. Let's talk about the like Sub example number two. When somebody has already said, like I'm not doing monogamy, I've got a lot of, or maybe not a lot, but I've got a certain amount of leeway in how I do my love life, sex life, romantic life, and they're still crossing all of the boundaries that they have agreed to and it feels a little bit mysterious to them as to what's going on. Let's speak to that astrologically.

Karen Hawkwood: I'm glad you brought us back to that because I was trying to remember what that second sub example was and I'd lost the details. So in my experience and observation and thinking about it both conceptually and in the lived examples which I've lived through that in my last poly relationship we had very open a very not a completely open container but a very open container and one of the partners transgressed that. And I was really curious. Aside from all the personal response I had to that, I was really curious. So there is a certain vein of the freedom-loving archetypal parts that we have that is specifically about breaking rules, even the rules that you have negotiated and agreed to.

And there's a part of you, and this is archetypal, this is built into human nature. It's very inconvenient and uncomfortable, but it's not innately wrong.

Marie Murphy: Yes, thank you so much for saying it that way. It is so important to recognize that this is a thing. This is a thing that humans do.

Karen Hawkwood: It is a thing that humans have always done. And so there is something in the people who really have that very strongly that no matter how negotiated and agreed to and humane and meeting each other and our needs, the rule is it is still a rule. You know, in our situation the rule was simply do what you're gonna do with whoever you're gonna do it with, but tell us." And they didn't, even that was too much. And so it can be interesting sometimes, I'll just add this briefly, for people who really have that polarized response to rules or agreement, because it's a limit, it's a line, Is to get curious about if that line weren't there. Let's say in my situation, if we hadn't even had that line, would she have said just on her own? Yeah. Would she have chosen to say, hey...

Marie Murphy: Volunteer the information.

Karen Hawkwood: Yeah. Yeah. And we're hypothesizing. It's kind of hard to say. But that can sometimes be a thing to kind of play with that.

The other thing that I see, so going a totally different direction with this. So this is why it's interesting because it's not just one archetype linked to one situation…

Marie Murphy: Before we go there, let me also say this. Like what I hear people say over in all kinds of different relationship configurations is I want something just for me. I want something that is just mine. And I think what I see is that desire transcends relationship configurations. You can have as much, I'm going to say, rule-bound freedom as you want to create in your life. But if you want something just for you, it doesn't matter how much freedom you've kind of granted yourself. Right.

Karen Hawkwood: So let me ask you, in terms of following up on this feedback, when they say I want something just for me. What they mean is something outside of this primary partnership that they have.

Marie Murphy: Or if it's not a primary partnership situation, it's like, OK, you know, like I have multiple partners, like I have agreements with each of them, or there's some sort of group agreement, but I want something that's my secret.

Karen Hawkwood: And the secret part is the thing that I think is the key. Because in the instant, if you have multiple partners and you've got agreements with all of them and there's a kind of web, you know, molecule, polycule relationship situation going on, that's a little more open. 

But in the case of having a partnership where you are, let's say, supposed to be exclusive with each other, that is just for you, but it's still not meeting the need. Because if you have that… have is a weird word applied to people. But if you have that partner, if they're yours and you are theirs, then that is just for you.

Marie Murphy: Such an interesting way of putting it.

Karen Hawkwood: At least if I'm, I may not be following you, you know, about what people mean when they say that, but that's where my mind goes.

Marie Murphy: But that's so interesting. I mean, I don't think I've ever thought about it that way before, but what people are getting at when they say this to me often is like, yeah, I have this thing that's all for me, but I want something else that's just for me. Right?

Karen Hawkwood: And when you said secret, that was the thing that really, because that's kind of where I, where my mind was going next, as far as what, what archetypally can lead to this. And this is where I see particularly the primal animal because the primal animal is what it sounds like. It's like, how would you behave if you were a tiger? And if you, in a broad sense of being an organic being, if you don't know about this part of my life, you can't hurt me. And so also, so that's one thing.

One is that secrecy is, from the primal animal's perspective, a form of protection and minimizing vulnerability. But the other piece that I will add, and this is really something that I have seen a lot of in infidelity situations that I've dealt with, is that the primal animal wants intensity more than anything else. Now it wants intensity without being hurt. So it wants intensity without vulnerability, which is never really works that way. But those are the joined priorities of the primal animal.

And there is nothing that generates more intensity in my experience than secrecy. And I am distinguishing partly because of a lot of years of being Polly, I had to learn the difference between secrecy and privacy.

Marie Murphy: Yeah, that is something I talk about a lot. Tell me what you think about that.

Karen Hawkwood: Privacy is an experience of intimacy in whatever way with a person that where there's a container that holds it and what is in that container doesn't have to be revealed but if it were revealed it would not injure the other relationships. So it's not privacy is not transgressing the agreements and the structures that are supporting whatever that looks like, right? The highly individual, but whatever that looks like to this relationship or set of relationships, secrecy, if it were revealed, would transgress. It would cause injury. So I spent a lot of years, a lot of years, trying to refine that for myself.

But secrecy is hugely charged. And often, unfortunately, the charge ends up being destructive. And again, I mean this very personally, I'm not coming with, there's no moral agenda here, but I just watch what happens with people. And secrecy, the charge that's associated with secrecy can be corrosive. Not for everybody, I think, not in every situation, but a lot of times, but it's a high charge.

So it meets… and this is one of the things I see too, where the primary partnership or partnerships are beautiful and serving them and meeting a lot of those needs on a deep level except for the intensity need. And sometimes the intensity need, intensity can be hard to sustain in the presence of familiarity. This is a known thing, right? And sexual and especially sexual relationships, but all relationship dynamics, that crackling sense of aliveness can diminish when familiarity increases. And for somebody with a strong primal animal, that's gonna become a problem sooner or later.

That's a need that needs to be met. And so if they have a life that is not very intense, it can be really good in so many other ways, but the intensity meter is down a one or a two, that primal animal is gonna look for the food they need in another way. And when something is secret, that intensity level just is automatically higher than if it's known, if it's known and in accordance with agreements. So that's another place where I can see someone transgressing rules, even that they negotiated and agreed to, because when it's all above board and out in the open and agreed to, there's no intensity.

Marie Murphy: It's not as intense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's such a good way of putting it.

And also, there's something that you said made me want to stress this. Sometimes people say to me, "I have this great life, everything's really good, this, that, and the other thing. I don't know why I want anything more than this." And the answer in my terms is even if things are good, it doesn't mean you're getting what you want. But in astrological terms, I think it's fair to say even if things are really good, you may not be getting that specific nutrient that you need based on the way that you are built, so to speak.

Karen Hawkwood: 100%, that's exactly it. And when a lot of people say, "I have this really great life," It's great according to either what they think they should want or the sort of prescribed homogenous, in other words it all hangs together and all the pieces fit together into one picture, set of needs that our enculturation tells us to want. And so it's great, but it's not complex. The complexity has been screened out and that will always, it will always tunnel up or work its way around and climb in the back window or come up from the heating vents or whatever it has to do to get its needs met. So yeah, we can have a really great life by certain standards of great. And that can still mean that there are very important parts of us that are hungry.

Marie Murphy: Yep, yep, yep, yep. Lovely way of putting it. I think we were gonna segue into something that I don't remember exactly what we were saying, but my suspicion, my hope, was that we were maybe gonna talk about the mermaid and how the mermaid might relate to all of this. So if you don't mind, let's go there.

Karen Hawkwood: Oh, darn. It's my favorite one to talk about because it's the one that really, yeah, can cause pretty deep hurt to people just because it's hard to manage.

Marie Murphy: Okay, so yeah, just tell people like a little bit about what the mermaid is and talk about like the astrological stuff that people are going to recognize and how that maps onto your thing.

Karen Hawkwood: So astrologically, this is the planet Neptune. It's the sign of Pisces and it's the 12th house. And in particular, this is a very different take on Neptune than what you kind of get on the astrological internet. And that's no shade, just a different approach. But this has borne out, like this I have tested and worked with for years and years now, and I'm very confident that there's real usefulness in this take.

So archetypally, when you've got a strong Neptune or a lot of Pisces, or, you know, strong 12th house, kind of sometimes all of the above, there is this dimension of your nature that yearns for a way of being. I often talk about it as a place, but I don't mean a physical place necessarily. It's a state of being where you can just dissolve and you can float. It's just this floaty, swimmy, blissful, often, doesn't always feel blissful, but it's still this floaty, dreamy kind of place where ideally, if we can get as close as we can get, nothing hurts. There is no struggle. 

Everything is just, you're just held. It's just delicious. And all your needs are met because you don't even have needs in a way. Because when you're dissolved into that state, whatever it is you're dissolved into just knows what you need. And you're not lonely. You're not lonely. You don't have to try and figure out who you are and what you want. You just float.

And a lot of times that place, that state of being, feels like home to those of us with a strong mermaid. And the converse experience of that is being here in a body, being in an embodied state, right, being all the way here as an individual. And when I am an individual and you are an individual, there is space between us. And however close we might get, it's still you and me pressing ourselves together, which is not the same thing as dissolving to where there is no you, there is no me, right? And so the mermaid part of us finds this embodied world intolerable. It's so painful. It's so harsh. It's so lonely and cold and struggly and you know.

And so the mermaid part of us is always yearning and looking for that way to dissolve and to merge and come into that flow state. And so of course other people and relationships are a very common way that a lot of people's mermaids will seek to get that experience. And the mermaid is not bad. It is not malicious. But it doesn't care. Again, each archetype has its values. It has the things it cares about and then the things it doesn't. And the mermaid does not care.

This is my four-point kind of guide to people with the mermaid. It does not care about your body, your bank account, your relationships, or your self-respect. And that doesn't make it bad. It's also a deeply beautiful part of human nature. This is the part of us that recognizes and responds to what most of us would call magic in whatever form, right? I call it the shimmer. And if we didn't have the mermaid, we could never experience the shimmer. And that would be tragic to me, yeah. But because the mermaid doesn't respect or care about essentially the limits of embodied life, it'll just blow right past them.

And this can look like a lot of different things, but to keep it in the relationship focus, it looks and feels like you literally want to become one with this person. And when the mermaid groove is working, this is one of the things that can happen relationally with the mermaid, when that archetype is sort of has the wheel of your bus, is being with them is the shimmer. Like, like it is just the most transcendent. You don't have words for what it's like to be with them, whatever way you are with them.

But inevitably there will come a time when that doesn't happen, when that the shimmer doesn't kick in. And that can be because these things just change because there's waxing and waning within people. But a lot of times what happens is because the other person, if you're the one really expressing the mermaid, the other person doesn't want to merge with you to that extent or maybe at all. And maybe it isn't permanent, maybe they just need some space, but they also might get to a point where they're like, this doesn't work for me anymore.

I want to be me and have you be you and have this dynamic between us, which is a different kind of relating than merging and being just subsumed and dissolved and sometimes it even feels like being devoured. And to the mermaid, this is the ultimate devastation. And so this mermaid dynamic has a lot of linkages to the victim, betrayer or perpetrator, and then savior roles. People with really strong mermaids often either have a predilection for one of those roles or will rotate. I am a rotator. I've gone around and around. And ultimately the goal is to learn to live with your mermaid differently so that you're not on that triangle anymore. But that yearning for that dissolved state, it's a valid set of needs. To go back to what you said at the beginning, it's a legitimate set of needs. But in relationship with other human beings, it is tricky to manage in a way that doesn't become just a heartbreak hotel.

Marie Murphy: Yes. So I'm sorry to jump in like this, but I'm just so excited to make sure we talk about this. Like, let's talk about kind of the I'm going to use the words and then we're going to explicate what we mean by them. Let's talk about the shadow side versus the kind of, I hate to say healthy side, but I'm gonna say it anyway, just that shorthand people, we're gonna explain what we mean by this. Let's talk about the shadow side versus healthier expressions of any given archetype.

Let's talk about the fact that there are these things for each archetype, but then let's talk specifically about what that looks like for the mermaid.

Karen Hawkwood: Okay. So I do want to be clear and you and I are so in agreement on this, which I love, that there's no predetermined idea of healthy and unhealthy. This is really, I mean, we can give some ranges where it's going to be unhealthy probably for most people, but this isn't something that someone else gets to determine for you. Each of us has to find that place for ourselves. What I will say is my definitions and the way that I work with my people around it, Is it destructive to you by your standards?

And that can be a hard thing to face, but if you have some support and help to face it, you'll know that it really is being destructive for you, but nobody else gets to tell you. That's how we're working with it.

Marie Murphy: Yeah, really important. So we're gonna talk about like the shadow expression of the mermaid archetype and healthier expressions of the mermaid archetype, but we're not saying that there is a fixed definition of what the shadow expression is. And we're also not saying that there's a fixed definition of what the healthier expression is.

Karen Hawkwood:  For sure, and this gets very individual for people. So what I will say though, again, keeping it very relational is that the shadow of the mermaid is that it has, I mean, really one of the qualities is it has no bottom. There is no end to it. The dissolving can always get deeper.

And so the shadow becomes this kind of voracious kind of hunger or compulsion. And compulsion, the compulsive quality, is the thing that I track the most around any shadow of any archetype. When we're in a clean, healthy, skillful is another word that I use, a skillful embodiment of our archetypal qualities, there's not really that compulsive.

Marie Murphy: I need this or else.

Karen Hawkwood: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like I can't not. I have to.

That usually is an indicator of shadow. So with the mermaid, it's this compulsive dissolving. And that really honestly begins to overlap with what we often talk about as addictive. I think we have to be careful with that because addiction is a whole world and I want to be super respectful right and not get out of my lane with it. But when the mermaid is operating in a shadowy way, which is really easy for that to happen with most of us.

It really does start to verge into an addictive experience. And then when the mermaid doesn't, can't keep going, when it can't keep dissolving, it is a devastation that is really hard to put into words. Nothing else means anything. Nothing has meaning.

Marie Murphy: Yeah, I see this a lot with people who have just fallen in so deep with a person. And on the one hand, they've experienced this merging as transcendent and amazing and wonderful and all of that stuff is legitimate, but they've also just like completely gotten sucked into the vortex and then they're just like, no.

Karen Hawkwood: When it can't keep going because inevitably that will not continue. Not in a sustained way like that. Right? There will be an end to that transcendent, dissolved experience. And then it's the end of everything.

And this is what I mean about the mermaid doesn't care about your body or bank account, your relationships or your self-respect, because when you're in that place, you will spend money you don't have. You will threaten your work. You know, you will start calling in sick days on end to spend it with your lover. You will abandon all the other relationships, you know, friends, family.

Marie Murphy: You will stalk your lover when they break up with you and put yourself and them in jeopardy. Yeah, all the things.

Karen Hawkwood: And again, no judgment. This is not judging. It's deep compassion because I have a very strong mermaid. This is what led me to develop my understanding of that archetype and I've been there. Yeah, like I have fallen into that place and then had my world end when that person withdrew their side of the merging.

Marie Murphy: Yes, to your point, this is not a criticism of anybody for going there. It's language to help understand the experience of what's happening. And we're also acknowledging that whenever we get too far into a tendency and we don't know how to deal with that, we need to figure out how we're going to deal with it.

Karen Hawkwood: And we can acknowledge the needs of our mermaid without letting them be the entirety of who we are. Because the mermaid will swallow up the rest of us too and try to white out or dissolve all of our other archetypal parts. And it can't do that. It's not allowed to do that. I can hold it with love and hold it with respect and be like, honey, I hear you and you are not the only one in here.

You are not the only one who has needs in this bus. And that's part of, because a lot of people who feel this way then of course are just drowning in shame. Just drowning in shame. And that means they don't get help because they don't think they deserve help. They try to manage it, and by manage it I mean they try to make it stop.

And they're often told by other people to just stop. Like you just don't feel this way. You know what?

Marie Murphy: Yeah, right.

Karen Hawkwood: If it was that fucking easy I would have done it.

Marie Murphy: Right.

Karen Hawkwood: Because it is not fun to be in that place. So one of the things I tell people and again I know our time is limited here but just in general for any of you who are resonating with this mermaid thing, the thing I will tell you that will help all of this is to have at least one place in your life that is comparatively healthy by your standards, where you get to float for a little while, then you're gonna have to come back, but it is not with a human person. Find something you can dissolve into that is again, hopefully not destructive to your life. Like, you know, getting drunk every night, again, no moral judgment, but ultimately that's not going to serve your life. So find some way that you can dissolve that doesn't have another human person attached to it.

Because part of what happens when we make one person, when one person just becomes our whole being, is our mermaid isn't being fed anywhere else in our lives. And it's starving. And this lover comes along who is the most transcendent thing you could have even imagined possible. And the mermaid is just gorging. You know, it's just getting everything that it needs. 

But then when that one source of food goes away, it's the end of everything. And part of the problem there is you don't have any other sources of food for it. That's always gonna end in tears.

Marie Murphy: Yeah, I think this is, I mean, I don't know about astrologically, but from a non-astrological framework I think this is a really transferable point. When we know we have a desire for something, what we can start to learn is that there are multiple ways of satisfying that desire. Sure, we might have our preferred ways or our most favorite ways of satisfying it, and that's fine. But there's more than one way to skin a cat. 

And part of what we get to learn within relationships in general and within infidelity more specifically is that there may be other ways of getting what we truly need than from doing the thing that we're doing that is creating trouble for us or by trouble I mean by creating results that we don't like in our lives.

Karen Hawkwood: Exactly. That's just harming us by our own standards. But this is exactly it. When you have a strong intensity need, there are multiple ways to actually get that intensity need met. And breaking agreements that you've made is a really effective, not gonna say good or bad, it's a very effective way to get intimacy, but it has consequences.

With a mermaid, you know, falling into a lover and losing the whole rest of your life, very effective. Also probably not going to be real functional. And so there are other ways to meet all of these needs. And that's exactly what I want people to understand. Legitimize the need and get creative and sort of diverse in finding ways to feed that part of you what it needs.

And yeah, it's not necessarily gonna be the same. With the mermaid in particular, I've really struggled with this. A lot of my clients have struggled with this. That those other ways to feed the mermaid that are not attached to a person, not really as delicious. Just honestly not.

Marie Murphy: Right, no, I think that's so good to point that out. I mean, there are some things that, you know, it's like, I talk about this sometimes, like, you know, like a bump of cocaine feels different than a cup of oolong tea. Like it just does, right? But there are consequences that come with that, like line of cocaine that you don't get from the oolong tea. And it's a matter of consciously examining what you get out of pursuing option A, B, or C.

Karen Hawkwood: Yeah, balancing the needs that get met and then the consequences to that and trying to weave the best solution of all of those together that you can and then it'll change. Yeah. So we just get that tapestry right into a good place and then it, you know, some changes and it doesn't work so much anymore. Yeah.

Marie Murphy: Yeah, for sure. Why don't we talk? This was a great treatment of the mermaid. Is there one more archetype that we could talk about how the kind of like, I'm gonna say unhinged expression or unconscious expression may feed into infidelity and how we may be able to consciously feed that desire in a different way. Let's just give one more example while we're at it.

Karen Hawkwood: Yeah, I think a good one, and I'm gonna say one last thing about the mermaid because I'm gonna slide from there into this because there can be some commonalities with these two. Because remember that I said the mermaid is really prone to the victim-betrayer-savior triangle. I was taught that's called the Karpman drama triangle but has different names. 

The savior role, the victim role and the savior role can be particularly, well, because then the betrayer ends up being the other person in the infidelity situation. But the savior role in particular can be very seductive because you meet someone and they need you. And you meet that need and you're saving them and you're caring for them and you're rescuing them. You know, that has its own seduction and ultimately it won't go anywhere good, but it's also a very legitimate human thing. But there's another archetype that I talk about as the wounded healer, unhealable wound. And usually I emphasize the unhealable wound part. And this is really a third rail moment because the idea is that there is anything that can't be healed in a permanent way is very provocative to people.

And so if you're recoiling In this moment as you're hearing this, you're not alone and that's okay and people see this differently than I do and that's fine. This is my experience. It's borne out by a lot of what I've seen, but of course it is because it's me. 

So the unhealable wound is archetypal. In other words, all of us had it, in my view. This is connected to the, it's not really a planet, but the body in our solar system that's called Chiron. Chiron, in my view, is not associated with a sign of the zodiac or a house. So it is just its own being. But when it is tightly connected to a lot of other stuff in us, this is gonna be a strong archetype for people. 

And then what happens in an infidelity situation is either kind of, it can be a combination of any of these, you meet someone who sees that wounded place in you and meets you there. And it doesn't heal it, but it salves it, right? It ministers to it. It tends to that wounded place in you. And there is a deep intimacy that comes with that experience. And then you might be the person seeing the woundedness in someone else that they don't ever feel like it's seen.

Marie Murphy: Can I jump in and say this like and I may be stealing your thunder and if I am I'm so sorry, but what I see a lot is that people often mistake being seen for being healed. And I think there's a really important distinction there? Of course it's wonderful to be seen. Of course it's wonderful to be seen in a uniquely potent way. Like, that's great. Not taking anything away from that. But we often mistake that for being healed or saved.

Karen Hawkwood: Which again, even those are different things but they are equally tricky. And this is a whole, I'm not going to go into this, but I do want to just quickly say that I encourage us to keep having the conversation about this ideal of healed in the first place. This is really connected to westernized culture and this final, this permanent state thing that we have.

Marie Murphy: That there's like an end point where everything's better. Oh, yeah.

Karen Hawkwood: Just got to do what we got to do to get to that end point. And that again my stock phrase that does not match my experience of human people and so Yeah, and what I was gonna just slide in there with again, we're not talking about this but I just want to acknowledge what I'm talking about here in this connection to another human person through the unhealable wound place is not quite the same as trauma bonding. And there can be overlaps, there can be overlaps, but trauma bonding is its own kind of difficult relational situation. So I just wanted to acknowledge that.

But the unhealable wound again, remember, is archetypal. You could, in my view, which again, as I know, is very upsetting for some people, but you could have had the most perfect life through your whole gestation inside your mother, that your mother was the healthiest in body, in mind, in spirit, and that you had this amazing birth and that nothing, if this is even, I know this is not a real thing, but just try to imagine that you had a life that basically had no drama in it. You would still have somewhere in you, through the way I see it in the chart, in your psyche, in your being, that is an unhealed and unhealable wound. It's something that's part of being human.

So it's different from the trauma that we experience through being alive, or even epigenetic trauma, when we inherit lineal trauma. And so someone connecting to us isn't gonna heal that in us. Because nothing, in my view, will do that. We can tend to it and that's very important and when I work with the unhealable wound I talk a lot about that. It's not just like, oh well we're screwed so why bother with anything. Not that at all.

But when someone touches us in that place, whether it's circumstantially or it's just the way that we, the two of us connect, and that's always going to be there. It really, it is an intimacy and a connection between people that is not like anything else that I've seen. But it doesn't fix us. It doesn't, you know?

And meeting in that painful place that is also so intimate and so powerful, there is a beauty in it, and there's a medicine in it that isn't like anything else. But again, what are the consequences? What's the price that you pay for that?

Marie Murphy: Or maybe the question is like, what do you do with that medicine? How much of it do you take? Yeah.

Karen Hawkwood: And what is it really doing? Because again, if we think we're being healed because someone is meeting us in our unhealable wound, that's wonky, you know? And we're gonna end up crashing into that reality. That wounded place is still there.

Marie Murphy: Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. Just to start to like wrap us up, like I see this in so many people's experiences of infidelity. Like, oh my God, I have met this person who sees me like no one else does. And again, not to diminish the value of having that kind of an experience. But when we start to mistake that for us being OK now, all of a sudden, that's when things get real weird, real quick.

Karen Hawkwood: Such a beautiful way to put it, that because this person sees us, sees me, I'm OK now. Whatever that means.

Marie Murphy: Yeah. And also, therefore, I need to keep them.

Karen Hawkwood: Well, that's it, because they're the source of my okayness. Because if they stop seeing me, then I'm suddenly not okay anymore.

Marie Murphy: Then it doesn't work.

Karen Hawkwood: My okayness is predicated on them seeing me. And a lot of times these archetypal connections, because you're full of archetypes, right? You've got the mix that you've got, I've got the mix that I've got. When we contact each other, those archetypes touch and plug in to each other in particular ways. And that's a chemistry between people that is entirely beyond whatever we're seeing on the surface and whatever we rationally think should or shouldn't be there.

And that person activates certain things in us, they catalyze and alchemize certain things in us, but they don't make us anything more or less than we ever were. We just feel it when we're with them. And so, yeah, part of the trick is to recognize that they're not making you anything. And I believe me, all of you, I did not believe that for a really long time. It's easy for me to say this at 57, but if you had seen my relationship life, you would understand that I lived this, I am only okay because of you in heartbreaking ways for far too long.

So just all the empathy. And I will also tell you, it is something that you can work your way into onto different territory in yourself.

Marie Murphy: Yeah, brava. I think that's like a really good concluding point here. Like whatever challenges you're grappling with, whatever interesting tensions you're grappling with, like You can live them out differently, but it doesn't happen with the push of a magic button. Sorry.

Karen Hawkwood: Yeah, no, I wish. If I had that magic button, I would just give it for free to the whole world because I would want everyone to have it.

Marie Murphy: I always say that I would be a billionaire sitting on my private island somewhere.

Karen Hawkwood: I can't. I couldn't bring myself to be that person. You couldn't

Marie Murphy: Sell it, yeah.

Karen Hawkwood: No, I couldn't do it. But what I will say, just to follow up, again, same thing, but I just think what you said was so beautiful, but we don't get there by trying to cut off the parts of us that are uncomfortable and inconvenient that create that paradox. We get there by embracing that paradox, by finding a way, which takes some time, to welcome the paradox, and then we build skill. So I often don't even talk healthy and unhealthy. I talk skillful and unskillful. Because there's nothing wrong with being unskillful. We all start out unskillful about everything.

And then we build the skill when we can. And so your complexity is not the problem. I don't even see it as a problem, but you just don't have the skill yet, and that's okay. So yeah, yeah, we'll stop there.

Marie Murphy: Love it. So good. We could keep going all day

Karen Hawkwood: but we shall not. Okay, not this time.

Marie Murphy: Not this time. Karen, please remind everyone where they can find you, how to work with you, etc. All the things.

Karen Hawkwood: Absolutely. My website is karenhawkwood.com. K-A-R-E-N-H-A-W-K-W-O-O-D.com. And then my new Patreon, which is a podcast and writing and a community space in a way is a human equals paradox.

Marie Murphy: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me again. It's been an absolute pleasure once again.

Karen Hawkwood: Thank you so much for inviting me. I really appreciate it. These are great conversations. I hope this is helpful to your people.

Marie Murphy: Yeah, so good. So good. To all of you listening, thank you so much for joining us today. Have an amazing rest of your day and until next time, bye for now.