Mother-In-Law Problems Explained By Astrology

How can you use astrology to understand your problems getting along with your mother-in-law?

Mother-in-law problems can feel insurmountable; however, your mother-in-law is ultimately just another person and there are tools such as a synastry chart that can provide you with insights to assess your relationship compatibility and help you to improve it.

Try our interactive synastry tool, below. Before you start plugging in you and your mother-in-law’s birth details, let’s review the basics of a Synastry Chart.

Table of Contents

Synastry: Determine Mother-in-law Compatibility?

Some people think compatibility in astrology is just about which Sun signs get along with each other. That can make a difference, but you can get more details if you compare each individual birth chart to other.

This comparison is done through the use of a Synastry chart. Some issues that arise between mothers-in-law and the spouses of their children require a deeper look and a synastry chart will do just that!

Synastry stacks two birth charts together so that the links between them can easily be seen. To generate a synastry chart for yourself and your mother-in-law using the tool below, ideally, you should have the date, time, and city of birth for both people.

This article about birth chart compatibility reports “Relationship Birth Chart Compatibility Report, Do You Belong Together?” describes birth data collection in more detail.

If you don’t have all the important details of each person’s birth, then this article also addresses what you can do if you are missing these vital pieces… Like, if you can’t bring yourself to ask your mother-in-law for her birth time.

Without further ado, here’s the synastry tool.

Comparing Birth Aspects Between Charts

If you need a refresher on the planets and other celestial bodies included in an astrology chart, please see 7 Most Important Aspects of a Natal Chart.

The synastry tool highlights aspects between charts in different colors. Aspects are basically connections between celestial bodies within a chart or between celestial bodies in multiple charts.

One aspect that needs no color coding is the conjunction. In a single chart, a conjunction is when two celestial bodies are depicted right next to each other. In a synastry chart, a conjunction is when a celestial body in the first chart is depicted right next to a celestial body in the second chart.

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Of the hard or more difficult aspects, squares are coded as red, and oppositions are coded as blue. Of the harmonious aspects, sextiles are coded as purple, and trines are coded as green.

The yellow lines refer to the quincunx or inconjunct, which is a type of connection that can best be described as awkward. The grey lines refer to minor aspects used by advanced astrologers.

Potential Mother-in-law Issues By Celestial Body

Now that you have used the tool above to create your synastry chart, let’s review each celestial body to give you some insight into what’s happening between the two of you “celestially”.

The Sun As A Difficult Aspect Between You and Your Mother-in-law

If there is a difficult aspect between you and your mother-in-law involving the Sun in either chart, your conflict with her may be about who gets attention and who gets to shine. Especially if your mother-in-law’s Sun is involved, she may act out when she feels that she is not getting noticed enough.

She may feel threatened by the idea that you are getting more attention than she is, especially if she was used to your spouse doting on her before you came along. You may be able to head this off if you can make an effort to catch her doing something positive and intentionally give her attention for that.

If you are the one who feels that your spouse pays too much attention to their mother instead of you, tell your spouse before you do anything stupid, but also spend some time thinking about what is truly realistic for you to expect of your spouse.

The Moon As A Difficult Aspect Between You and Your Mother-in-law

If there is a difficult aspect between you and your mother-in-law involving the Moon in either chart, your conflict with her might evoke primitive parent-child issues. She might have trouble accepting that her spouse, her child, is now an adult because she has built her identity around the role of being a mother.

The Moon is also associated with food. If you have a food allergy that isn’t compatible with her favorite dish, this could be a really uncomfortable situation.

You might be the one who can’t eat nuts, for instance, but she’s the one who clearly is a nut if she takes that personally, so try to keep calm in the face of her nonsense.

What a person with a Moon problem often wants is to be seen as a good nurturer. The less recognition they get, the more overbearing their efforts become, so catching them doing something positive and complimenting that might chill them out.

Mercury As A Difficult Aspect Between You and Your Mother-in-law

If there is a difficult aspect between you and your mother-in-law involving Mercury in either chart, you might have a problem with communication. Maybe you have differences of opinion about how to handle texting or posting family pictures on Facebook.

You might have to tell her directly what your preferences for communication are. Another problem with a difficult Mercury aspect, however, could be an atmosphere where it feels like people only communicate to criticize each other, even if they have the goal of improving things.

Sometimes it is necessary to communicate about things that have gone wrong, but you may have a better chance of being heard if you make an effort to communicate when things go right too.

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Venus As A Difficult Aspect Between You and Your Mother-in-law

If there is a difficult aspect between you and your mother-in-law involving Venus in either chart, this can be a real mess if you are a heterosexual woman. She could be jealous of you for being young and attractive.

This is the ultimate Snow White scenario, where the answer to “Who is the fairest of them all?” was always her until you came along.

She could also be jealous of your relationship with her son, to the point that “The Boy Is Mine” seems like an appropriate response.

If you feel that your mother-in-law is seductive toward your partner or uses your partner, her child, as her surrogate spouse, you may benefit from reading Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Partnersby Kenneth Adams.

Mars As A Difficult Aspect Between You and Your Mother-in-law

If there is a difficult aspect between you and your mother-in-law involving Mars in either chart, the conflict might at least be open. In a way, this is easier than some of the other options where conflict might simmer under the radar for years – you at least get your differences out loudly and quickly.

In an astrological chart, Mars has to do with how you take action. No one else can take action for you, so you have to learn how to do it in your own way, which involves learning your own preferences.

Conflict of course can result when one person tries to impose their own way of doing things on everyone in their path. The best answer to a Mars problem between two people would be for each person to have an appropriate amount of space to do things in their own way.

Jupiter As A Difficult Aspect Between You and Your Mother-in-law

Jupiter is regarded as a benefic planet, meaning that it doesn’t have as bad a reputation for causing trouble as some of the other planets do. Everything has its pros and cons, though.

Jupiter is known for generosity. If there is a difficult aspect between you and your mother-in-law involving Jupiter in either chart, maybe there is a conflict involving the giving of gifts with strings attached.

Jupiter is also associated with religion, so a hard Jupiter aspect between your charts could signify conflict over religious differences.

Saturn As A Difficult Aspect Between You and Your Mother-in-law

If there is a difficult aspect between you and your mother-in-law involving Saturn in either chart, there could be conflict over obligations and duties.

Perhaps there is something that makes your life together difficult without really being anybody’s fault, like if one of you has a health problem and needs care from others in the family.

Saturn can also facilitate an atmosphere of emotional coldness, where issues like protecting the family’s image and living up to high expectations can outweigh the human emotional needs of the actual people involved.

The maddening thing about someone imposing such a regime on you is that you can’t convince them that they are hurting you emotionally or that hurting you emotionally is wrong because they are not any kinder to their own emotional needs than they are to yours.

Uranus As A Difficult Aspect Between You and Your Mother-in-law

If there is a difficult aspect between you and your mother-in-law involving Uranus in either chart, the person whose Uranus is involved might have a habit of doing wacky things to shock the other person.

For example, if you are an orderly guy with the tendency toward decorum that would be expected for your Sun and Mercury in Libra, your mother-in-law who has Uranus in Cancer square all that might try to get a rise out of you by ripping enormous farts in your presence.

The goal, of course, is to get a dramatic reaction out of you, so it will become less interesting for her to do things like that if you don’t react.

The bigger issue is that Uranus is associated with conflict between the individual and society, so someone whose Uranus is triggered by the synastry of a particular relationship might act out in disruptive ways because they feel like they will never fit in no matter what they do.

The ultimate fix might therefore be to help the Uranus person find a way that they do fit into the family group, where their individuality is a valued contribution to the whole.

Neptune As A Difficult Aspect Between You and Your Mother-in-law

If there is a difficult aspect between you and your mother-in-law involving Neptune in either chart, the two of you might have problems with interpersonal boundaries. You could be way too involved in each other’s business.

Neptune problems can also involve unrealistic expectations. In a best-case scenario, Neptune finds an outlet in spirituality, where people acknowledge that there are forces bigger than their own lives.

In a worst-case scenario, Neptune projects this longing for the divine onto mere humans who simply don’t have the ability to carry out that job description. You might be looking to your mother-in-law to be the amazing mother your own mother wasn’t – or your mother-in-law might be looking to you to validate her sacrificial nurturing in a way her own children didn’t.

An excellent book on this topic is The Astrological Neptune and the Quest for Redemption by Liz Greene. See also the example of Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump in Birth Chart Compatibility Explained.

Pluto As A Difficult Aspect Between You and Your Mother-in-law

If there is a difficult aspect between you and your mother-in-law involving Pluto in either chart, there can be hidden agendas surrounding power and control.

The Pluto person may be afraid to ask for what they want openly because they think they can’t handle being told no, so they may manipulate events so that they get what they want without having to ask for it out loud.

Alternately, the Pluto person may never clearly tell you what it is they want so you can always be in trouble for having guessed incorrectly.

The good part about a Pluto problem is that, by the time you are old enough to have a mother-in-law, you might have some practice dealing with it. Pluto moves through the 12 Zodiac signs over the course of 248 years, as noted in 7 Most Important Aspects of a Natal Chart, so everyone born within a few years of each other has Pluto in about the same spot.

For example, if you have a birthday in the middle of August in any year, everyone born in the early 1950s has Pluto in Leo conjunct with your Sun in Leo in synastry, because Pluto was going through the sign of Leo in the early 1950s.

If you were born in the middle of August in the 1980s, you probably grew up with your parents, your teachers, and your first employers all having Pluto conjunct with your Sun, as many people born in the early 1950s were the right age to be in those roles for someone born in the 1980s.

Many of those people probably tended to use you as a trophy child who existed solely to produce achievements that reflected well on them, though of course, they would not admit to that openly.

By the time you get a mother-in-law from the same cohort who objectifies you as her doctor son-in-law or lawyer daughter-in-law, it at least won’t be anything new.