Gemini Meets Scorpio

I’m not at all knowledgeable about astrological signs. I know people who are, and I think it’s kind of cool, but I never learned much about it. I’m a Gemini, and I do think that accounts for my split personality, but then again, so do I.


I used to work with a woman named Linda, who would always ask when someone’s birthday was, then she’d say, “Oh, you’re a Sagittarius!” or whatever sign was correct. Then she’d ask about the boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse/whatever, and pronounce her assessment of whether the relationship had a chance at happiness or was doomed to go up in smoke. She knew this stuff cold, too. “Oh, no, he’s going to be selfish and isolating,” or “You don’t want to trust her with your kids or money—they’re (whatever the sign was) so irresponsible!” I don’t know how she knew this, but she was pretty sure that my hub, [the Center of the Universe, when he was still ‘the boyfriend’] and I would work out great. “Gemini and Scorpio—that’s a very strong combination,” she asserted.

Now, however, I find Linda was either learning from a different playbook, or fifteen years has changed the conventional wisdom. And, since fifteen years is nothing in the big scheme of things, I seriously doubt it’s the latter. Anyway, if you Google ‘Gemini and Scorpio compatibility’, you will find this view of things:

A Gemini and a Scorpio are like two ends of the same pole. They are totally opposite to one another in almost all the aspects of their personality, making this zodiac match a difficult one. The Scorpion is a highly emotional individual, who always forges deep, meaningful relationships. A Gemini, on the other hand, hardly becomes attached to people and most of his love relationships tend to be superficial ones. The frivolousness of a Gemini will not go down too well with a Scorpio and he is most likely to find the former as too childish, immature and irresponsible.

Now, frankly, not to give out too much personal information, but that particular description of the Scorpio couldn’t be further from the truth about CoTU. It describes me far better than it does him. In fact, a case could be made that they got us totally reversed, or at least partially so. So was Linda just nudging me along, hoping we’d self-destruct, or did she have special psychic insights?

This is a little like the Chinese restaurant placemat information on birth years… If you were born in the Year of the Rat, can you successfully marry someone born in the Year of the Monkey? Does it all depend upon the phase of the moon? Which system takes precedence? Do the Chinese birth years override the astrological signs, or is it the other way around?

Pig, rat, snake, monkey, ox—not too much to aspire to, if stereotypes hold. What does that leave?—rabbit, rooster, horse, dog, dragon, tiger… Hmmm… Maybe I was better off trying to grasp the signs of the zodiac. Aries, Taurus, Cancer, Libra—they just sound less judge-y…

So for all you readers out there who are into on-line dating, do any of these things become factors for you? Does anyone really take these things seriously when you meet someone you might want to date, or is the old ‘personal chemistry’ still the gold standard when it comes to choosing a significant other?

In either case, despite what they say online, this particular Gemini and CoTU, my Scorpio hubster, are doing just fine. So maybe Linda knew better than the websites, in the final analysis.

Perhaps the labels and the generalizations are just another way we try to cubbyhole each other. I guess it’s still best not to try to put a monkey and a rat in a Taurus. Somebody’s gonna get hurt. Especially if the monkey’s driving.