Passionate but volatile. You both want to lead, and the friction generates heat.
A square means one person’s Mars and the other person’s Mars are about 90 degrees apart. The app counts it as challenging. What the labels mean.
Who’s driving
Mars square Mars is two people with different ways of getting things done, each convinced theirs is quicker. One wants to start now and work it out as you go, and the other has a method. One pushes straight at a problem, and the other goes round it. Sharing a task can feel like wrestling over a steering wheel.
There’s a thrill in this too, and many people wouldn’t swap it. Rivalry can be attractive. Knowing that someone won’t simply give in can make you sharper and more alive to them, and making up after a disagreement often carries a good deal of heat.
Where it can go wrong
Competition can spread to things that aren’t competitions: who’s more tired, who earns more, who was right about the shortcut. Small arguments may escalate because neither wants to be the first to step down. You can find yourselves having the same fight on repeat with fresh details.
A challenging label describes friction in how two people act. It’s not a license for anybody to intimidate, shove or threaten. Should a fight ever go there, what’s happening is about safety, and no chart should talk you out of acting on it. Our guide to the labels says more about that.
Separate territories
Give each person a domain where they’re in charge, without commentary. You do the taxes, and they do the garden. Keep your competition somewhere it can be enjoyed: tennis, a card game, a running app.
Agree on what ends a fight, too. A time-out with a return time works well here, because it lets both people stop without losing. Whoever calls it first hasn’t given up anything, and in a pairing like this one it may well be the bravest move available.