Motivations and interests
The wish to spend time with your partner can coexist with very different preferences. Beyond each person’s rhythms, it’s worth asking what invites each of you to take part and what leaves you indifferent. Knowing that difference helps you find moments you both enjoy, without measuring love by how much your tastes match.
In the astrological system I use, the study of motivations and interests helps us recognize what awakens in each person the desire to take part: what sets them in motion or what barely manages to catch their attention.
You can picture that inner disposition as a car battery: to get going, energy is needed. The comparison helps explain why an activity that thrills one person may leave the other indifferent.
If your partner doesn’t get involved with the same interest, that doesn’t by itself mean they don’t want to keep you company. Perhaps that activity doesn’t answer to what motivates them.
As you read these descriptions, think about the plans you accept eagerly and the ones you join just to keep someone company. Ask your partner about theirs, too. The difference between wanting to share and enjoying the activity itself may explain some of the misunderstandings between you.
Some people are motivated by having clear goals of their own. Others need the support and closeness of family. Some enjoy an intense social life, belonging to different groups and spending much of their time away from home.
Others prefer to devote their attention to questions about existence, metaphysics or science, and find it hard to take an interest in conversations that don’t come near those subjects.
The willingness to take part depends, in part, on the reach of each person’s interests and on the activities they find around them. Let’s think of a couple in which home and social motivations, respectively, predominate.
The person with home interests will probably want to spend free time with their family, stay home or invite close friends over. The person with social interests will be thinking about going out, meeting people and getting together with their friends. Both may want to be together and, at the same time, picture very differently how to spend an afternoon.
To recognize these tendencies, the system uses the same seventeen weighted points as mobility. Their distribution among the signs makes it possible to arrange the motivations into four groups.
The four kinds of motivations and interests
Personal motivations
They correspond to most points falling in Aries, Taurus and Gemini. Their range of interest centers on the person’s own needs, preferences and goals.
From another kind of motivation, this orientation may be read as selfishness. Yet personal interest is not the same as a lack of generosity. A person can be generous and, at the same time, need others to respect their belongings, their decisions and the time they devote to their own affairs.
Home motivations
They correspond to most points falling in Cancer, Leo and Virgo. Their range of interest takes in the family and the friends the person considers part of it.
Someone oriented this way needs to think about the well-being of the whole. Their decisions don’t usually stop at what benefits them individually: they also take into account how those who share their home or their closest circle of affection will fare. Caring for that group is a source of motivation.
Social motivations
They correspond to most points falling in Libra, Scorpio and Sagittarius. Here attention extends to the community, groups of friends and spaces of social participation.
The person needs to belong, collaborate and work as part of a team. They may go as far as making sacrifices for their friends, for the group they belong to or for their country.
Transcendent motivations
They correspond to most points falling in Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. Their interests turn toward questions that go beyond the immediate: the meaning of existence, death, how nature works or whatever might exist beyond life.
This search may lead to an interest in communities and traditions, such as those of Tibet, or in scientific research. The name “transcendent” does not necessarily imply a spiritual orientation: it can also be expressed through study and science.
The four types describe different reaches of interest. The difficulty appears when we take for granted that what motivates us should also motivate the other person.
How motivations are expressed
Two people can share a motivation and express it in different ways. The nuances of each group help you recognize those differences before looking at how they combine in a couple.
Compatibility, complementarity and incompatibility in the couple
What excites your partner shows you a part of their world. As you read these combinations, think about what you enjoy together and which activities each of you needs to keep for yourselves. This matters whether you share a home or meet in other spaces.
The second percentage as a meeting point
When the predominant motivations don’t match, the second-highest percentage may show another possibility of affinity. It may also happen that one person’s main motivation matches the other’s second.
Look for activities related to that shared motivation. In them you can meet your partner without either of you having to change your predominant interests.
Choosing what you want to share
A shared interest can give you a conversation you want to keep going, or the pleasure of being close while each of you attends to your own things. To make room for it, you need to choose how you’ll spend that time.
In that choice another difference becomes visible: some want to lead, some hold firmly to their own judgment and some prefer to adapt. How those ways of deciding come into play in a couple’s relationship is another topic, with its own guide.