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usually in a hurry from the living room to the kitchen. He must have movement and colour and life around him, because he gets bored easily. Then you get the notorious Aries querulousness, the irritability and edginess and bad temper which often flare up. Now, the Aries temper can be a little frightening. Have you ever tried confronting Mars on the battlefield? But it helps to remember that for Aries, gestures are stylized and often dramatized. All that fire and smoke and explosion is like a child throwing a tantrum. If he's really, really angry he won't explode so much; he'll just quietly move to destroy what's in his way. But the temper is just that - temper. And once it blows over, Aries hold no grudges. He's too chivalrous for one thing, and too absent-minded for another. It just isn't that important.
I had an Aries client who once told me about his behaviour in childhood. He said that when he wanted his mother to buy him something - a coveted toy, or a sweet - and she had the bad manners to refuse, he had a simple tactic that always worked wonders. He would throw a tantrum right on the street in front of the shop. Not a yelling tantrum, either - all kids do that, and Aries isn't all kids. He would announce in his most heraldic voice, 'I'm going to hold my breath until I turn blue.' And he would do just that - prone on the sidewalk, where everyone would have to stop and crowd around to see what had happened to the poor child. His mother, naturally, never waited to see whether he really turned blue. Also, she obviously didn't know anatomy, or the fact that if he did fall unconscious he would, of course, begin to breathe again. She simply bought the toy or the sweet. Cowed by the god of war, every time.
Naturally one thinks these things end with childhood. But my Aries client made it painfully obvious that although the nature of the tantrum had changed - after all, who would fall for a forty-five-year-old man saying he was going to hold his breath until he turned blue? - the tactics were the same. He had everyone in his household benignly terrorized. But usually Ariens contrive to get everyone else to do what they want. And their approach isn't subtle. No emotional blackmail like Cancer, or long strategic planning with deals and financial viable pressures, like Capricorn. Or gentle, diplomatic statesmanship in the spirit of cooperation, like Libra. No, Aries has a simple approach. 'Do it.' If you don't, you get the tantrum, in one form or another - maybe a slammed door and an evening of frosty silence, or a harangue, or a few smashed plates.
One way to describe Aries is self-willed. He's unquestionably unaware, a good deal of the time, of the fact that other people might wish to pull in a different direction. It's hard for Aries to understand compromise and cooperation. When he's fired up about something, nothing else seems as right, as true, or as relevant. He's dogmatic. That means that he simply doesn't notice conflicting opinions, unless you shout them at him. And then he's often genuinely hurt that you think he's being selfish or egocentric. In fact he's no more selfish than anybody else, and frequently less so. Because he tends to be generous to a fault, he's an easy prey for a sad story, and can be easily taken advantage of. He's also not a particularly astute judge of character, since he's not a suspicious type and will usually believe the best about people until unpleasantly surprised. Disloyalty, backstabbing, and meanness of any kind can really bewilder and wound him. It's just that he tends to be a little oblivious to the facts of situations, since he lives in his world of ideals. What he sees isn't how things are. It's how they could and should be. And even if everybody else is too tired or too jaded or too apathetic to do anything about it, Aries will go out there alone if necessary (he prefers support, but can do without it) and fight the dragon. And doesn't demand repayment for it either. A little applause, appreciation, perhaps. But no strings are attached to his gifts.
Trying to live with an Aries can often be difficult, if you're the type who likes the status quo to remain the same and the partner unchanging. Aries needs action; he needs something to pour his
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