The 6th houseness of live-in relationships
March 31, 2009 by Jeffrey Kishner
Imagine you have a live-in boyfriend or husband (or girfriend/wife). The house is a mess, a lightbulb needs to be replaced, your guy leaves his wet towel on the floor, you don’t like how he chews his food. You meet another guy at work or while having drinks with “the girls,” and start an affair. He’s also married or in a long-term cohabitating relationship, so you have your dalliances in a motel room. This arrangement goes on for some time, but you wonder if it’s “real.” (“This isn’t real” is uttered by Kate Winslet’s character to Patrick Wilson’s character in Little Children, after they have carried on an affair for a while.)
So much of a long-term relationship is the sharing of life on a day-to-day basis. The mundane, daily activities — grocery shopping, fixing up the house or apartment, taking the kids to soccer, reading the paper — are 6th house activities. They’re routine.
The routine can be comforting — it is often what draws people into relationships (e.g., “I want someone with whom I can share my bed every night”) — but it can also be stifling. Perhaps the question of whether an affair is “real” is whether this relationship can survive the 6th house experience. If you leave your boyfriend/husband for your lover and move in together, the habits might be different, but this is also when many of his flaws become apparent — those habits that annoy you.
The little details can be endearing, or they can drive you crazy.
Of course, you don’t have to live together if you are in a long-term relationship, even if you’re married. There are couples who choose to stay in separate residences so that the passion of their relationship isn’t weighed down by the humdrum routine of daily life. But most couples choose to live together. An affair is appealing because the romance exists on another plane, in which you don’t have to see each other brush teeth, wake up with bad hair, go through the stomach flu. Yet, could it be that as long as you haven’t integrated the romance into your 6th house, you cannot know if it can move “to the next level?
The 6th house is situated between the 5th house of romance and the 7th house of marriage. Think of the 6th as the “living in sin” phase of a relationship. You know you’re “in love” with each other (5th), but the only way you know you’ll last as a couple (7th) is to go through the fire of the 6th.
Living together requires communication (Mercury). You and your partner were each were brought up by your families-of-origin with a particular way of doing things, whether that’s stacking dishes or leaving the toilet seat up or down. Inevitably, you and your new live-in partner have conflicts regarding these small ways of doing tasks. And the only way to resolve the conflict is by openly talking about it — unless, say, one of you decides to passive-aggressively let the other person do everything, and when you do take on a household chore, you do it wrong, making your partner re-do it. (The house opposite the 6th is the 12th, naturally ruled by Pisces. You could call this the “checking out” house.)
The danger of the 6th is that a relationship becomes subsumed/swallowed by daily tasks (walking the dog, talking about the kids, etc.) and loses its fire. One could call this regressive, for the 6th is a way to move on to the 7th. It becomes *integrated* into the marriage, but it does not *define* the marriage. The 7th is supposed to graduate into the 8th: the passion and mystery of coupling, the unveiling of deep psychological truths within the relationship to facilitate psychological healing. Perhaps some (or many?) couples fear this growth, and prefer to get hung up on the issues of the 6th. (Or maybe their inability to master the issues of the 6th prevent them from moving on to the 8th.)
About the Author
Jeffrey Kishner is editor/publisher of Sasstrology. He has been published in The Mountain Astrologer and Dell Horoscope, and online at AOL Horoscopes, Tarot.com and StarIQ. He is available for astrology consultations. Learn more about his services at jeffreykishner.com.
Comment below: Has your 6th house issues in a relationship prevented it from moving forward?
Related: Astrology, housework and domestic bliss
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Awesome read, thanks!
Funniest thing, just before reading this, I nagged my husband into walking the dog (I have to do this every evening
The 6th house stuff scares me… I know it can all work out with the right person but I NEVER want to lose the fire with someone I’ve come so far as to actually decide on LIVING with them… but i’m a Gemini so moving in with someone is last on my list… scary scary 6th…
NR, we husbands love to be nagged …
Finally, an article about the 6th house- try this one: venus-sun-mars conjunction ALL in HOUSE 6 & ALL in PISCES – explains why my last date said I remind him of a VIRGO!!
Crystal, my wife is a Scorpio, but she has so many planets in her 6th that she reminds me of a Virgo quite often!
So i am a true virgo and for the past 4 years i have had a intense relationship with a true pisces. So we met randomly and he was in a relationship at the time but on a break due to being on the west coast with me and the relationship was on the east coast where he went to school. i also was in school there but home for the summer. we casually dated for two weeks and then i was left for the rest of the summer. After the rest of the summer we were supposed to meet but he went missing as pisces tend to do. anyway let it be and for two years we loosely stated in contact-seen him once a year casually-yet he played mad games every time (he wasn’t a game player when we dated??) So i was like forget you-moved on got another bf and did my thang. So he was destine to graduate and go back abroad where he is from. then two years ago i get a email saying he is moving to my city for a job. I was moving abroad for a semester so wanted to see him before i left. we met up and he went nuts on me! NUTS! that’s when i got hooked- i liked the emotional rage (we are total opposites i keep my emotions bottled up. Ok so we dont talk for a while and in the middle of the semester he comes back with an apology, we start emailing again and talk about when i get back in a few months. he’s still playing some games and i have to read in between the lines. i come back for a weekend and things went great-like where we left off years ago, so i get back three weeks later-he gets cold feet, lies, and says he met someone else last week! ( i think he moved to my city for me-i have some good evidence too) so i am like hell no but we still hang out everyday for three weeks but he’s playying soo many games testing me and hurting me. so at one fight i say call me when your not crazy and leave. we dont talk for three months and then we run into each other and have dinner later the week. he was still playing his immature games…
Ok so how it relates to the posting-it seems for the past 4 years we have all the passion of the 12 house, but whenever we get in the same room the passion makes the 6th impossible. funnily the two weeks we originally dates the 6th was working so smooth-even though we were both out of our element ( me visiting home him doing a summer academic program.
I feel he is my sole mate but we were raised very differently yet share a special yin yang bond. I do love him and it’s hard to meet others because i can’t find the passion-I’m going with my gut with him-yet it seems we don’t go anywhere but down hill-he gets out of control because i “over stimulate” him. I know he needs to mature and we both agreed upon this. So what are signs that it will work out once he mellows out?
Excellent article !!! Wish you wrote more often, Jeff
Gauri, thanks! I write blog posts when I feel inspired … and I still write quite often — you just have to catch me on twitter and facebook
Great article! The 6th house seems to define my current relationship. My boyfriend and I have been togther now two years, we moved in after only dating 5 months and get on fantastically. We seem to be really in sync when it comes to the day to day routines and pratically never argue. Unsurprisingly in our synastry chart, each of our suns falls directly in the other’s 6th house. It’s definitely not a hugely fiery relationship though we love each other deeply but I have a sixth house moon anyway so it’s exactly what I need…
awesome article. if only everyone knew this =p
thanks, arielle!
My Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Pluto all fall in my 6th house.
Three signs there: Virgo, Libra and Scorpio.
I don’t know what it’s like to live together with someone (I still live with my parents) but I know that I’ll love it ! I don’t care about household chores (I do that enough at home, I really don’t mind) and I don’t see the 6th house posing any problems for me in the future. It’s my natural energy, I feel best when I do those things !
And as for the whole “clean up your own sh*t, pick up your socks” thing, I don’t even think that’s important !
Because he WILL cle