birth chartBy DailyDestiny Editorial Team

Mars in Pisces: Drive, Anger Style and How You Pursue What You Want

Mars in Pisces means the planet of drive runs on feeling and imagination instead of direct force, so this placement pursues goals sideways and expresses anger through withdrawal, guilt or tears rather than confrontation. Mars in Pisces has enormous stamina for anything it can merge with and almost none for anything it has to argue for out loud.

What does Mars in Pisces mean in a birth chart?

Mars in Pisces means the planet of assertion is working in mutable water, in a sign traditionally owned by Jupiter and modernly associated with Neptune, so the drive expresses itself through feeling, imagination and surrender rather than through direct force. A person with Mars in Pisces does not push at life, they permeate it. Wanting something registers first as a mood, then as an image, and only much later as an action, which is why Mars in Pisces frequently looks unmotivated to people who read motivation as visible effort. The energy is real; it simply runs underground until conditions bring it up. What Mars in Pisces genuinely lacks is friction tolerance. Direct opposition, competitive scoring, and having to state a demand out loud to someone who might refuse it all cost this placement far more than the actual task ever does. Hand the same person a cause, a piece of music, a suffering animal, or a deadline that has finally become emotionally real, and the output is startling in both volume and quality. Mars in Pisces also borrows its host's manners. As a guest in Jupiter's sign it inherits mercy and a tendency to forgive too early; from Neptune it inherits glamour and the ability to make its own motives unreadable, including to itself.

The technical detail sharpens the picture considerably. Traditional astrology assigns Mars the nocturnal triplicity rulership of the water signs, so a night-born chart with Mars in Pisces has a Mars with real working dignity, not a broken one. Pisces is also divided into bounds, and in the Egyptian scheme still used in traditional practice Mars rules roughly 19 to 28 degrees of the sign. A Mars in Pisces sitting in that stretch is in its own bound and behaves with noticeably more spine than one in the early Venus-ruled degrees. The same asymmetry shows in the decans: under the Chaldean order the final third of Pisces is the Mars decan, which the Golden Dawn assigned to the Ten of Cups, the card Crowley and Harris titled Satiety in the Thoth deck. A Mars in Pisces at 25 degrees is a different animal from one at 3 degrees. Mars spends about six to seven weeks in Pisces in an ordinary pass, longer when it stations retrograde there, and returns to the sign roughly every two years and two months. Anyone born during Neptune's transit of Pisces between 2011 and 2025 may also carry Mars conjunct Neptune, which intensifies every trait described here.

Is Mars in Pisces considered a weak Mars?

Mars in Pisces is not formally weak. Mars is in fall in Cancer and in detriment in Libra and Taurus; Pisces appears on none of those lists, and Mars holds nocturnal triplicity rulership over the water signs. Mars in Pisces is indirect rather than debilitated.

How do Jupiter and Neptune change Mars in Pisces?

Jupiter, the traditional ruler of Pisces, gives Mars in Pisces generosity, forgiveness and a habit of pardoning offenders before the anger has finished. Neptune, the modern ruler, supplies imagination, atmosphere and camouflage, letting Mars in Pisces obscure its own aims even from itself.

Does the degree of Mars in Pisces matter?

Yes. Mars in Pisces in the late degrees, roughly 19 to 28, falls in the Mars bound and in the Mars-ruled final decan, producing a markedly more direct and combative version. Early Pisces degrees fall under Venus, softening the placement further.

How does Mars in Pisces express anger?

Mars in Pisces anger does not detonate, it floods. The characteristic sequence is delay, absorption, leakage and only then, sometimes, an eruption that seems to arrive from nowhere and shocks everyone including its owner. In the moment of provocation Mars in Pisces usually feels something closer to hurt or confusion than to rage, and the anger itself often does not arrive until hours or days later, in the shower, in the car, at three in the morning. By then the argument is over and the moment to say anything has passed, so the feeling goes somewhere else. Where it goes is the signature of the placement. Mars in Pisces anger comes out as withdrawal, as unavailability, as tears that arrive at the wrong time, as a joke with a blade in it, as agreeing to something and then quietly failing to do it, as guilt aimed with real precision at whoever caused the injury. It also comes out through the body. This is the placement most likely to answer an unfinished conflict with a headache, a stomach that stops working, a fortnight of exhaustion or a cold that arrives the day after a confrontation. Nothing was expressed, so the body carried the charge instead.

The mechanism underneath is a boundary problem, not a temperament problem. Mars in Pisces takes in other people's emotional states the way a sponge takes in water, and it does not reliably label what it has picked up. A person with this placement can spend an entire evening carrying someone else's resentment and register it as their own bad mood. That makes it genuinely difficult to answer the question every fight eventually asks, which is what exactly are you angry about. Mars in Pisces often does not know, because the anger has several sources and only one belongs to them. The other consequence is delayed detonation. Anger that is absorbed rather than expressed accumulates, and it accumulates across unrelated incidents. When it goes off, the trigger is usually trivial and the discharge disproportionate, which produces the guilt that sends Mars in Pisces straight into apology, sometimes to the person who was actually at fault. That apology reflex is the single most costly habit of the placement. It buys peace at the price of an unresolved account that will simply be reopened later, with interest.

Why does Mars in Pisces go silent instead of shouting?

Mars in Pisces goes silent because the anger has not finished forming yet. This placement processes emotionally rather than verbally, so the coherent version of the complaint arrives well after the confrontation ends. Silence is delay, not agreement, and treating it as agreement guarantees a later reckoning.

Is Mars in Pisces passive aggressive?

Mars in Pisces is one of the most passive-aggressive placements when unhealthy, expressing anger through withdrawal, martyrdom, forgetting, lateness and guilt rather than statement. It is not malice; it is a drive that never learned it was allowed to make a demand and found sideways routes instead.

How can Mars in Pisces express anger more directly?

Mars in Pisces expresses anger best in writing and on a delay. Draft the complaint the next day, cut everything that is not a specific request, then say it out loud within the week. The written stage supplies what the placement lacks in the room: language.

How does Mars in Pisces pursue what it wants?

Mars in Pisces pursues what it wants indirectly, by attraction, positioning and proximity rather than by pursuit in any straight-line sense. A person with this placement rarely announces an aim, applies for it and chases it down. They circle it. They spend time near it, learn its texture, make themselves useful to it, and wait for the current to bring it within reach. This looks like passivity from outside and it is not; it is a genuinely different strategy, and in fields where reputation and relationship decide outcomes it works extremely well. Mars in Pisces gets offered things other people had to fight for, and the reason is that it spent a year being the person everyone wanted in the room. The failure mode is equally consistent. Mars in Pisces struggles to state a want plainly to a person with the power to grant or refuse it, because a plain request creates a moment where refusal is possible and that moment feels intolerable. So the want gets hinted at, softened, framed as someone else's idea, or attached to a reason that makes it sound less like wanting. Salary conversations and pitch meetings are where this costs Mars in Pisces real money.

What reliably switches Mars in Pisces from drift to output is meaning, and meaning here means service. This placement produces its best and most sustained work when the effort is on behalf of something larger than the person doing it: a client who needs the thing, a collaborator who is depending on it, an audience, a cause, an animal, a child. Convert a personal ambition into a duty to somebody else and the same person who could not start for six weeks works for eleven hours without noticing. That is not a trick, it is the operating principle of the placement, and people with Mars in Pisces who learn it early build entire careers on it. The second reliable ignition is pressure that has become emotionally real rather than merely scheduled. Mars in Pisces ignores a deadline until it acquires a face, then demonstrates a capacity for concentrated, sleepless, high-quality output that surprises everyone who wrote it off. The cost of living on that pattern is a nervous system with only two settings, and most Mars in Pisces burnouts trace back to it.

Why does Mars in Pisces struggle to ask for what it wants?

Mars in Pisces struggles to ask directly because a stated request creates a moment where refusal becomes possible, and this placement experiences that exposure as disproportionately costly. The want gets hinted, deferred or attributed to someone else instead, which is why Mars in Pisces routinely underprices its own work.

What actually motivates Mars in Pisces to finish something?

Mars in Pisces finishes when the work becomes a duty to a specific person rather than an ambition for itself. A waiting collaborator, a client who needs it or an audience that will be let down converts drift into sustained output far more reliably than any personal goal does.

Is Mars in Pisces ambitious?

Mars in Pisces is ambitious about outcomes and reluctant about competition, which reads as unambitious to observers who equate the two. The placement wants scope, meaning and recognition genuinely, but declines the leaderboard route to them and takes the relational route instead.

What is Mars in Pisces like in desire, sex and attraction?

Mars in Pisces runs on atmosphere before it runs on anything physical. The conditions matter more than the act: light, music, weather, the quality of what was said an hour earlier, whether the room feels safe. Get those wrong and desire simply does not arrive, no matter how attractive the other person is. Get them right and Mars in Pisces is among the most immersive and responsive placements in the chart, because what it actually wants is dissolution, the temporary loss of the boundary between two people. Imagination does most of the work. Fantasy, anticipation, a voice on a phone, a story told well, an idea of the person built over weeks: all of that fuels Mars in Pisces more efficiently than direct stimulation does. This is also a devotional placement. It wants to give itself to someone, to be swept rather than to sweep, to be wanted so unmistakably that it does not have to do the asking. Venus is exalted in Pisces, and although that concerns Venus rather than Mars, the sign's romantic register saturates this Mars too. Sex and love are not usefully separable for Mars in Pisces, and attempts to separate them tend to leave the person feeling strangely bereft afterward without being able to say why.

The risks of Mars in Pisces in desire are specific and worth naming plainly. The first is idealization: this placement falls for the version of a person it has constructed and can sustain that construction for years against considerable evidence. The second is the difficulty of saying no in an intimate setting, which follows directly from the same trouble with direct refusal that shows up in salary negotiations. Mars in Pisces frequently consents to things it does not want, purely to avoid the discomfort of disappointing someone, then experiences the resentment weeks later and cannot trace it. The third is escapism, since desire and altered states run on adjacent circuits for this placement and the pull toward mixing them is real. The fourth is the muse trap, where Mars in Pisces attaches its creative drive to a partner and loses both when the relationship ends. What works against all four is unglamorous: state one preference out loud per encounter, and keep at least one creative practice that has nothing to do with the partner.

What is Mars in Pisces attracted to?

Mars in Pisces is attracted to atmosphere, mystery, artistic sensitivity and any sign of emotional depth being offered rather than guarded. It responds strongly to being desired openly, to music and setting, and to people who seem to need something only this person can give.

Why does Mars in Pisces idealize partners?

Mars in Pisces idealizes because imagination is its primary erotic engine, so the constructed version of a partner is genuinely more vivid than the observed one. The correction is not cynicism but attention: notice when the adored figure has stopped matching the person in the room.

What kills desire for Mars in Pisces?

Harshness, contempt, ugly surroundings, scheduling and any hint that the encounter is transactional shut Mars in Pisces down completely. Unresolved conflict does the same, since this placement cannot compartmentalize; an unfinished argument sits in the body and blocks arousal outright.

What is a Mars in Pisces man like?

A Mars in Pisces man expresses drive in a register that most conventional masculine scripts have no slot for, and the friction between the two shapes much of his life. He is gentle, perceptive, often artistic or musical, and reluctant to compete openly for anything he wants. He rarely raises his voice. He reads a room faster than the louder men in it and usually declines to use what he reads. In friendships and at work he is the one people confide in and the one who absorbs everyone else's stress without being asked. He tends to attract partners who are drawn to that softness and then, in some cases, become frustrated by it when a decision needs to be made and no one is making it. His characteristic difficulty is directness. A Mars in Pisces man will avoid the conversation, take the longer route, agree in the moment and change nothing, or simply become gradually less available rather than say the hard sentence. This is not cowardice so much as a genuine deficit in the equipment for frontal engagement, and it improves considerably once he stops treating the deficit as a character flaw and starts treating it as a skill he has to build deliberately.

Two failure modes recur with a Mars in Pisces man. The first is overcompensation, where he borrows a harder masculinity that does not fit him: bravado, risk-taking, heavy drinking or a performed toughness that costs him enormously to maintain and collapses under real pressure. Substances feature here more often than with most placements, partly because this Mars is genuinely more sensitive to them and partly because they supply the disinhibition he cannot generate on his own. The second failure mode is the drifter, who avoids commitment by never quite refusing anything and disappears rather than ends things. Both are the same problem in different clothes. The version of this placement that works is the man who has located what he will fight for and accepted that it is almost never himself. A Mars in Pisces man who will not raise his voice about his own promotion will stand immovable between a bully and whoever the bully picked, and that is where his real strength lives. Building the direct-request skill on top of that foundation, rather than replacing it, is the whole project.

Is a Mars in Pisces man passive in relationships?

A Mars in Pisces man is receptive rather than passive, but the two look identical from outside early on. He waits to be chosen, signals interest obliquely and rarely initiates a defining conversation, which partners often read as disinterest when it is actually a reluctance to risk refusal.

How does a Mars in Pisces man show attraction?

A Mars in Pisces man shows attraction through attention and small acts of care rather than pursuit: remembering details, appearing when needed, sending music, creating atmosphere. He will make himself indispensable long before he says anything explicit about what he wants.

How does a Mars in Pisces man handle rejection?

A Mars in Pisces man usually absorbs rejection without visible protest, then withdraws entirely and processes it for far longer than he admits. He rarely argues the decision or asks for a reason, and he tends to keep an idealized version of the person for years.

What is a Mars in Pisces woman like?

A Mars in Pisces woman asserts through atmosphere, empathy and emotional influence rather than through demand, and she is usually far more powerful in a situation than the room registers. She sets the temperature. She knows what everyone present is feeling and adjusts accordingly, which makes her exceptional in care work, creative collaboration, mediation and any environment where the official hierarchy is not the real one. Her sexuality tends to be receptive and imaginative, drawn to being wanted rather than to hunting, and her attraction pattern often bends toward people who need something: the talented mess, the wounded artist, the one everybody else gave up on. Her structural difficulty is permission. A Mars in Pisces woman frequently arrives in adulthood without ever having been given a workable model for her own anger, and since the placement already routes anger inward, the result is a person who has an enormous amount of unspent Mars and no accepted outlet for it. It surfaces as exhaustion, illness, sudden tears, resentment toward people she loves, or a delayed and total withdrawal from a relationship that appeared fine the week before. Learning that she is allowed to want things loudly is usually the central task of the placement.

The rescuer pattern deserves specific attention because it consumes years. A Mars in Pisces woman channels her drive into other people's potential with genuine skill, and the arrangement is stable until the person she is carrying either recovers and leaves or refuses to change at all. Both endings hurt, and both are followed by the discovery that she postponed her own work for the duration. The related habit is the delayed no: agreement given to avoid causing disappointment, then weeks of quiet resentment, then an exit that seems abrupt to everyone but her. Where the steel actually lives in this placement is protection. A Mars in Pisces woman who will not defend her own salary will go to war over a mistreated child, an exploited colleague or an animal in trouble, and in that mode she is genuinely relentless. The practical route forward is to borrow that mode deliberately: treat your own interests as a third party you have been asked to defend, and the same force becomes available.

Is a Mars in Pisces woman assertive?

A Mars in Pisces woman is assertive indirectly and highly effectively, shaping outcomes through influence, timing and emotional reading rather than through open demand. She usually holds more real power in a group than her stated position suggests, and less than she is willing to claim out loud.

What kind of partner does a Mars in Pisces woman choose?

A Mars in Pisces woman is drawn to sensitive, creative or wounded partners, often ones with visible potential and visible difficulty. The pattern works well when the partner is genuinely doing the work and badly when her drive becomes the engine of someone else's unlived life.

How does a Mars in Pisces woman set boundaries?

A Mars in Pisces woman sets boundaries late and then absolutely, tolerating far past her limit and then leaving with a finality that shocks the other party. The workable alternative is stating small refusals early, while the stakes are still low enough to survive being said.

What kind of physical energy and stamina does Mars in Pisces have?

Mars in Pisces has tidal energy rather than steady energy. It runs high and low in cycles that track mood, sleep, weather, company and emotional weather rather than any training schedule, which makes this placement unreliable at fixed-hour discipline and formidable at sustained immersion. A person with Mars in Pisces who is told to train at six in the morning regardless of state will quit within a month. The same person swimming, dancing, walking for hours or moving to music can go far past the point where more forcefully driven placements have stopped. The stamina is real; it is just conditional and rhythmic. Mars in Pisces also tends to be pharmacologically sensitive. Alcohol, caffeine, sugar, medication and anesthesia are all commonly reported as hitting harder and lasting longer for this placement than dosage would predict, and recovery from illness, injury and hard effort takes longer than it does for others. Environment is a physical variable, not a mood variable. Mars in Pisces loses energy in loud, fluorescent-lit, competitive or hostile settings and regains it near water, in quiet and around people who are not leaking stress. Treating environment as training input is the most useful adjustment available.

The training approaches that hold for Mars in Pisces share three features: they are rhythmic, they are immersive, and they are not scored against another person in real time. Swimming is the most consistently recommended, and not only for the symbolic reason; the sensory deprivation and the breath rhythm suit the placement exactly. Dance in any form, long-distance walking and running at conversational pace, yoga, and the softer martial arts built on redirection rather than impact all work on the same principle, which is that Mars in Pisces produces effort best when it stops noticing that it is producing effort. Music is not a garnish here but a functional input; many people with this placement double their output simply by getting the soundtrack right. What fails is the crowded competitive gym with mirrors and visible comparison, where the sensitivity that powers this Mars gets spent on everybody else in the room. Recovery has to be scheduled rather than earned. Mars in Pisces that builds in no genuine downtime gets no warning; it goes from apparently fine to unable to get up, and that crash takes weeks.

Why does Mars in Pisces get exhausted around certain people?

Mars in Pisces absorbs the emotional state of whoever it is near and spends real physical energy processing it, so an afternoon with an anxious or hostile person costs more than a workout. The tiredness is genuine, not imagined, and it is the main reason this placement needs solitude.

What exercise suits Mars in Pisces best?

Swimming, dance, long walks, yoga and redirection-based martial arts suit Mars in Pisces because all of them are rhythmic, immersive and uncompetitive in the moment. Crowded gyms with visible comparison drain this placement faster than the training itself builds it.

Does Mars in Pisces have good stamina?

Mars in Pisces has excellent stamina inside a flow state and poor stamina outside one. It sustains long immersive effort far past average and struggles badly with short bursts demanded on schedule, which is why endurance suits it better than anything explosive.

How does Mars in Pisces handle conflict and confrontation?

Mars in Pisces handles conflict by not meeting it head-on. The instinctive responses are to absorb, to concede early, to change the subject, to become vague, or to leave the field entirely, and all four follow the same water logic: do not stand in front of the force, go around it. In the room this looks like agreement, apology or fog, and it ends the immediate confrontation without resolving anything. The disagreement then continues underground, expressed through withdrawal, reduced availability and quiet non-compliance. Mars in Pisces does not lose conflicts so much as decline to have them in the open. Where this placement wins is duration. Mars in Pisces outlasts. It absorbs the pressure, never needs the last word, and is still there six months later when the aggressive party has burned out and moved on. It also has one weapon it deploys with unusual accuracy: making the other person feel the cost of what they did. Used consciously that is empathy under pressure; used unconsciously it is guilt.

Arguing usefully with a Mars in Pisces requires three adjustments and they are all timing-related. Ask one specific question rather than a general accusation, since a general accusation produces fog and a specific question produces an answer. Allow the delay: this placement needs hours or a night before it can say what it actually thinks, so demanding a resolution in the moment guarantees a false one. And put the important part in writing, because Mars in Pisces is far more precise on paper than in a room where it is absorbing the other person's distress and losing track of its own position. On the other side, the person with Mars in Pisces has to accept that early concession is not generosity, it is deferral with interest. There is one situation in which Mars in Pisces stops calculating cost entirely. When someone weaker is being harmed, the fog clears, the concessions stop, and this placement becomes completely immovable for as long as it takes. That is the real Mars, and the work of the placement is learning to access it without needing a third party to trigger it.

How do you argue with someone who has Mars in Pisces?

Ask one specific question instead of making a general accusation, give them a night to answer, and put the substance in writing. Mars in Pisces fogs under direct pressure and becomes precise on paper, so demanding an immediate verbal resolution produces only a false one.

Why does Mars in Pisces apologize first?

Mars in Pisces apologizes first because it feels the other person's distress as acutely as its own and wants the discomfort to stop more than it wants to be right. The apology ends the scene without settling the account, which is why the same argument recurs.

When does Mars in Pisces actually fight back?

Mars in Pisces fights hardest when someone else is being harmed, especially someone weaker, and in that mode it is relentless and unmoved by pressure. It also erupts unpredictably after long absorption, usually over something small that arrives on top of everything unspoken.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Mars in Pisces a good or bad placement?

Mars in Pisces is neither exalted nor in detriment or fall, so the textbook dignity scheme has no verdict on it. Mars falls in Cancer and is in detriment in Libra and Taurus; Pisces is on neither list. What traditional astrology does say is that Mars is the nocturnal triplicity ruler of the water signs, which gives Mars in Pisces working dignity in a night chart. The honest reading is that Mars in Pisces is a badly designed weapon and an excellent instrument. It performs poorly at anything scored by direct comparison and unusually well at anything rewarding absorption, timing, imagination and endurance. Charts are not graded, they are used, and Mars in Pisces used correctly outlasts most placements that outmatch it in a straight fight.

What are the strengths of Mars in Pisces?

The strengths of Mars in Pisces are timing, absorption, imaginative stamina and moral courage on behalf of others. Mars in Pisces reads the emotional temperature of a room before anyone speaks and acts on that reading, which makes it hard to ambush and unusually good in crisis work, care work and any negotiation where the other side is telegraphing more than they realize. It can sustain effort on a creative or devotional project long past the point where more competitive placements need scoreboard feedback to keep going. It does not require an enemy to function. And it holds a line without moving when someone weaker is being harmed, which is the one situation where Mars in Pisces stops calculating cost entirely. Those are not consolation strengths; they are the ones that decide most real outcomes.

Which Mars signs are most compatible with Mars in Pisces?

Mars in Pisces works most easily with the other water Mars placements, Cancer and Scorpio, because neither requires a want to be stated out loud before it counts. Earth-sign Mars partners in Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn pair well in practice: they supply the schedule and follow-through that Mars in Pisces supplies the vision for, and they rarely take the fog personally. The harder combination is a fire-sign Mars, especially Aries or Leo, who reads Mars in Pisces silence as agreement or contempt and escalates to get a reaction. That pairing works only when the fire Mars learns to ask a direct question and wait, and the Mars in Pisces learns to answer the same day.

Does Mars in Pisces make someone lazy?

Mars in Pisces is not lazy, it is conditionally powered. Output is genuinely low when a task has no emotional meaning, no atmosphere and nobody it serves, and genuinely high when any of those conditions is met. The confusion comes from measuring Mars in Pisces on a metric it was never running on: visible, steady, self-starting effort produced on demand at a fixed hour. What Mars in Pisces produces instead is uneven, tidal and often invisible until it arrives finished. Someone with Mars in Pisces who spent a fortnight apparently doing nothing was frequently doing the part of the work that does not look like work.

What careers suit Mars in Pisces?

Careers that suit Mars in Pisces are the ones where the drive gets to serve something rather than beat someone. Music, film, photography, dance, fiction and design reward the imaginative stamina this placement has in surplus. Nursing, hospice, midwifery, veterinary work, addiction recovery, therapy and social work use the absorption capacity directly. Legal aid and campaigning suit Mars in Pisces far better than commercial litigation, because the fight is on someone else's behalf. Marine work, brewing, anesthesiology and anything involving water, fluids or altered states have long been associated with this placement. What does not suit Mars in Pisces is commission-based sales against a leaderboard, where the motivational structure is comparative and the fog sets in by week three.

What does a Mars in Pisces transit mean for everyone?

A Mars in Pisces transit lasts roughly six to seven weeks and lowers the collective appetite for direct confrontation while raising the appetite for retreat, art, sleep and forgiveness. Arguments started during Mars in Pisces tend to be about something other than their stated subject, and they resolve less by resolution than by dissolution: people get tired, feel guilty and drift back together. Practical projects lose momentum, deadlines slip, and energy for gym routines and competitive push tends to sag. What the transit is genuinely good for is finishing creative work, making peace, clearing out what you have been carrying for other people, and any effort that runs on imagination rather than willpower. Mars returns to Pisces roughly every two years and two months.

How is Mars in Pisces different from Mars in the 12th house?

Mars in Pisces describes the style of the drive, while Mars in the 12th house describes its location, and the two produce similar-looking people for different reasons. Mars in Pisces asserts through feeling and indirection wherever it sits, so Mars in Pisces in the 10th house is still a public career drive working by atmosphere rather than open competition. Mars in the 12th house buries the drive regardless of sign, so Mars in Aries in the 12th is a genuinely aggressive Mars its owner cannot admit to. When both occur together, the indirection doubles and the person usually needs an external mirror, a partner or a rival, before locating their own anger at all.