Venus Square Neptune: Ideal Love That Won’t Match Reality

With Venus and Neptune at odds, there is often a gap between the ideal love in your heart and the person in front of you. You are easily disappointed, and it pushes you to learn to tell imagination from what is real. This page starts from what Venus governs (love, taste, values and money) and what Neptune governs (ideals, imagination and dissolving boundaries), then looks at how the square makes the two interact, how it tends to show up in everyday life, its strengths and blind spots, and some advice for it.

Venus Square Neptune at a glance

Percentages are our own calculation from 8,401 charts of people born in Taipei between 1960 and 2005 with random birth times, using the same orbs as our chart calculator.

The core meaning of Venus Square Neptune

Venus wants a concrete relationship, with someone to hold hands and share meals with. Neptune wants a love that is perfect and close to nonexistent. The square has the two interfering with each other, so while you are in a real relationship you keep comparing it with the ideal in your heart. A partner can hardly live up to that picture, and you often feel let down after the first rush of love. Sometimes it goes the other way, and to preserve the lovely image you turn a blind eye to obvious problems.

People with the conjunction are soaked in imagination and do not feel much conflict. With the square you run into the gap between imagination and reality again and again, and you feel it every time. When you are young this brings a few relationships that are heartbreaking or confusing, such as a long secret crush, loving someone you cannot be with, or finding out a person is not who you thought. These experiences wear you down, and they also let you see more clearly each time. People with this aspect often become deeply perceptive about the human heart, and their creative work has real depth.

How it feels inside

You often have a longing you cannot quite name, a sense that something more beautiful and more profound must exist somewhere. When you cannot have it, the yearning is especially strong. When you do have it, it somehow is not what you pictured. Your sense of your own worth wavers easily too. When you are liked you feel wonderful, and when you are overlooked you doubt that you deserve anything. Bring your attention back to the relationships and abilities you really have, and this floating feeling becomes more grounded.

In love and relationships

In love you tend to fall for the person you imagine. You may spend a long time liking someone who does not respond, or get caught up in something that never gets a name, where one kind word from them keeps you going for ages. You may also play the rescuer, convinced that if you give enough, they will change. When fact and expectation are too far apart, you are hurt deeply. Asking your questions directly when you are dating, without making up the answers on the other person’s behalf, is what this aspect most needs to practice.

At work and in getting things done

At work, that fixation on beauty can become a powerful creative drive. You are not satisfied with the mediocre and keep revising until it comes close to the picture in your mind, so in music, film, design, or writing you can produce work that reaches people. The trouble is money. You lose patience with numbers and fine print, and you may accept unreasonable pay because you love a project, or spend carelessly in a moment of feeling. Keeping regular accounts and having someone look over a contract before you sign will block most of the problems.

Strengths

• Feeling deeply: You know what it is to have hopes fall through, so you understand other people’s losses especially well, and your words of comfort tend to land where they are needed.
• Driven toward beauty: That ideal picture in your heart keeps urging you on. You refuse to be sloppy in your work or your life, so your quality is more refined than most.
• Learning to see clearly: After a few gaps between hope and fact, your read on people grows more accurate, and you can tell who is sincere and who merely talks well.

Blind spots

• Easily disappointed: You imagine a partner or a romance as too perfect and are hit hard when reality falls short, sometimes writing off a relationship that was decent.
• Self-deception: To hold on to the lovely picture, you may deliberately not look at obvious signs, and admit the problem only after it has grown large.
• Sacrificing too much: You assume giving more will earn the ideal relationship and keep pushing your own needs to the back, and in the end the one worn out is you.

Advice for Venus Square Neptune

Practice asking until it is clear. When you have a question about a relationship, ask the other person what they think and take the answer at its literal meaning, without adding the meaning you were hoping for. Also find your ideal another home. Put it into creative work, faith, volunteering, or anything you find beautiful. When Neptune has somewhere of its own to go, your expectations of a partner will naturally come back within the range of what one person can do.

What to keep in mind when reading this aspect

1. The tighter the orb, the more it matters. In our calculations, only 13.6% of all major aspects are within 1° of exact, and 41.2% are within 3°. If your Venus square Neptune is tight, the traits on this page will be more noticeable; if it is close to the 7° limit, they will be much fainter.

2. Applying and separating. An aspect is applying when the two planets are moving toward the exact angle and separating once they have passed it. Tradition holds that an applying aspect is still taking shape and acts more strongly. Our chart calculator marks which one you have.

3. Watch for out-of-sign aspects. Two planets in square are usually in signs of the same modality (both cardinal, both fixed or both mutable), but an aspect is measured by actual distance. In our calculations, 13% of squares do not match the usual sign relationship (one planet late in a sign, the other early in another). The nature of the aspect is still there; it just shows up in a less typical way.

4. Most people born on the same day share this aspect. Venus and Neptune move only a little in a day. The difference lies in which houses they fall in on your chart, and that depends on your birth time; see Planets in the Houses.

5. Then look at each planet’s own placement. The signs Venus and Neptune are in decide how each one expresses itself; see Planets in the Signs. If either planet has other aspects, read them together. For a complete reading, use the In-Depth Chart Reading.

Other aspects between Venus and Neptune

Conjunction · Sextile · Square · Trine · Opposition

The square with other planets

Venus: Moon square Venus, Venus square Mars, Venus square Jupiter, Venus square Saturn, Venus square Uranus, Venus square Pluto.

Neptune: Sun square Neptune, Moon square Neptune, Mercury square Neptune, Mars square Neptune, Jupiter square Neptune, Saturn square Neptune, Uranus square Neptune.

All Venus aspects · All Neptune aspects · Planet aspects overview