“Dear Mystic – What Is A Love Zombie and how do I know if I am one?”
That was all the email said. But I sensed an element of concern in the message, a faint whiff of wisteria and mobile phone wallpaper with an “Old Souls Love Differently” slogan on it. Love Zombies all express differently, but there are two main modes: Yearning passivity with religious fervor and Wile E Coyote style antics to attract the attention of the beloved.
Divination, fantasy, dreamwork and heightened desire replace actual engagement with the person in question. You know you’re a Love Zombie when your entire insights into your love interest are speculative and/or based on insights gleaned from your birth chart, their birth chart, numerology etc. Add some social media breadcrumbs of info for the full ‘feast.’
To answer the question succinctly, a Love Zombie is a person fixating on a person who is not interested in them. They generate an enormous amount of energy and feel that they are in a relationship with this person. Only it is a phantom relationship. They’re in love with a figment – it’s fiction based on reality.
The Love Zombie affair is not a celebrity crush scenario. It is not even an obsessive relationship. It is a construct. There are such things as fated relationships and people whom synchronicity brings together.
The upcoming Venus Retro in Scorpio is a karmic relationship zone for sure. I always hesitate to delineate these sorts of astro-passages for fear of inadvertently triggering a Love Zombie episode.
But my thinking on Love Zombies and the targets of their affections has evolved over the years. Yes, people with a strong Neptune influence in their birth energies or who are having a Neptune transit are highly prone to morph into being Love Zombies.
Nothing ‘real’ will suffice and what better way to transcend tedious normality than by having what is essentially a paranormal affair? Speculation on a long-shot love affair that could, maybe, come off. Fantasies of reincarnated romance beat bickering in the parking lot at Ikea.
Or ending phone calls feeling nebulously judged and controlled. They’re ultimately safe.
However, Love Zombies do not become so in isolation. They are not fixating on desirable people without any ‘come hither’ signal whatsoever. The Love Zombie may mistake a flickering alert lamp – like those that warn drivers of landslides in the dark – for a green light. But there is a signal.
Future Fakers – a term coined by Baggage Reclaim’s Natalie Lue – specialize in generating instant intimacy on demand. Their goal is to coax out enough desire and flattery from someone to feed their voracious ego.
It is perfect possible that behind nearly every Love Zombie is a narcissistic vampire. Think back upon your own Love Zombie episodes and ask yourself if this were not true to some extent?
Image: Joe Webb – Antares & Love IV
“a Love Zombie is a person fixating on a person who is not interested in them.” ..you mean like someone you talked to everyday for 2 months, synchronicity and compatibility through the charts but you only met once in the middle of all that (because of them not you, you tried as hard as you could to try to meet), and then they all of a sudden disappeared only for you to find out they unfriended you on FB and got back with their EX, and with absolutely no closure whatsoever, seriously like just one day they decided you were chop liver and blocked your @ss with no warning or anything but you cannot get them out of you mind like every single day even though you know it’s a lost cause and even though you try your hardest to move on? Hahaha, yeah I am Love Zombing hard and need a damn cure before I go insane! I think it was the lack of closure, if they would have just said “hey I am out I’m with him now” but instead disapeared into thin air then would never answer back any messages while me having no idea what is going on. There I put it out there and feel better, my Mars in the 12th wants me to lash out (oops, already did once, that got a response), my Venus (in Scorpio) wants me to get them back …somebody give me a cure please!
Gawd if this doesn’t sum it all up in one sentence! ..”Yearning passivity with religious fervor and Wile E Coyote style antics to attract the attention of the beloved.”
Just saw ‘Asako 1+2’ at MIFF. The most perfectly sustained filmic meditation on the topic of Love Zombiedom ever seen!
For anyone struggling right now, i saw a chewing gum pack at the bookstore i went to with Cap today, labelled:
I Really Hate You!
8 Delicious Pieces
Cap pointed out the “Assholes Everywhere” gum packet, complete with a flash note: Spoiler Alert!
You gotta have buddies 🙂
Thank you for this post. I am a Neptune conjunct my IC person so yes, Love Zombie, I have been one.
Thank you because you said “it’s safer”. It was and by connecting it to my IC I have had the insight of the origin of this being my family.
I am undergoing EMDR (on a break for the summer, we will start the real deal in September) and I truly believe that Love Zombie always pairs the warriors we develop inside of us. We
Fight, we become stronger than the average peeps but then we need and long for that love we didn’t have during our infancy.
The Sat/Neptune square was one of the bigger bubble buster ever. It set in motion a very painful process. It’s true though that a Love Zombie is often kicked in action by one hell of a Narcissist. The Sat/Neptune square also helped me become a very good narcisist spotter.
When you stop being a LZ and falling for Narcisists, you can face a very lonely time.
For the first time ever I am enjoying a week in the country and, though I have come here on my own, I don’t feel alone.
You are a 41 For sure I’ve known quite a number of them. It’s a wild ride for sure
I need to understand this number too. What does it mean? Or was it a typo? Maybe you mean a numerology 4?? Crikey, put us out of our misery, Emg, so we can have at least a laugh if there’s a late Merc Retro bug, and at best we might get a grip on your wise thoughts! Love you both, PF and Emg xx
Oh funnily enough i got a couple of texts from a little Cancerian. Prolix Sag Rising Sag Jups me got told early on not to leave her a VM as it costs her money to listen to!!! Ahhhhahahahahhhh little smartie pants value-holder, what’s not to love about Cancerians ( i am gonna say that even though my pain episode may be in entanglement with a Kataka Rising…one claw snips and one claw strokes…) You guys are always adorable and beautiful, and rest assured never misunderstood by a Piscean xxx
Cannot imagine the plethora of Water. Pisces is the only Water in my chart and it is a blessing and a real nuisance. Or maybe that would be the 12th Neptune stuff if it weren’t trined and sextiled all sorts. I sometimes feel i’m only actually alive because of 12th Sag Rising with Antares warrior on Moon Rising. Steampunk ain’t got nothing on me… that shit is stagnation and form above substance and i know it does bullshit for our oceans, for example. Better raise myself to that Sea Shepherd logo as sharky but lesser best as i can. There’s sea creatures to look out for, right, PF? There will always be sea creatures and sea world to work hard for, enviro and human.
I have a very big 14 !! How did you know ?
Check out Jovian archive .com Put in your date time place of birth and see if you’ve a 41 ?
No typo no merc retro. Put your details into Jovian archive.com and see what appears
Mine is the same! What does it all mean…?
Sorry, PF, should have nested my reply under yours, as that is what it’s about.
I see i am in syncwith my realisations per
One thing is that not all intimacy avoiders are sociopaths. They may have issues but if they were real people while present, candid and honest, it does you no good to write off good people who could not bring it at your level: you will avoid sadness by blame and anger where it need not be.
You can feel rightly disrespected by a lack of lasting commitment and transparent break up, but it may not have been intentional disrespect. Of course, if you are willing to think about both yourselves as real people honestly, you are not so much a Love Zombie as going through pain and seeking the truth. You can yearn and miss as long as you’re not spinning future fantasies.
I found the LZ idea took me on a self-doubting and hurtful tangent that undermined my hard-acquired self knowledge through complete doubt. I know now i can rely on my Venus in Aqua. It is conjunct IC. It is conjunct Circe, and she had the ability to reveal men for who they are in nature. Almost wrote off a real but cut short love as a fake narcissist and wondered how i could have been so blind and stupid, even after years of therapy and work. Now i can just be thankful for what the love did give because there was a Gift. There must be no fear going forward, not of myself, my instincts and my radar.
You cannot process hard yards alone and by Dr Google Psych! You need an expert, and i am glad i had one already at hand. Saved me karmically poisoning my soul with neg energies. Now to complete the acceptance… xx
Kudos for finding the Gift, it takes a lot of insight to find that. x
Hahaha. Flickering alert lamp.
My pre sat sq speciality was indulging inner delusion about relationships while consciously keeping the other person at a distance to control my feelings / image. Fun times
Has anyone here enjoyed the hilarious opening EPS of The Bachelor Aus with Honey Badger?
Well Cass is Love Zombie personified….. !!
And if you read James Weir’s hilarious post Ep commentary he ads what wveryone’s thinking – and some!! (News.com.au)
It was the first thing I thought of when I saw the topic heading LOL. I don’t watch the show strangely enough. Just read JW’s take on it. It’s so much funnier and much less time consuming
<3
Oh wow! My love zombie episode occurred when Neptune was transiting my natal Venus. It must have gotten the hooks in me, and it took a couple years (sigh) to get free.
Love zombies not to be confused with those trying to make sense of relationships with Mr Unavailables. Although there probably is some kind of Venn diagrammable crossover. I honestly didn’t even know the phenomenon was a thing until a year into dating the Aquarian body builder. In my disarray, I discovered Baggage Reclaim, which is pure gold. Love it! And yes, you really do need to do “no contact” with these people.
Thanks for laying it all out there. I’m definitely a recovering love zombie.
You can relapse or even have a whole new dose. There isn’t a proven vaccine
If I one day write about my 16 year lz episode I will get my photo on the future love zombie Wikipedia page.
It’s.a.doozy.
Yep. 100%. Every damn time, the object of fixation was yet another hungry narcissist. Now, a subtle vile warning appears like a waft of cheap perfume.
UHHHH
Ok thanks again for the reminder Mystic I needed this
At least I’m high functioning lol
Yes!!! I am (maybe?) coming out of an epic 16-month love zombie bender. In my case it was all true— the flickering signal, the ever-present fantasy on my part, the hours spent comparing our charts or reading tarot cards and whatnot. In my case it was a workplace flirtation that sent me wild— both of us married of course. Epic delusion on my part. But it was also an interesting time of growth. I fell really hard (in my deluded way) for this dude whose sun is on my NN (and his Saturn/juno conj my sun) and the flirtation and resultant zombie-ing actually changed me…he was more nourishing to me than my marriage felt (still working on that!) and that was a huge wake up call. Somehow the fiery burn of my obsession was like the cinnamon bush to the Phoenix…Maybe love zombie-ing is an important psychic activity, a time that a new self (new ideas/ beliefs/ activities) can grow — needing to be attached to someone before it can survive on its own.
Pluto exactly on my moon (pass #2) is bringing all my love zombie episodes up for review. Spoke with my high school sweetheart for two hours the other night, a man I haven’t seen in 30 years; I realized I’ve been holding space for that man for decades, and all his “someday when the time is right” was b.s. And in his eyes I was a victim of his rejection, whereas in my eyes it was all about my own attachment issues, my inability for intimacy or understanding of what love was, and I was fully responsible for throwing up roadblocks and creating huge conflicts out of nothing. Between that and a work shitshow, I’m mentally ending chapters – very old ones – and kindly requesting some new doors to open. As Mystic reminded us last week, “it hurts to become.”
As someone’s who went through that transit 18 months ago, it’s rough. But so worth it. I found exploring the Persephone myth and the idea of giving and taking power was a very helpful lens, personally, for that time.
Thank you! In my lifetime Pluto has transited everything except Uranus – this is the last planetary conjunction (then there’s the midheaven). Through pass #1 I thought “this isn’t so bad, I can handle this” — then, per Mystic’s recent post, the second pass is a different story. Work totally went south in a very abrupt way (9th house/publishing moon) and now this LZ situation with roots in 1972. Yikes. I appreciate the Persephone guidance.
I didn’t realise how under I was.
I’m doing it now. Horrific.
I don’t understand how his Sun in Aries conjunct my Mars-Venus-DC-Vesta can be one sided. He looks like he gets struck by lightning when I appear. Why on Earth am I losing it solo? With Chiron on top.
I firmly believe Chiron heals.
I smell an extraordinarily afflicted moon.
Time will tell what all the lessons are. I think I’m getting there. I think it’s true, it’s about self expression and self knowing. He’s a living demo of the lost bits. That’s all.
If anyone has had a similar experience, please lemme know.
Is this a situ you are able to act on?
It sounds a bit mutual, is that right?
Afflicted moon can trash many things. Not a show stopper though..
It might be a low-rent suggestion for this site but can you guys hit a bar and work on reducing any inhibitions ..?
Part of what I have learnt (might be just a pi lesson) is that just because someone happens to zap our astro gaps, and our hearts are spinning in our chests, doesn’t mean that we have to sit alone in a cave until the idea is assimilated and then we continue like some free floating atomised paragon of self reliance. I mean, that’s useful sometimes. But why incarnate in this body unless we’re meant to crash messily (or nicely, whatever) into each other’s lives and figure things out that way?
Also holy shit all that Aries energy lol. How have you not exploded
AHHH THANKS very much for saying all of that, Pi. Made me laugh. It’s true.
think I need to huff off for a little bit for Mars to ignite. But I’m pissed off enough anyway. Maybe I can be a paragon of self reliance and get the rest too.
MARS IS STILL RETRO… so is Mercury until this weekend, so give it time, Aries people (ruled by Mars). You may not get anywhere with this Aries guy until Mars is past its shadow. Of course, then Venus will be going retro in Scorpio (the other Mars ruled sign). But definitely wait until September.
I guess the sun would completely illuminate / manifest all of those other planetary energies.
It’s an interesting scenario. Sometimes denying the feelings is almost damaging. Like not letting yourself love or grieve. Bad things happen. Circulation gets cut off. It’s how you choose to act on them that is important…
With the help of astrology, pop psychology, Actual Psychology, and psycho therapeutic methods, not to mention various spiritual pathways to self awareness, and occasionally losing my mind, my LZ experiences have become progressively more profound learning experiences about my SELF. Which I guess ultimately helps to make me a better person in relationships?
I have Venus, Chiron and south node conjunct in my aries 10th house, and square moon.
I’m gonna confrss though, the Oracle has some crazy making LZ answers. If I get the “someone is a clandestine crush on you” I roll my eyes , how am I supposed to know or care who that person is? 😉
I’m almost cured, I tell you.
Just have to get through a spot of Saturn square venus and then Pluto square venus , yikes
Pluto sq Venus, hehee. (Cackles ruefully) This is in the name of a heads-up. That transit coincided with my last (ever? hopefully!) LZ episode in the lurid throes of the ZZ esp c 2014 as it activated my natal t-sq before it sobered (painfully) w the dreambusting realities of 2015&16. Don’t ever want to get that drunk again. It was oc a Plutonic type that got me and yes there was the flickering light signal. I do have a natal pluto-venus conjunct (a la 6 degrees loose), though, if that could be something that made me ‘susceptible’ to that particular brand of inebriation?
Lol – yes, the Oracle is insanely pro-LZ and also pro-relationship focused at times. Looking forward to the new Oracle questions (and answers) that Mystic is releasing soon!
I mean, the rship focus is handy for rship questions. So that’s awesome (thanks mm 😉 )
I think when I’m being a hardass and trying to stay above it all that i huff off and go and tinker in the shed or something unemotional lol
im a kinda love zombie for someone…same b day….good merc aspects…etc…he in diff country…got a girlfriend….but he keeps e mailing ME!!!! its always him that initiates stuff…I know I cud ignore…but hey, I’ve given up alcohol…..gotta hav a vice right? wrong…….
You need to disapear for that guy for two weeks. Seriously. Light will come from that!
Yes. How chilling is that – the LZ is essentially the long-distance sacrificial surrogate for someone else’s insecurity & self-abandonment. Sometimes even being alone takes two! Needed the reminder, cheers. x
Omg this IS me … it’s been 20 months, 8 months apart…
I feel this hard.
Strings are all being swiftly scissored.
I thank the eclipses…
All I can say is…. thank the Goddesses you exist, Mystic.
I’ve been a love zombie, I must “do” my transits for that time. Man! did I do good art back then…wow Jupiter on natal sun 4th H, chiron on natal Jup, Pluto on Neptune 10th, Uranus and Saturn conjunct in 11th. N Node on parts fortune. Interesting
Holyyyyy the 12 card tarots are so accurate its exciting!
Paranormal affairs are the only kind I partake in these days. Purely fantasy, though. Saturn Square Neptune (transiting my loaded 7th house) officially inoculated me against Narcissistic Qi Vampires. Not sure that it cured me of being one though. Ooh, I just realized that. Hello, transiting Neptune conjunct 7th house Sun, opposite my ascendant. Delusions of how I am perceived by others. Sh*t. Good to know.
did you see that woman in the Daily Mail who married a ghost?
OMG Amazing! I’d have bought it if she didn’t have to go and say it was specifically Jack Sparrow. Ghost of an 18th century pirate? Sure. I’m all over that. But I think this is a way to make a typical celebrity crush on Johnny Depp more interesting.
Maybe they’re doing that (metaphorically or literally) in this lifetime!
Haaaa aaaaaaa
I think at least I qualify as a high functioning love zombie. I’m way more fit than I have been in years and I gave up alcohol, sugar and red meat.
Mentally I am living in a highrise in Neptune City, gazing out on the cloudscape lost in a dream.
Love Zombie-ing is the ultimate drug, isn’t it?
Congrats on your sobriety. Cheers w a club soda in your honour
Me too. We must be neighbours.
For my money the “generating instant intimacy on demand” skill is explained circuitously via Esther Perel:
“Male desire needs to be looked at through a lens that incorporates relational and emotional factors. Sex is the language through which men have license to ask for love, tenderness, surrender, sensuality, affection and more. Often sex is the only keyhole he has to fulfill these emotional needs.” https://estherperel.com/blog/men-women-and-sexuality-more-similar-than-different
But as Dan Savage says men need to start taking on their share of emotional work.
I think the dance steps are – Future Faker disavows longterm emotional work for a short term “tenderness/surrender/affection” fix via transference, and Love Zombie disavows self-esteem work via a phantom relationship with someone they esteem.
I know several female Future Fakers well so invert the genders as appropriate.
I love both Esther Perrel and Dan Savage so much. Such a breath of fresh air in the sex/relationship conversation. Original thinkers who are articulate and razor sharp with a wicked sense of humor.
Love Zombie disavows self-esteem work via a phantom relationship with someone they esteem.
gee spot on Scorpinthesky!
Spot on and thank you for introducing me to both of those people!
Also I think some of this stuff can be explained by attachment theory. And it’s a lot easier these days to love people at a distance.
Just read Dan Savage. I agree. Beautiful sex is when both are emotionally open. If a man trusts you in that space he can be so vulnerable, Its so touching. Sometimes you think you are seeing it for the first time and that’s even more endearing.