I swear, I never planned on becoming one of those people. You know, the ones who check their sign every morning like it’s the stock market. But man, when things hit the fan, you grab onto anything that feels like a solid handle, even if it’s just the digital ink of some online column.
Things were a mess, a real, steaming mess back then. This was about maybe three years into living together, and honestly, the air in the apartment was thick enough to chew on. We weren’t fighting big, screaming fights, which, ironically, would have been easier. It was all this quiet, passive-aggressive garbage. The kind of tension that makes you dread walking through your own door.
I remember one night, I couldn’t sleep for the third time that week. I was scrolling aimlessly on my old tablet—the one that barely held a charge—and somehow I landed on this site. The OM Times thing. I saw the little Virgo graphic, and I just clicked it. I wasn’t looking for God or anything deep. I was looking for a sign that I should just bail, or maybe a sign that everything was going to be fine so I could stop worrying.
And that’s how the whole ridiculous ritual started.
The Daily Grind of Seeking Permission
It began as a one-off, but it quickly turned into the only consistent thing in my morning. Seriously. Forget brushing my teeth first, I’d grab my phone and open that exact page. I had the routine nailed down:
- 06:45 AM: Alarm off. Immediate grab for the phone.
- Skip Past: The career advice. Didn’t need to know about “potential collaboration with a fiery Leo.” My job was fine.
- Scroll Straight To: The big heading, “Love Today?” The question mark always felt aggressive, like it was taunting me.
- The Reading: It was usually something vague. “Seek a deeper connection,” or “Unexpected communication may clear the air.” Stuff you could apply to literally anything from finding a lost key to finally cleaning out the garage.
I started keeping a small, cheap spiral notebook. Not to be analytical, just to literally copy the key phrase down. Just the one line. I wasn’t tracking how accurate it was; I was just collecting these little, cryptic instructions. Like I was a spy waiting for a daily code from HQ. I did this for months. I mean, months and months. Every day, the forecast was my first conversation.
And I tried to fit my life around it. If it said “Trust your instincts,” and my instinct was to be annoyed that the dishes weren’t done, I felt validated in slamming the cabinet door a little harder. If it said, “Open your heart to forgiveness,” I forced myself to ignore the little passive digs my partner made about my cooking.
The entire thing felt like this weird, self-fulfilling prophecy. I wasn’t fixing the core issues; I was just following an external script.
The Unplanned Break and the Backlash
The turning point wasn’t some grand revelation, either. It was stupid. My phone battery finally died completely. I mean, totally bricked. This was a Thursday. I was already stressed about some deadline at work, and suddenly my morning ritual was impossible. I panicked. Not because I thought the lack of a forecast would ruin my day, but because I felt like I was flying blind. Like I’d lost my map and compass.
I spent that whole day hyper-aware. Every interaction I had with my partner felt high-stakes. Was this the “unexpected communication” they mentioned last week? Was this the moment for “cautious optimism?” By the time I got home, I was exhausted just from trying to guess what the stars thought I should be doing.
That night, I didn’t get a new phone or fix the old one. I sat down on the couch, partner beside me, and I just started talking. Not about the dishes, not about work, but about how stressed I was that I needed a stupid horoscope to tell me how to feel. I told them about the notebook. I confessed the whole, embarrassing, obsessive practice.
My partner just looked at me. No judgment. Just confusion. And then they asked the simplest question that somehow hit me like a truck:
“Why didn’t you just talk to me first?”
That did it. It wasn’t the forecast that was guiding me; I was using the forecast as an emotional shield. I was waiting for permission to be honest, to be vulnerable, or even to be angry. I was allowing some algorithm in California to manage my relationship dynamics because confronting the real problem—us—was too terrifying.
I kept that little notebook for another week. Then, one Saturday, I grabbed it. Didn’t read a single line. I just walked it straight to the trash can and dumped it. I never went back to that site. It didn’t instantly fix everything—we still had the same core problems, of course—but the air finally got clearer. The solution wasn’t finding out what a Virgo should do; it was just figuring out what I was actually feeling, and then having the guts to say it out loud to the person who mattered.
