Mobility and shared activities
The time you choose to share with your partner also expresses attraction and affection. An outing or a while spent resting together can be ways of enjoying each other’s company, whether or not you live in the same home. When you decide what to do, what matters is how each of you experiences that moment.
The same activity can rest one person and exhaust or bore another. In Germán Rosas’s system, mobility is the name for the different needs for movement and the activities we tend toward. This reading invites us to explore why we don’t enjoy the same pastimes.
Some people need to be doing something, move quickly and can’t bear staying shut in for too long. Others prefer stillness, rest and an unhurried pace. Some are drawn into motion by conversation, curiosity and contact with others. Others focus their activity on reaching a concrete result and don’t want to be interrupted while they work toward it.
This approach reads those differences as part of a nature of one’s own, which can’t be explained by willpower or training alone. It uses four categories to describe them: Hydrogen, Silicates, Oxygen and Water.
These names belong to the astrological system I present. The score comes from the birth chart and does not measure the body’s chemical composition.
I have seen people who need stillness and rest but live in a family or cultural setting that undervalues that need. They say they don’t need to stop and keep up constant activity; later they go through periods of discomfort or illness that force them to stop.
That is why I insist on listening to one’s own rhythms, without turning an astrological interpretation into a medical explanation of what is happening to them.
In a couple, too, tension can appear between what we need and what we feel we should do. If one needs rest and the other wants to go out, the difference can be read as laziness, lack of interest or lack of love, when what is needed is to understand what each person is going through.
Free time and agreements in a couple
Germán Rosas calls the measurements of mobility, motivations and position in the group “the loving murders of weekends and holidays.” The phrase points to a common situation: the pressure to do everything together, even when interests and rhythms don’t match.
In my experience, that difference can give rise to several kinds of relationship:
- One person goes along with their partner even when they get bored or tired. If they experience that company as an obligation they can’t voice, they may build up discomfort and resentment.
- One person stops doing what they enjoy in order to please the other. The giving up repeats itself and, over time, the feeling appears that they are always the one who gives in.
- Neither gives in, but both read the difference as a lack of love or commitment. Reproaches arise: one doesn’t come along, the other doesn’t invite.
- Both recognize that there are activities to share and others that each prefers to do on their own. They reach agreements to share moments they both enjoy, without feeling they must sacrifice themselves all the time.
Giving in consciously is not the same as canceling out your own needs. You can negotiate, make adjustments and accept an activity that isn’t your favorite, as long as it is an acknowledged choice and there is a mutual benefit. Silent sacrifice, on the other hand, tends to come back as an unsettled debt.
In consultations I often hear complaints like this one: “All that I do for my partner, and they aren’t able to do anything for me.” Behind the complaint there may be efforts that were never talked about and expectations the other person didn’t know about.
At the start of a relationship it’s easy to join almost any plan just to be together. Over time, your own preferences make themselves felt again. Then you need to agree on which plans you’ll keep sharing and which each of you will do on your own, without that choice becoming a measure of affection.
Compatibility, complementarity and incompatibility in mobility
To compare these descriptions, look at which group or groups hold the highest score in each chart. Then consider the points of overlap and the differences. The aim is to find affinities for enjoying free time together and to recognize which differences need agreements.
When both share the predominant group
Meeting points through the second predominant group
When the main groups seem to have little affinity, look at the second-highest score. It may be the same in both, or one person’s main group may be the other’s second. There may also be a compatible combination between those levels.
That shared space lets you choose activities both of you enjoy. It doesn’t erase the main differences, but it offers a concrete place to meet without requiring either of you to give up your preferences entirely.
The time you want to share
When you plan time together, think about what you would like to share and ask your partner what they feel like doing. You can go back to each person’s predominant group and to the secondary meeting points to look for activities you both want to enjoy.
Even with similar rhythms, two people can be interested in different things. That raises another question: what awakens in each of you the desire to take part. Motivations shift the focus from how you move to what moves you, so you can recognize more clearly the projects and experiences you want to share.