Plutonian true tales

A couple of weeks ago, I was delegated to attend a meeting on pretty random topic. The meeting had 3 contractors present. One of them had a certain look in his eyes I've come to recognize. I immediately thought "Plutonian." Dark, mysterious, emotionally troubled, weird, intense: take your pick on which adjective you'd like to use to describe these people. I have a 7th house Pluto in my birth chart, so that means I meet them all the time.

Several weeks later, the Plutonian was back at my office. I was filling my water bottle and he appeared, leaning back against the doorway he was standing in, waiting for me to start a conversation with him. I missed the cue. No matter: he found me in the hallway a few hours later. Firm handshake, penetrating eye contact (I call it the "death glare" and I've written about it before). I'm used to this. A lot of the time the death glare alienates people, but don't let it scare you, they're just trying to look into your soul. And you have nothing to hide, right? Right?

But they don't do it on purpose. I remember meeting a baby that had a sun-Pluto conjunction and she barely had control over her own head but was doing the penetrating gaze thing. I'd imagine raising that type of child would involve a lot of "it's not polite to stare" until they dial it down. If that's possible?

Anyway, back to the recent Plutonian: I could tell he was circling me, and he was seeking me out to talk to me under the guise of "project updates" despite the fact that I was not the project manager, and to this day, people still come to me as the subject matter expert. Literally on the day I wrote this I was asked a question about the color of paint for the walls and had to text the actual project manager, because that information is so far away from what my job is, it’s crazy.

The project had spanned the holidays, and the Plutonian used "holidays" to try to get personal information about how I spent my holidays (meaning who with, which would give him information about what I'm about as a person) and then indicated that he had (at least) dependent children. I dodged his question about me and he asked a second time, and I looked him right in the eye and changed the subject again. "Normal" people would not have picked up on the subtext and would have heard a mostly-mundane conversation, but the conversation we actually had was me saying "I see you hitting on me and also telling me you have kids (so presumably a significant other)--I'm not interested in your little games." And he stopped seeking me out after that, and it became hallway head-nods. Funny, that.

When interested in you, or when bored and looking for a psychological challenge, they play this little game where they mine you for information to see what they can get away with asking. I used to fall victim to this all the time as a teenager and over-share only to have that information used against me later in some really unpleasant ways. The rule with them, though, is either tell the truth or intentionally shut your mouth, never lie, and never make it seem like you are hiding something. If they detect lying or hiding, they will find out what and why and retaliate. So it's easier to be honest but seem boring and reserved. I have some Plutonians in my life who think I don't talk about myself, and will be mad to discover I have an entire newsletter: if you're reading this, sorry, but in my defense, you never asked if I had one, did you?

So I'll tell you what happens almost 100% of the time when you get to know them very well: you have the "you don't understand how dark I really am" conversation. Sometimes with examples, sometimes not. Plutonians have this emotional depth to them that they really prefer not to look at: they'd rather spend their waking hours picking other people apart than look at their inner cores, which most of them secretly believe to be damaged beyond repair. Picking other people apart (or messing with other people's heads) distracts them from themselves (feeling that everyone outside of them needs to be "fixed" to be more like them is another fun one and can happen with the religious or those with strong social/environmental justice orientations). If they don't do those things, they tend to live in a state of constant crisis, but when you look closer at the crises, you usually find that they created them so they could overcome them (this is not always completely conscious, though on some level they do understand what they're doing).

When you get to the "you don't know how bad it is" conversation, you really can't flinch if you find out something that's...actually really bad, because they have a pretty fine-tuned radar for abandonment, and rejection of their inner core is an abandonment. If you scare them, they will abandon you first, or they will try to take you out because they know you know the "awful truth" about them. (It's the same concept as not startling wildlife. You have to have that calm strength energy that animal whisperers use, because believe me, if you ever get to these conversations, you are dealing with their reptilian brains.) I've been abandoned and/or taken out plenty. Now I mostly try not to get to the point where I'm having the darkness conversation. However, I can be a witness to the darkness, given my abilities. I just obviously cannot fix the darkness for them.

If you're still with me, are you chanting "get a therapist" about them yet? Well, weird news on that front: they usually have one or have spent some time in therapy at some point, but almost never with a therapist who challenged them. They like therapists they can play their little games with, or therapists who will listen at great length to the "you don't understand the darkness" soliloquy but won't force them to actually work on themselves. And this is where my story ends, because I'm not a therapist, but I've been nominated as the unlicensed therapist for so many of these people that I stopped counting a long time ago.

I should say this about the darkness: I've had the "you don't understand how dark I am" conversation a lot of times, clearly. I feel bad that people have to endure a sense that they're isolated in feeling dark about themselves, their lives, their pasts, etc. But it's more common than the sufferers would like to think, and it can be worked with if you have the inner strength to turn, face it, and find forgiveness for it being there in the first place. It's the "trying to outrun darkness" that's the issue.

Here's the bottom line: these types are truly an inside job. They spend a monumental amount of time on outside-problems to avoid the inside-problems, but the funny thing is, when they decide to level up in terms of dysfunctional behaviors, they can suddenly stop doing things and suddenly start doing other things with almost no problem. They simply have a tremendous amount of energy that's usually been devoted to feeling sorry for themselves and playing weird psychological games with other people. When you're not doing those things, there's a lot of time for hobbies.

If you read all this and have no idea what I'm talking about, god bless. Go forth and live a full and rewarding life. If you do know what I'm talking about, well, this was free advice, wasn't it? Delivered in the spirit of unflinching eye contact.