Saturn Returns with Caggie - What if love is a practice?

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

In this solo episode of Saturn Returns, Caggie reflects on one of the most shape-shifting forces in our lives: love. Not the fantasy, but the lived, practised - and sometimes uncomfortable - truth of it. She weaves together her own relationship experiences with insights from some of the most influential voices in modern relationship thinking. Drawing on the work of Jillian Turecki, Caggie explores the idea of personal sovereignty in love - how our romantic lives often mirror our relationship with ourselves, and why consistency and character matter more than chemistry alone. She also reflects on the grounded wisdom of Matthew Hussey, whose work champions self-respect and emotional availability, alongside the deeply human teachings of Esther Perel, including the paradox at the heart of intimacy: our desire for closeness and our need for space. This conversation is an invitation to examine your own patterns. Do you confuse intensity with intimacy? Fantasy with safety? Are you choosing love from fear - or from truth? You may also enjoy revisiting our earlier mini-series Letters to Venus for further reflections on matters of the heart, including Caggie’s interview with Jillian Turecki here. The Saturn Returns app is here… 🪐 Find your exact Saturn dates and navigate life's most transformative astrological passage with personalised insights, guided reflections, and cosmic wisdom. Click here to download now! Discover more from Saturn Returns: 🪐 Find us on⁠ Instagram⁠,⁠ YouTube⁠ and⁠ TikTok⁠ 🪐 Order the Saturn Returns book:⁠ Click here⁠ 🪐 Join our community newsletter:⁠ Sign up here⁠ 🪐 Explore all things Saturn Returns:⁠ Visit our website⁠ 🪐Follow Caggie on Instagram:⁠ @caggiesworld⁠

I want to tell you about something very exciting that we've been quietly working on behind the scenes because so many of you message me saying, I love the podcast, it's helped me so much, especially those going through challenging times, but they don't know where to go after they listen. And so we created the Saturn Returns app. It's not just another astrology app that tells you what's going on astrologically. It's designed for daily support, a place to integrate what you're already feeling. Inside the app, your astrology is used as a mirror rather than a rulebook. You'll find short reflections, daily anchors, and of course the focus is around Saturn,

because Saturn is the ultimate teacher for our personal development and our maturity. So whether you're in your Saturn return or going through a challenging moment of transition or just craving some steadiness in how you relate to your life, this is a place to slow down and build self-trust over time. And if you were trying to make sense of the current phase you are in, the app is probably going to tell you something that you didn't realize because whilst we have our big Saturn return moment, we have these mini initiations throughout our life. And it's really helped me over the last year understand what has been going on and why it's been happening. And so I am super excited for you guys to explore the app. I think it's completely beautiful.

It's just everything that I've worked on over the last five years. one place and this is only the beginning. So head to the app store, type in Saturn Returns, add your information, get your birth chart overview and your current Saturn face. Enjoy and thank you so much for listening. Hello everyone and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kaggy Dunlop. This is a podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. Today I wanted to put together an episode that I have been thinking about for quite some time and we're going to do it today. And you'll be pleased to hear that I've got some batteries. I'm properly recording. I'm ready to go. And the subject of today's

episode is around love. One of my favorite subjects, as you know. And I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts in the space or finding thought leaders that I think are really worth following because in the last few years relationships have, I feel, blown up in terms of people giving advice on them. And I think that's for a bunch of different reasons. It's always been something that obviously unifies all of us that we all, we will have, we need, we're wired for connection. But I also think our language and understanding of relationships and our expectations and our expectations of relationships have changed so much and therefore we're all kind of muddying through thinking like oh is it you know is this normal is are my expectations too high whether it's to do

with dating trying to just get into a relationship that apparently is like a jungle at the moment according to my single friends because there's so many different um you know I think that when I was like a, when I was dating when I was in my 20s, it was like, you met someone through a friend, you like went out on a night out, you may be kissed and then maybe you kissed again the following weekend and then you're basically boyfriend and girlfriend. Whereas now I don't think it's like that at all. I think it's really, I think it's very complicated. And I've been in a relationship now for five years. So I even feel like in that space it's changed a lot. And so what I wanted to do today was kind of pulled together who I think is worth following and worth listening to

in the relationship sphere. And I have given this a lot of time and a lot of thought and a lot of consideration. So if you value my opinion, listen closely. I believe now in my 30s that love is a practice. It is not something that just takes over. I mean, it does at the beginning, but then I think in terms of its longevity, it's very much a practice. And I don't know whether we have the tools for that practice. And that's where we run into trouble quite a lot. Also, because there's so many options, I think it makes it easier for people to leave relationships.

I am not saying people should stay in relationships that are not good. but I think that we at least should give ourselves the possibility of working through in a healthy way to see whether actually there's something there that we can come back to. And someone kind of described a relationship which I thought was quite accurate as a sort of like a DNA strand. If you visualize that, these kind of two things swirling together and they need each other, but they have to have a little bit of distance. If there's too much distance, it's a problem. There's a problem.

If there's too much closeness, it's a problem. And they kind of have this like dance together. And that's what a relationship should be. So let's begin. Now, one of the people that I'm going to discuss next is someone who has come on the podcast. I had the privilege of interviewing her. I think it was for last season. She's blown up online.

and that is Gillian Turecki. And she's grown up because I think she is giving the advice that people are really resonating with and it centers a lot around self-responsibility in relationships and self-responsibility over romantic fantasy that I think people are recognizing

isn't really helping them anymore. And she very much speaks to patterns and pattern recognition and the important of disqualification of discerning if someone's character is aligned with us, and if their values are aligned with us, versus infatuation, chemistry, etc. She doesn't like this kind of idea of, like, you know,

we need to be rescued by someone. It's a lot about, it's very rooted in personal sovereignty. And I like that. It very much relates with the themes of Saturn returns that we cover here. and how essentially she kind of the relationship is not the problem it's your relationship with yourself and she very much mirrors this idea that it's our relationship with ourselves that is playing out in our relationships and also really installs this idea that you can't heal in the same patterns that keep

hurting you and what i really take away from her work is a number of things firstly this notion of compatibility and being able to discern. So not being kind of taken over by the chemical connection we have with someone when we first meet them and not actually noticing how our body feels and whether they're making us feel anxious and not measuring our investment on them by how excited we feel. Measuring our investment and our sort of reciprocity on how much they're engaging in how much they're putting in as well. And that's how it should be. And it should be measured at the beginning. It's like a, there's a consistency. There's not love bombing. It's not too much, but it's, it's consistent. They're showing their intentions and you are showing theirs. It's not

hot and cold. It's not, oh, are they going to message back? Or I don't know if I've said the right thing. You're not questioning everything you've said and done. It's, you feel kind of safe and steady. And for a lot of people, this can feel very foreign if you're used to being in the pursuit of love, in being in the pursuit of being chosen. And we'll get to that a little bit later. But I think this key principle as well of having pattern recognition for your own behaviour in relationships is really key because it's so easy to place everything on the other. and to not notice, hang on, is this actually a me thing? Like, am I the common denominator?

And obviously this comes with time, you need to have enough experience to even recognise your own patterns and have that awareness. But when you do, you can start to really change that and do something different. And that might feel very odd at the beginning because your whole nervous system

might have been based on a concept of love from growing up that isn't healthy, that isn't safe, but it's familiar. And so rewiring that takes a lot of conscious effort and it isn't easy, but I think Gillian's work is really helpful and being more, I guess, logical when it comes to love, which I don't think sounds particularly sexy or romantic, but I think it's real and I think it's relatable and I think it's why she's doing so well at the moment. And what she does is she sort of consistency pulls people out of projection, like out of what they're projecting onto the other person and back into their own personal agency. So it's very much about maturing. It's not about sort of molly coddling or, yeah, like I said,

kind of waiting for someone to come and save you. It's like about self-responsibility and you know, we cannot be chosen into wholeness. And I think that if we've grown up around the kind of Disney narrative, and I particularly had this real thing about feeling the need to be chosen, but to kind of share some of my patterns when I was younger, the need to be chosen, I would seek from the person least likely to give it to me. So my subconscious would gravitate towards someone. And of course, like, I was attracted to them. There was something there.

It wasn't just like someone I didn't know. But there was often something about them that meant I was unlikely to be chosen. And I realized, like, often through reflecting on my diaries and journals that I, it wasn't that I felt good in the space, but I felt alive in the space, the space of being in the pursuit of a love that probably wasn't going to happen, that I probably wasn't going to be picked. And I found in that space because it was so charged that it was actually a very creative place for me. And I became quite addicted to that space because it fuelled me.

my art. I wrote so many poems. I'd write so many songs. Some of my favorite pieces of writing are from that place. And I think I sort of became addicted to it. And it became my model of what I thought love was. Now, sometimes I reflect on my family life and try and I understand if it came from that. But I think it's probably more, I mean, I'm sure it is, but that's a podcast for another day. But my first kind of experience of falling in love or thinking I had fallen in love was with someone who constantly didn't choose me. And it went on for years. And it was something, in my mind, it was such a formative relationship. It fueled me as a person.

It fueled my art. It consumed diaries and journals. But the truth is that me and this person were actually not even together. I mean, we were probably in a relationship for maybe 5, 10% of that time. So the rest of the time that it occupied my mind, occupied, you know, my waking thought. It was sort of, I guess, a kind of like an obsessional love. And it stemmed from being a teenager. I met him when I was 15 and it spanned throughout, you know, up until my early 20s.

And interestingly, and this is what I mean about pattern recognition, it was on off until my early 20s, but mainly off, because he would never want to really be in a relationship with me. And if I could ever get him, it was always very short-lived. And so I was constantly in the state of being hard. heartbroken, really. And again, being in this pursuit of being chosen, that if I was chosen by this person, like, the world would be right. And the irony is that in my early 20s, he suddenly turned around and was ready. And I think about this a lot because when we then actually were

in a relationship, it didn't last very long because of me. Suddenly, after, I don't know, It was a few months. It was not long. I mean, like probably three months or something. I suddenly didn't feel it. I didn't even really, I didn't have the language to explain it. It just was, it wasn't a big dramatic breakup. It was just kind of like we were sitting on the sofa at home

and he just was like, you're not into this and like, I'm going to go. And he went and there was no drama. there was no fight I didn't even have a reason it was literally just like I didn't feel it anymore and it was so bizarre because well I didn't think it was bizarre

at the time but I do now that I had been in the pursuit of this person for years and years and years and then suddenly I had them and then my whole body was kind of like oh that thing's gone because I was no longer in the pursuit of it if you see what I mean

and now I can recognize that that sort of theme played out in a lot of my relationships. There was then another one sort of a few years later that I wasn't with for a very long time. It was a disaster of a relationship. It was like red flags everywhere. And yeah, when we had broken up, it became the fuel for my creativity, for my world. And now that I have more self-awareness and language and understanding, I can see that whatever it ignited in me was something that existed in me already.

That thing that that person makes you feel isn't actually them. It's something that you possess in yourself. They have just shined a light on it. And that can make you feel very addicted to them because you feel that you need to be in their presence or in their orbit to feel that thing, but actually it's something that exists in you, that beauty is in you, that creativity is in you. And I think if we can find other ways of accessing it, that can be a really, really powerful thing. Now, the second person who I feel that in the relationship space

is incredible. And I sort of followed his work on and off for a lot of. For a lot of long time. He's like the OG in relationships. I mean, he's like been doing this way before it was cool. And that's Matthew Hossie. And he's a podcast. He has a book. I haven't interviewed him yet. I really hope to. But his stuff is really, really good. Like he knows his shit. And I think he's often misunderstood as people think it's kind of like dating tactics or tricks. But actually, he really helps people and I think specifically women really love his work, get you to a place of understanding your standards and of having put like putting yourself in a good standard for dating and not lowering your standards and having clarity about what you want and what's in alignment with

that and to not chase or have to convince people to be with you. And if someone wants you, you know, that should happen without you manipulating it. or coercion. And I think his, he does, he has an amazing podcast. I listen to his stuff quite a lot. And it's quite digestible. It's quite bite size. And it really kind of teaches you, if it doesn't come that naturally, how to like have

that self-respect and know how to navigate the dating pool with self-respect, which even for many of us, like that we're, say we're super successful and we've got great friends and everything, but for whatever reason when it comes to dating, we can just be complete dormats. And why is this happening again or not really understanding again, like our patterns or what's going wrong? And I feel like Matthew Hussie is really, really good if you are in the dating jungle. I think he's fantastic. And it's about having that clarity, like I said, self-respect. And noticing emotional availability and how important that is for measuring our investment into something. I guess some of the work that he discusses is essentially like if someone wants to be with you,

you won't be confused about it and the right person will not require you to abandon your standards to keep them. And you don't need to convince the right person. Alignment removes the chase. And so if you are questioning, if you are in the midst of dating at the moment, and you are kind of in that chacey energy, I really suggest giving his podcasts a listen because I think that his work is very much grounded in integrity.

I listened to him to this. It was kind of like it had a podcast host, Matthew, and then another dating expert who I really, really don't like her work, but that's a whole other thing. And you could see Matthew Hussie and her kind of like bashing heads on stuff. And I think he just seems like a really good guy. Like he's got his head screwed on. He's not like giving you BS advice. It's fantastic. And I think he reframes dating away from strategy and towards like self-trust, but he gives you the tools to get that. And underneath the kind of practical advice, there's just a really strong ethic of dignity and integrity,

and I really respect that. Now, the third is the wonderful Esther Perel. I mean, we couldn't not mention her. I actually had the opportunity to meet her. I kind of did meet her. I was at this festival and she was speaking there and I sat right next to her. We were doing like a yoga class and she came in and sat next to me and I think she actually yeah she actually started like rearranging me because she's very good at yoga Esther and um I I was just like totally starstruck but it was a four day events I was like I'm definitely going to speak to her at some point and I didn't I I she's just like a powerhouse woman she really is and her work on relationships is really in a league of her own because she has so much experience under her belt from being a

relationship therapist. I cannot believe I hadn't read this until recently, but if you haven't read her book mating in captivity, it is like the Bible for relationships because it goes through everything that any kind of couple has gone through. Like warts and all, it really does not hold back and it's actual couples that have seen her. And it's so humanizing to recognize yourself and some of the stories because I think one of the biggest problems, especially in relationships, long-term ones, is that we feel like whatever we are thinking or feeling, we're the only ones that have ever felt it. I definitely have this like romanticized idea of love that it's perfect and the other person like sees you perfectly and you don't have to have any conflict and you don't

have to say anything, they just get it miraculously. And that's, that's what love is. Where she really breaks down, like, that is not what love is. And she communicates it in this way that's a bit, it's a bit risky. Like some of what she says, it's like, oh, wow. But it, it lands, it really resonates. And she talks about, I mean, if anyone listening has children, now she talks about, like, how children change the dynamic and the relationship between a mother and the child versus the father and the child. And she puts it into such eloquent language that it's both witty and elegant. And it's just a wonderful, wonderful book. And she really kind of frames relationships as this complex paradox of relational complexity. Love seeks closeness, but desire needs space.

We want one person to give us what an entire village once did. The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives. Those are her sort of three, I guess, big pillars. And especially that paradox around love seeking closeness, but desire needing space, she goes into how we can cultivate that in our lives and in our relationships. And she sort of legitimizes that contradiction that can feel very heavy and very confusing. But she doesn't simplify love. she gives us the language to hold it,

and I think that's why she is so exceptional. Essentially what I think these voices have in common is that it refuses fantasy as a foundation for love, which I have done, as I just explained from showing my previous relationship stories from when I was a teenager to my early 20s. I'm a creative. I live in the fantasy realm,

And so when you allow love to be there too much, it can be quite unhealthy. And I also can recognize it in some of my friends that want to be in relationships, but find it hard to be. There's a safety in being in a fantasy realm because you don't get hurt there or you don't get hurt by anything real.

You get hurt by your sort of imagination. And it also, I think their work centers agency over attachment, which again is something that I have not found natural or easy. I have a very complex attachment style and it's something that I've had to really, really work on over the years and to come back to my own personal sovereignty and agency. And of course, this helps by being in a healthy partnership and having someone that is stable and there because our attachment stars obviously get activated most negatively when we're with someone that is activating them in that way.

If they're actually push-pull, hot cold, it's going to be hard for us to feel safe and solid in that. So of course, it's important to be in the right relationship with someone healthy to do this kind of work. But I think another thing that they all kind of centralise on is telling the truth without shaming. And this is really, really hard. I think we hold back the truth because we don't want to upset the other person or we tell it in a way that's spiteful and shameful. And actually, I think they give us the tools to communicate things that allow us to focus on repairing. the relationship because every relationship is going to go through challenging things and conversations and fights and difficulties. But if we have the tools to navigate that, we can repair, we can fracture and we can repair without the whole thing shattering. So if you're at a place

now where you are confused with what you are going through in the matters of the heart. I think I'd like to kind of end this on a couple of questions that you can ask yourself. And one of them is where am I confusing intimacy with intensity? Or where am I confusing intensity with intimacy? if you are dating and you're feeling that kind of like intense butterflies and everything, are you telling yourself that's intimacy? And if so, maybe explore some of your patterns and if this is something that's come up and then put on a more pragmatic hat and see whether actually, you know,

this is reciprocated in the right way. if it feels healthy on the nervous system, being a little bit more logical with it. And ask yourself what patterns keep repeating in my relationships? What am I bringing to these dynamics? What things have continuously showed up throughout my life? This is going to be the most powerful thing I think you could possibly do because one, if you're dating at the moment,

it will allow you to go for something different. You know, they often say like you end up with someone that's not your type. It's kind of, it plays into that because our type is often what activates our attachment wounds. And so if you can recognize the patterns that have been holding you back and the things that you keep going for that are not healthy for you, you have an opportunity to do something different. equally if you are in relationship and you are feeling confused, recognising your patterns is going to give you the knowledge and the understanding of whether this is something you work through

in the container of the relationship or independently. And you don't want to just run because you don't understand what's going on in your own body and mind. And ask yourself if you feel more yourself or less in the presence of love. I think this kind of helps us understand our relationship to love, whether it brings discomfort, whether we are okay with actually being loved. I find this is something that I've actually found deeply uncomfortable. Like I said, I've been very good at being in pursuit of it, in chasing it, but I actually am not very good at fully receiving it or just being in the sort of neutrality of love long term. And then finally, ask yourself,

am I choosing from fear? Am I choosing from fantasy? Or am I choosing from truth? And I think the previous questions will hopefully help inform for you answering that. Love isn't something we just fall into in terms of something that we want to maintain and keep. It is something we practice again and again with honesty and courage.

And I actually saw this explanation of love recently by, I'm going to get his name wrong. He's the guy that's in you. And surprisingly, for all of the content that I see and hear around love, I thought this was one of the most beautiful definitions of it. And in a podcast, he's called it Penn Badgley or something, but he's talking about relationships and he says how he's been in, I think, three big relationships and how at the beginning everything's very easy and you're in that honeymoon period and the sort of more intense it is the kind of quicker that burns out. And he said, and if you're lucky,

you can you can prolong that period for like maximum two years. He said it's probably going to be like six months. But again, it's dependent on how quickly you burn out. And but the longest it can go on for is probably two years. But eventually there comes a point where you look at that person, you wake up one day and they do something that's kind of gross or kind of an eye. And that infatuation, that kind of, oh, they can do no wrong, suddenly fades and you're left with the reality of who that person is and they're imperfectness.

and it kind of bums you out. You're like, oh, this is not so effortless and so easy. They are real human and flawed, just like you. And he describes it, he gives this analogy of the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, which I have not been to, but he said, love at the beginning is like getting a free ticket to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. It's this beautiful place filled with flowers, and magic and you've been given a free pass and you're just going through and you're like,

wow, this is wicked. I've, you know, spending the day here. This is awesome. This is, this is easy. This is wonderful. And being in a long-term relationship, he said, is like being the gardener at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. It's about the work that goes into making it stay beautiful, wonderful and magical. So that is all I have for you today. I hope that you've found this useful. We actually did do a little mini-series on Matters of the Heart called Letters to Venus, if you want to revisit that. And as always, remember, you are not alone. And thank you so much for listening. Goodbye.