Venus in the 8th House

Having Venus in the 8th House can make love feel particularly dangerous. Venus is, after all, the planet of love and with it being placed in the 8th House, the home of our demons and our issues, those with Venus in the 8th know all too well what it’s like to be dragged down into the Underworld in matters of the heart. Having this placement means that your way of loving people can be terrifying or tormenting and that you have also been terrified or tormented by those that you have loved. However, you have gone through this turmoil in order to come out on the other side with a profound awareness of what love truly means. Take it from me, as I also have Venus in the 8th. After the pain, the heartache, the betrayal, or the tragedy, you have the opportunity to completely transform your ways of going about love and relationships. Your love is an incredible force and you’re intensely attractive, for better or for worse, drawing whatever relational energy into your life that you focus on. So, shifting your focus toward empowering, healing love is the key.

When we look at the 8th House, we see the trauma that we’ve been through and how it’s shaped us. 8th House Venus people, then, experience significant trauma when it comes to love. While this can mean being in an abusive relationship or dealing with excruciatingly unrequited love, it goes back even further than that. The reason why you are so drawn toward those kinds of relationships is because you most likely had a toxic model of love, earlier in your life. Witnessing a marriage between your parents that was very volatile, abusive, or unhealthy in some way left a major psychological scar, making it hard for you to not gravitate toward tragic or catastrophic love affairs and continue that cycle. At some point in your life, someone that you loved did nothing but hurt you, control you, make you feel less than, and told you that it was love. The fact that this is a toxic pattern down your family line (and that it likely was someone within your family) only makes it harder for you to get away from that style of relating to people.

As a result, you can live out either the most sadistic or the most masochistic parts of your Venus sign, often going from one mode to the other, and unconsciously believe that this is just an element of relationships. One side of you can fuel the other. If Venus is in Capricorn, for example, you can be a complete glutton for punishment, wanting to be told everything that you’re not doing right in a relationship, all while being capable of harshly, ruthlessly punishing the person you love when they step out of line. Venus in Leo in this house can set you up to be in relationships where you have to relentlessly jump through hoops for the other’s attention, validation, or praise. Yet, when your feral pride is wounded, you’ll want their head on a platter. As much as you can be deeply, profoundly hurt by the people you love, you definitely know how to hurt back. The 8th House is our dark, destructive side and with Venus here, that shadowy energy comes out in a “love-is-pain” way.

A scary part of you definitely emerges when your heart gets involved. The places that love, affection, and sexual attraction can take you may terrify even you, due to both the depths of your devotion and your resentment. Having a Virgo Venus in the 8th means that there is no amount of effort I won’t put in for someone I love. Yet, I have put myself in very painful situations because of that totally tireless effort, setting myself up to love those who don’t put nearly as much work, time, or effort into the situation. Then, I would be relentlessly critical in regards to what I thought was going wrong, even if I didn’t express all of that. There are levels of resentment that 8th House Venus people harbor that the other person doesn’t know about. Scores are kept and a fierce rage can be hidden underneath a certain placidity or kindness until, one day, it all comes spilling out in a devastating manner. The intense anger, jealousy, or vindictiveness you experience in love will also emerge full-force whenever you’ve been lied to, cheated on, abandoned, or seriously taken for granted. Hell hath no fury like an 8th House Venus lover scorned and anyone who gets romantically involved with you and hurts you discovers this once you’ve gotten your revenge, made their life a waking nightmare, or declared them dead to you.

But, do you just want to be hurt? Why do you keep putting yourself through this endless cycle of pain, turmoil, and heartache in love? You have to do some 8th House-style soul-searching in order to examine and transform all of your ideas about love. This brings up the issues of being abused in your formative years by someone who claimed to love you or witnessing romantic relationships that were anything but stable or healthy. In the 8th House, we see the destructiveness we need to eliminate from our lives to empower ourselves. So, you must eliminate any relationships from your life that just makes you feel unloved, unsafe, worthless, or disconnected. In spite of what you’ve been conditioned to believe, that’s not love. You also have to stop being so in love (Venus) with your issues (8th House). Being so attached to your demons only perpetuates this vicious cycle that makes it hard for you to have a happy, healthy relationship.

In the end, it’s all about self-love. You’re at your most powerful when you are deeply, wholeheartedly loving yourself. In the process, you’ll figure out how that toxic form of love you were exposed to or given prevented you from doing so. For me, it was the experience of feeling severely criticized, of having so many little things that I did constantly picked apart, and how I internalized that. But, as I have worked on transforming and transcending that pattern, I see that I express very powerful self-love when I realize that I am exactly how I need to be and there’s no reason to constantly criticize myself. By letting go of that, I see that I’m perfect as I am. Venus in the 8th House people have to release the harmful, destructive traits of their Venus sign in order to find inner healing and truly love themselves. For example, if you have an 8th House Taurus Venus, learning how to not be extremely attached to people and external situations, to the point where you’re seeking value in them, will help you develop magnificent, life-changing self-worth.  

This also changes how you love other people. You must provide them with the same kind of healing, empowering love that you can provide yourself with. Venus in Taurus here can mean that, when you go dark, you can treat someone else like a mere possession or a toy to play with. But, you have to learn how to move beyond that pattern and focus more on building up the person that you love, helping them see their value, more and more. There will always be that dark side of you when it comes to love and the trick is to be aware of it without succumbing to it. The ultimate purpose of the 8th House is to be conscious of the darkness, not controlled by it, which helps you move toward the light and transform your destructive patterns. There will always be that part of you that harbors silent yet intense resentment in relationships, that doesn’t trust easily or tries to gain the upper hand in some manner, that could ruin a lover’s life or seriously hurt them. But, you have to continually rise above it in order to attract the right kind of relationships into your life.

Having this placement makes you highly attractive and magnetic. Yet, you won’t entirely understand your appeal, the really powerful effect you have on people, especially your preferred sex, and that’s the point. Your sexual appeal is meant to be quite a mystery, to you and to others. There is this unexplainable quality about you that can really turn people on. With Venus showing how we dealt with and experienced puberty, it’s a stage of life that hits 8th House Venus people like a truck; not just because of the overwhelming sexual energy that you got in touch with during this time but the intensity of the responses you got from people. When someone is into you, they’re really into you and your early experiences with this could’ve exposed you to total obsessiveness from others as well as behavior that could be deemed as stalking or harassment. This carries over into adulthood. No matter their gender or orientation, Venus in the 8th House people often feel particularly vulnerable to unwanted, uncomfortable, even scary sexual advances from others.

Your response to this might be to try and downplay your sex appeal so you’re not overly sexualized. This still proves to be ineffective much of the time and also takes away a vital part of your power. Being truly sex-positive, fully enjoying your sexuality and all that comes with it, is the purpose of this placement. Venus does represent how we can find our happiness and with Venus in this house, that happiness will stem from a really healthy relationship with your sexuality. You’re highly sexual and those vibes just magnetize people your way, usually effortlessly. It’s best for you to just go with it. Allowing yourself to feel really sexy is a big part of what will bring you joy in life. Also, like with anything else, if you’re letting your fears take the upper hand, you will attract a lot of negative attention. But, shifting your focus and understanding the joy that can stem from sexual attraction will allow the admiration you receive to be much more positive and welcome.

When you love, you love with one hundred and ten percent of your energy. So, you also can totally obsess over someone that you’re attracted to and an inability to handle your own emotions is why you can fear the intense attention of others. It’s all about conscious understanding. Yet, you will want to know every part of someone that you possibly can. While this makes 8th House Venus go into FBI agent mode when tracking down information about a love interest, it also means that you become very deeply engaged with people. You create a strong intimacy whenever you form a connection with someone else. It’s part of why people will feel themselves being so very drawn to you or, on the other hand, backing slowly away. It all depends on how capable they are of going to that deep place within. You don’t feel appreciated or happy without that kind of passionate bonding. This is why being an artist of any kind can be a great, much-needed outlet for you. It provides you with the space you need to reach that level of depth and emotional intensity. Your tastes lean toward what is dark, complicated, or mysterious, giving you an emotionally rich aesthetic.

This love of what is alluring means that you will feel the best in clothes that just make you feel sexy yet in a low-key way. Wearing something that’s form-fitting or revealing without being too much so is the perfect vibe for you. When it comes to actually having sex, your yearning for it is strong, seemingly insatiable. But, you may be too focused on your partner’s pleasure over your own, to the point where they get to where they need to go and you don’t. The same issue with feeling deeply unappreciated can also translate into your sex life, which can lead you into situations where you’re sexually desired without actually being loved or treated kindly or where you’re somehow trying to find love through sex. Like all 8th House people, dramatic periods of celibacy or promiscuity can be the result of these underlying issues. Whatever you do sexually is fine and well, as long as it’s between consenting adults. Yet, it’s best for you to approach sex, no matter how casual or committed it is, as a form of love-making. You must strive to give and receive that love in equal measure, leaving both of you satisfied. You may or may not need an emotional connection to do this. Contrary to popular belief, casual sex is not necessarily impossible for you. Since you believe that sex is a very valuable part of your romantic relationships, that emotional connection often times does not happen for you or them until you have sex. But, know that this can also lead to hot-and-heavy yet tumultuous love affairs that go from zero to sixty very quickly. So, be careful!