MARS IN CAPRICORN
“The Slave of Love”
Sex should be a simple matter for Mars in Capricorn Lovers. They are among the earthiest Lovers of the zodiac; people who identify the joy of sex directly with the body and make no apologies for their strong erotic drives. These are practical, sometimes calculating Lovers who go after physical satisfaction with an unbeatable combination of relentlessness and raw lust. However, despite this apparent simplicity, the sexuality of Mars in Capricorn Lovers is loaded with complexities.
One of the most remarkable traits of these Lovers is their aversion to happiness, or at least to any happiness that has not been tempered and purified by hardships. Mars in Capricorn Lovers think of love as something that must be earned and they seem to seek out adversity in their love lives. They are unable to really appreciate their considerable sensuality until guilt, responsibility, or dire circumstance has somehow hobbled their sex drive. Suffering brings out the best in Mars in Capricorn Lovers. Their real capacity for loyalty and devotion is often only apparent in the proximity of pain.
Mars in Capricorn Lovers are typically very conservative. They are most comfortable when they can keep their sexual activity well within the limits proscribed by their own social milieu, and they tend to avoid the company of people who can’t. This conventionality brings up another complex issue in the sexuality of this type. Their physical drives are so elemental and they pursue them with such dogged determination that it’s almost impossible for these Lovers not to break the rules now and again; but when they do, they are so incapable of seeing themselves as rebels that they often turn the situation on its head. They look at their own activity as normal, no matter how unusual it may be, and wonder why the rest of the world doesn’t agree. For this reason, Mars in Capricorn Lovers—who usually have little tolerance for sexual risk taking—can sometimes become the most outlandish of sexual revolutionaries.
Control is another issue in which the complexity of this type becomes evident. Mars in Capricorn Lovers are typically very controlling Lovers who can’t really relax in a sexual situation unless they think they can physically, emotionally, or mentally “manage” a partner. Thus they are often drawn to relationships with people over whom they have some sort of advantage. However, it is rare that these Lovers are able to enjoy being the boss. For the Mars in Capricorn Lover, control is measured in terms of obligations and responsibilities. It becomes just another means of self-sacrifice or, in many cases self-sacrifice becomes a means of control.
The final complexity of the Mars in Capricorn sexuality has to do with romanticism. These Lovers seem full of old-fashioned chivalry and sweet, romantic notions because they honor self-sacrifice and the obligations that come with relationships. However, while it is true that these Lovers do tend to be old-fashioned, it is typically old-fashioned lust that is their real motivation. For all their determination to “love till it hurts,” Mars in Capricorn Lovers tend to be very practical when it comes to forming relationships. They seek relationships that are grounded in material interdependence and sexual capability and, of course, feel guilty for it afterwards.
CELEBRITY EXAMPLES OF MARS IN CAPRICORN
Among our examples of The Slave of Love we find many sad stories. From Katherine Hepburn’s servile attachment to Spencer Tracy to Jean Harlow’s bizarre marriage to Paul Bern, from the many failed romances and marriages of heiress Christine Onassis to the marital trouble of Marvin Gaye, there is enough misery in this group to fill a hundred soap operas. Sometimes this misery comes from choosing the wrong partner, such as in the case of Barbara Stanwyck, whose husband beat her or John Wayne whose first wife refused to have sex except for the purpose of procreation. In other instances misery seems to have been just a matter of bad luck. Due to the severe injuries she suffered in a bus accident when she was an adolescent, sex for Frida Kahlo was necessarily a combination of pleasure and pain. Other examples produced their own hardships. John Ruskin developed a crush on a young girl he knew for only a few months during his sheltered adolescence. A few years later, when he learned that this girl, who had by now all but forgotten about Ruskin, was marrying someone else he became so upset that he was forced to drop out of college. Of course, the most flagrant example of this “lust for misery” is Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who needed a good beating and ample humiliation before he could enjoy sex.
We also find among our examples of this Mars type several who sought out relationship in which they could manage or control their partner. We see this in the marriage of Woody Allen to a girl who had formerly been his adopted step-daughter and the marriage of Anna Nicole Smith to a man old enough to be her grandfather. There is also evidence of this trait in the penchant of both John Wayne and Marlon Brando to marry women who were "foreign" in one way or another. Of course, not all these efforts to attain a superior position in the relationship panned out the way the Mars in Capricorn Lover might have expected. Leo Tolstoy spent almost fifty years trying to convince his wife, Sonya that he was the great man that everyone else seemed to believe he was but he never quite succeeded. The worldly and robust Dante Gabriel Rossetti seemed to have the upper hand over his sickly wife, Elizabeth Siddal but, in the end, the dominant theme in their relationship was her emotional hold over him.
For more information about these and other examples, see the individual Mars/Venus combinations