Needing to be seen, and exposed by it
Two things are true and they pull against each other. You need one person to genuinely see you, and being that visible to somebody puts you at risk. Pluto in Leo in the 7th house puts the whole question of significance into one-to-one bonds, so a partner is never simply company.
Which half of this is actually about you? Not the Leo setting: Pluto sits in a sign for decades and marks a very large group with the same seriousness about mattering. The 7th house is yours, decided by your birth time. It aims that seriousness at the person opposite, which is why their regard carries a weight that no amount of public success replaces.
What was cast before you chose
Early on, somebody's attention was conditional on what you produced, or you were the one who kept an adult upright by being impressive. The arrangement worked, which is why it was never questioned by anybody including you. What formed was an equation between being admired and being safe. It has been running your close relationships ever since, and it has never once been examined in daylight.
Where the pride jams
When a partner disappoints you, you do not say so, you become magnificent and unavailable and wait for them to notice. They rarely do, and the withdrawal reads as coldness rather than as injury. Say the small ungrand sentence within a day, because after that the performance has begun and it will run its course.
What partners actually meet
They meet somebody generous, warm and unusually attentive, who is also quietly waiting to find out how they rank in your estimation. Both halves are entirely real and only the first is visible. The waiting is the part they cannot see and therefore cannot answer, however willing they might be. Tell them what you need to hear, in ordinary unremarkable words, because guessing has not produced it in twenty years and will not start now.
Equals, rather than audience and performer
The relationships that work for you are the ones where the other person is unimpressed by the parts that impress everybody else, and stays anyway. That is uncomfortable and it is the only version that holds. Let somebody see you fail at something small this year, deliberately, and remain in the room.
Whose relationship is it
You set the tone, arrange the occasions and largely determine what the two of you are like together, and partners often go along with it for years before saying anything. Ask what they would choose if it were entirely up to them, and then actually do that, since you have almost certainly never found out.
One friend gets the unedited account
Among a great many pleasant connections there is generally one person who receives the version of you with nothing removed, and that friendship carries considerably more than either of you acknowledges. It is also unreciprocated in scale rather more often than you notice, since you are the one being understood. Ask them about their own life first this month. Then stay with the answer for longer than is comfortable.
The regard of one person outweighs everything
Public recognition has never settled the question that one person's genuine attention settles immediately, and you may have spent years pursuing the first while needing the second. That is worth knowing before the next decision about your work. Ask what you are actually trying to be seen by, and answer it honestly.
A counterpart who is not impressed by you
Working surrounded by people who admire you produces your worst decisions, because nobody in the room will argue with the confident version. One colleague willing to contest your judgement is worth three who agree with it, and considerably harder to keep. Protect that person when they are inconvenient, which they will be. The value of them is precisely the part that is uncomfortable.
Generosity that is also a position
You give handsomely to whoever is close, and the giving is genuine and it simultaneously keeps you in the stronger seat in every relationship you have. Both things are true and neither cancels the other out. Let somebody pay for something substantial this year and sit through the whole of the discomfort. The discomfort is the information, and you have arranged your life so as never to collect it.