Your Descendent Sign Can Reveal A Lot About Your Romantic Life

If you've even dipped your toe into the vast universe of astrology, then you probably know that you have a whole astrological birth chart full of zodiac signs, houses, and planets that comprise your cosmic profile. And while you may have the scoop on your sun, moon, and rising signs, do you know what your descendent sign means in astrology? This significant angle in your chart can shed a lot of light on your relationships — both with other people and with yourself.

Unlike your sun and moon signs, the descendent sign is represented by an angular point in the birth chart rather than an actual planet or celestial body. It's one of four important angles in every astrology chart, all of which are located on an X/Y axis (see the chart below for a visual — each point is labeled with letters on the perimeter of the zodiac wheel). The midheaven sign (often labeled MC for short) and the imum coeli sign (labeled IC for short) represent your public and private life, respectively, and they're located at the top and bottom of a chart. But the descendent sign (DC) is located on the left side of a chart, opposite to the ascendent sign (AC). While your ascendent (aka the rising sign) represents your surface-level personality and self-image, the descendent sign in astrology is all about what you seek in relationships with others.

How To Calculate Your Descendent Sign

In order to find out your descendent sign, you need to know your exact birth time. Dig up your birth certificate and consult a professional astrologer to get the dish, or use an online birth chart calculator to figure it out at home. If you already have a copy of your birth chart, you can look to the cusp of the seventh house and locate which zodiac sign it starts in. That's your descendent sign — and the qualities of that zodiac sign can tell you a lot about what sorts of qualities you may be attracted to in a potential partner.

What Does The Descendent Sign Represent?

Just as our ascendant sign marks the cusp of our first house of self, the descendent represents the cusp of our seventh house of partnerships. This house rules over all of our closest one-on-one relationships and the commitments we make to other people — which includes our bosses, business partners, and best friends. But it especially applies to our love lives and romantic partners. That said, our descendent sign can tell us a lot about what we're attracted to in other people, how we want to govern over the important commitments and partnerships in our lives, and even the parts of ourselves that we may struggle to embrace.

Because our descendent sign is in direct opposition to our rising sign, it embodies the exact opposite qualities to those that we actively project into the world. So, our rising sign dictates how we appear to others and what sort of image we create for ourselves — it's about our first impressions, our reactions to things, and our surface personalities. But the descendent, on the other hand, is everything our rising sign isn't.

All the tendencies, strengths, and weaknesses that we (consciously or subconsciously) push into the shadows can be found in our descendent sign. That's part of why we'll continually find ourselves drawn to these very qualities. They're like the missing pieces of our personality puzzle — the holes that we're always looking to fill through our relationships with other people. The "opposites attract" theory is in full force here: There's a palpable (and sometimes irresistible) tension that forms between the qualities we embrace in ourselves and the ones we push away or feel that we lack. So it makes sense that the ones we don't have are also the ones that we find ourselves subconsciously pulled in by.

But there's an important synergy to note here, too. Opposing zodiac signs may clash, but because they share the same "axis" in astrology, they actually have similar values and goals. That said, it makes sense that we're attracted to the qualities of our descendent — it represents a different way of achieving what we want to achieve, and that's naturally going to be intriguing.

What Can We Learn From Our Descendent Sign?

Our descendent sign represents things that we admire in others, in part because they're things we have trouble accessing within ourselves. There's a natural attraction to these qualities, even if they feel unnatural to us. That's why we often seek to bring our descendent sign's qualities into our lives through outside relationships. For example, you might find yourself entering into a lot of close partnerships with people who are born under the sign of your descendent.

And if you don't, then maybe you should start — the sign that rules your descendent could prove to be an ideal zodiac match for you, as they'll likely embody many of the qualities that spark your interest in relationships. Someone with your descendent sign's energy can offer balance and synergy to your personality, which could bode well for a successful romantic partnership or business endeavor.

But ultimately, one of the reasons we may seek out people and relationships that embody our descendent sign's qualities is because we're trying to find ways to express those qualities within ourselves. And if we're not honest with ourselves about this struggle, then our descendant sign could also point to qualities that we project onto others, dislike, or feel jealousy over. That said, we may subconsciously seek out relationships that align with our descendent's energy as a way to mirror to our own negative qualities. If you find yourself repeatedly drawn to or critical of a certain personality type, try to find some clarity by examining your descendent sign and being honest about how those qualities manifest in you.