On Crabs

This piece is not a scientific piece about the biology of crabs. That's got nothing to do with themes of this blog and I'm not going to waste a lot of time trying to make it scientifically accurate.

In brief, female crabs shed their shell to mate and are vulnerable for several days until the shell hardens again. The male crab with whom she mated guards her until it hardens again.

If the male leaves too soon after mating while she's still vulnerable, she may betray him and mate again to find a new guardian while she's vulnerable, rather than wait to die in the dangerous seas with a compromised shell.

I do astrology and I have Venus in Cancer, the sign of the crab.

What I learned from my relationship to Navarre boils down to I'm like a crab and I need to shed my armor to be with someone and if they keep me safe and meet my needs while I'm vulnerable, I'm extremely loyal.

And if they don't, I may try to find someone else to keep me safe.

I can be faithful to a good man or I can sleep alone. If I'm in a relationship with an emotional vampire bleeding me, other men are like a blood transfusion I can't live without.

And that concept helped me understand how someone who so much wanted a monogamous lifestyle failed to get it while married, though the last man I had intercourse with was my husband the night before he moved out not quite exactly twenty years ago, contrary to everything I feared and expected while staying with a man I was terrified to leave and imagining I would immediately sleep with someone awful -- "because I don't know how to say no" -- get pregnant, have a shotgun wedding and he would be an abusive monster and blah blah blah.