Honestly, I got so fed up with the whole dating scene. You know how it is. Endless swipes, pointless small talk, and then you’re constantly checking those stupid weekly forecasts, right?
I am a total Pisces, by the way. Like, textbook, moody, daydreamer stuff. I kept seeing these headlines about finding “new love next week” or “a cosmic shift is coming.” I’d read them, get my hopes up, and then nothing. Just another week of going home alone and staring at the ceiling. It started to feel less like guidance and more like a cruel joke.
I hit my low point last winter. I was coming off this brutal breakup that just flattened me, and every date I went on was just a carbon copy of the last failure. I was blaming the moons, blaming Mercury, blaming every planet out there except maybe the Sun. I decided right then and there that I was done waiting for the stars to fix my life. My new practice was going to be fixing it myself. I turned this whole love thing into a stupid little DIY project.
My Anti-Astrology Love Practice
I realized my biggest mistake was thinking compatibility meant sharing a love for hiking or having the same star sign. Turns out, it means if they take out the trash without being asked. That was my revelation. So, I grabbed a big, cheap notebook—a ledger, really—and I started logging every single interaction. Not just dates, but interactions with everyone who was remotely a prospect.
The core of my practice was ignoring their sun sign completely. I didn’t care if they were an Aries or a Libra. I only cared about their actions. I boiled it down to four non-negotiables. If a person failed any of these four things consistently, they were out. No discussion. No “maybe the retrograde will fix him.”
The Four Non-Negotiables I Logged:
- Do they show up on time for big things, or do they constantly blame traffic or their alarm?
- Do they say what they mean, or do I have to read between the lines, constantly guessing?
- Do they remember one small, random thing I told them a week ago about my family or work?
- Do they admit when they’re wrong without making it sound like it’s actually my fault somehow?
I started with a massive backlog. I went back and logged all my last five serious relationships and maybe ten of the most memorable terrible dates. The pattern was horrifyingly obvious. Every single person I dated for more than two months had failed at least three of those things consistently. They were great on paper, maybe even great in bed, but they were chaos in real life. I was attracting people who were good at the first date but terrible at the fifth date, you know what I mean?
Then I had to put the practice into action. I went on four dates in the space of three weeks. It was exhausting. Date one was a total Gemini who was perfectly on time but then talked over me for an entire hour straight. Fail, fail, fail. Date two was some fire sign who swore they were interested but then took 48 hours to text me back every time. Said they were busy. I logged it: inconsistent communication. Fail.
I was ready to burn the notebook. I figured I was too strict, too judgmental, too far gone. I told my friend I was quitting the whole thing. I was going to become a crazy cat person and just live in peace. He told me to just try one more time, but to ditch the notebook and just try to have fun.
So I did. I met this person—totally by chance, not on an app. We were waiting in line for a terrible concert, and we just started talking about how stupid the band was. We ended up getting coffee two days later. I went into it with zero expectations. I didn’t even ask for their birthday, which, for me, is like a personal record.
The date was fine. Not fireworks, just easy. The next day, I had this little work crisis, and I texted them super late just saying, “Ugh, my day sucks.” And they didn’t just write “That’s awful.” They wrote, “I remember you said you like those sour gummy bears. I’m dropping a bag off on your doorstep right now. Don’t worry about it.” And they did it.
I didn’t even have to open the ledger. I realized he had aced all four of my stupid little tests without even knowing they existed. He was on time. He said exactly what he was going to do. He remembered the sour gummies from a random five-minute chat. And he apologized genuinely a week later when he accidentally spilled coffee on my laptop case.
It was never about the stars, man. The stars were a distraction. The “new love” I found wasn’t about a prediction coming true next week; it was about the practice I put in this week to figure out what I actually needed. I found it because I stopped looking up and started paying attention to what was right in front of me.
