The opposition is nearly always lived through somebody else first. The native considers themselves moderate and keeps choosing companions who are not: the spender, the promiser, the one who books the restaurant nobody can afford. Being the reasonable party is comfortable and slightly dishonest, since the extravagance is being enjoyed at one remove. The reverse arrangement occurs just as often, with the native cast as the lavish one by a partner who prefers to count. Either way, the tension is contracted out rather than held.
Household money is where it surfaces. Two people with different definitions of a reasonable sum are obliged to agree on one, and the negotiation recurs monthly for decades. Gifts are the second flashpoint: the native gives too much or is given too much, and in both cases something is owed afterwards that neither party will name. Taste divides on the same axis, the plain against the ornamented, and each side privately considers the other vulgar. The quarrel is rarely about the object, and the object is always what gets discussed.
Resolution means owning both ends rather than assigning one of them to a spouse. The native who admits their own appetite for scale stops needing a proxy to enact it, and stops resenting the proxy for the expense. This is the contact behind good agents, patrons and matchmakers, people who can hold a large ambition and a real sense of proportion in the same hand, usually because they have watched the imbalance run in both directions. Choosing one side merely relocates the problem into the next relationship.
What It Gives
- ◆proportion learned from watching excess
- ◆generosity given deliberately
- ◆brokers between plain and grand
- ◆attracts patrons and backers
What It Costs
- ◆appetite outsourced to partners
- ◆recurring quarrels over household money
- ◆obligation created by lavish gifts
This is one line of a whole chart. The rest of it — every placement, house and aspect at once — is a birth date away.
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