Thought Catalog Agency

The Brutal Truth About Why You Can’t Move On, Based On Your Venus Sign

ARIES

Your competitive nature manifests in ugly, toxic ways when your heart is shattered. After the split, you’re still territorial and obsessed. You’re a devout lover and expect the same kind of devotion in return. You put your own desires above other people’s feelings, so it doesn’t matter that they don’t want to be with you. You feel like you’ve lost control. You feel abandoned. Worse, you feel rejected, and rejection makes you feel powerless and weak. You view moving on as a challenge. Running off pure rage, you dive into something new too quickly. The pressure to “win” the breakup makes you resist introspection. There’s no grief to be had when you see red. These feelings come back to haunt you because you never allow yourself to acknowledge them. You think pushing your pain down makes you tough. Until you feel it, you can’t let go and open yourself up to something new. 

TAURUS

You objectified your partner. They were one of many achievements and art pieces hung on the wall. Value for you is found in all you possess. You find validation in a relationship. When it severs, you begin to question yourself. How could you have chosen so wrong? How could you not have seen the signs? You were attached to your life together, maybe even more so than to them. Either way, your world crumbles. It took time to open up and let them in, and it takes even longer for you to let go. You hang on just as tightly to pictures and mementos as you do to the feelings. Years later, you still haven’t thrown out their cardigan. Even in a new committed relationship, you remain stuck in the past. You’re doomed to repeat the cycle if you don’t learn how to find self-worth and self-love through who you are. 

GEMINI

It was difficult for you to settle down completely and sacrifice your personal freedom. You take heartbreak hard for this reason. After the comfort of a secure relationship, you’re incredibly bored and lonely. You rationalize the events for a long time. To avoid getting lost in your mind, you seek out flirtation and sex too soon. You don’t want to wallow in pain, so you run away from your ache and emotions. If you’re not careful, you’ll jump from shallow connection to shallow connection, never allowing yourself to mourn your ex. It will make it difficult to genuinely connect with someone awesome and new who could be just the one for you. 

CANCER

You emotionally gave yourself completely over to your partner. Commitment and loyalty are two of the things you value most. Taking risks doesn’t come easily to you. You’re haunted by how you’ve been hurt in the past, so entering the relationship took a lot for you. Breakups fuel your self-doubts. You mistake your insecurities for instinct and intuition. When new potential connections present themselves to you, you self-sabotage, hardened by your ex. You didn’t allow yourself to speak your feelings aloud after the breakup, so you’re still carrying them around. You have to process them to let go. Moving on isn’t possible without losing your fear of being vulnerable again. True, you hate casual dating, but getting back out there will work wonders in your healing. 

LEO 

You take a long time to feel like yourself after your heart has been broken. Breakups are a critical blow to your personal ego. This isn’t to say they don’t affect you on an emotional level—they do, deeply. You just never want to let anyone know just how much you’re hurting. You hide behind a calm and cool facade. The truth is that you weren’t looking to be committed, but they made you love with a fiery passion. You tried to put out the flames by playing the role of victor. With hot IG posts, new flings, and trips, you still have everyone fooled. The fire in you will rage until you find your self-worth. It would do you well to remember that lions don’t need the attention of others to know their value. You can only truly move on by worshiping yourself. 

VIRGO

Falling in love for you takes forever. You have to get close to and spend a lot of time with someone to let down your walls. Vulnerability comes hard for you. When things end, it feels as if your trust has been violated. You begin to question everyone’s motives. Dissecting every self-perceived flaw, you pick apart yourself to the point of closing off. You fear risking yourself to heartbreak again. You’re afraid you will never find someone else who looks as good on paper and who it just makes sense with. You must remember that the pain is no worse than the fear. To let go, you have to work hard at tearing down every brick you’re tempted to put up. You may just find someone who actually makes you feel excitement along the way. Face it, your ex just felt safe. 

LIBRA

As the sign of partnership, you thrive in relationships. You’re enamored with the idea of being in love more than you may be with the actual person or connection. When it ends, your whole energy is thrown off balance. Your ability to feel good about yourself is too contingent on love. You were codependent in the relationship, relying too much on it for acceptance. It fulfills your desire to be loved, so your self-esteem was shot after the split. You tried to heal through your ego. The partying, flirtation, and shallow affairs did nothing to ease your pain. To let go, you need to learn the difference between being in love with someone and loving their attention. You must learn to be happy alone and build up confidence without relying on anyone’s affection. The beauty you seek is found within yourself. Once you learn this, you’ll reap all the benefits of true love. 

SCORPIO

For you, a relationship is all or nothing. You demand total intimacy. Love for you is transcendental, a connection so deep that it transforms you into a new being. The road to get you there is full of obstacles, including tests of loyalty for your partner. You can’t open up until you’re certain you can trust someone, so when you feel abandoned, you become violently emotional. The obsession and fixation for your ex lasts longer than it is healthy. Your vindictive nature may have pushed you into crossing boundaries in the name of revenge. You never learned how to temper your feelings. Instead of letting go, you hung onto grudges, bringing baggage into new relationships. You became even more distrustful than you were before. You’ve been holding yourself back from genuinely letting someone in again. You need grounded love, not fiery love. Until you’re willing to let go of your fear of heartbreak, it will remain out of your reach. To move on, you’ve got to let go of the poison and paranoia. 

SAGITTARIUS

You’re the type to approach everything in life on your own terms, and that holds true in relationships. Settling down doesn’t come quickly or easily to you. You played the field before getting serious with your former significant other. They were one out of many options. Heartache for you is devastating. It’s rare for you to fall in love. No matter how much the breakup hurts you, you act like you’re fine around your friends. You continue on with your normal, adventurous-filled life, filling the void through excitement. Instead of dealing properly, you engage in impulsive activities and brief situationships. On the odd chance you allow yourself to make it past the first several dates, you hit some point in which you feel vulnerable again and then pull back. To move on, you need to open yourself to new experiences and new people. 

CAPRICORN

You’re selective about who you commit to. Relationships are an investment of your time. Making a home and a life with someone is of utter importance to you. You didn’t enter the relationship lightly. When it ended, you felt like a failure. You were devoted to its longevity and got too comfortable in the sense of stability it provided. Instead of allowing yourself to immerse in the heartbreak, you channel your rage into work. You zero in on “bettering yourself.” Seeking power to ease the pain, you shove down your emotions. Somewhere along the road to ambition, you became cynical about love. You can’t move on because you’re constantly awaiting disappointment. You’re afraid to get back out there and meet someone new because you think the next person will also let you down. Break down your emotional walls to let go. 

AQUARIUS

Whenever you get hurt, you never forget it. It takes a genuine mental connection for you to open yourself up to somebody. Settling doesn’t come easily to you because you don’t like being tied down to conventionality. You’re not usually affectionate or intimate, but you were with your ex. You tried to make logical sense out of your heartbreak and invalidated your own feelings. It pained you deeply, but you never allowed yourself to express it. You weren’t even honest with yourself and averted emotion. Moving on is hard for you because you developed a fear of intimacy that prevents you from getting too close to the next person. You keep others at arm’s length. To let go, you must learn how to be vulnerable again. 

PISCES

You saw your relationship through rose-colored glass, and possibly immersed yourself into a fantasy of what your relationship wasn’t. Your deeply sensitive and romantic heart makes it easy for you to get carried away. You lost yourself in the relationship and became too dependent on your partner for happiness. When your “happily ever after” gets shattered, you idealize them long after. You can’t move on because you’re incapable of letting the veil fall from your eyes. Clinging on to memories, you tend to isolate and indulge in self-blame. You’ve done this for so long that you’ve allowed your desire for love to become extinguished. You can only let go by once again leaping into the unknown and igniting your light.