Very good with children, short on childhood
Both of these are true and they are connected: you are unusually good with children, and you were not permitted much of a childhood yourself. Saturn in Cancer in the 5th house puts care into the arena meant for delight, so you learned the adult half of play first.
The 5th house is romance, creativity and everything done for its own sake; Cancer looks after. With Saturn present, enjoyment arrives supervised: you are the one making sure everybody is warm, fed and having a good time, which is a real pleasure and is not the same as having one yourself.
It comes due when you have to play rather than run it
The test is being asked to join in rather than manage: the game, the dance, the ridiculous thing everybody else is doing. Your instinct is to hold the coats. Doing the thing badly, in front of people, is the whole exercise and it is more uncomfortable than it sounds — which is the evidence that it is the right exercise.
Your seriousness is read as not wanting to
Because you hang back, people conclude you are not interested, and the invitations gradually stop arriving. From inside, you were waiting to be persuaded a little longer. Say the true thing — that you would like to and find it awkward — since the alternative is a social life that slowly organises itself around your apparent preference for the sidelines.
Somebody has to be the responsible adult, and it is you
In any group at play you are tracking who has had too much, who is upset, who needs to get home. It is genuinely valuable and it is a full-time position that nobody assigned and nobody relieves you of. Hand it over explicitly for one occasion, by name, to somebody who will do it worse. That is the cost of ever being off duty.
Delight that finally has permission
What this builds, once the supervision relaxes, is enjoyment with real depth to it: you take pleasure seriously, so when you do let something in it lands properly rather than passing over. People who were never rationed do not experience it that way. The whole subject here is permission, and it turns out to be something you can issue yourself.
Courtship conducted as looking after
You show interest by attending to somebody: noticing what they need, remembering the difficult date, making things easier before being asked. It is unmistakably affectionate and it can read as friendship rather than romance, which is why several people have taken years to work out what was happening. Say the direct sentence as well. The care alone is ambiguous and always has been.
Making things that look after people
Your creative work tends toward the useful and the nourishing — food, spaces, stories for children, things that comfort somebody. That is a real market and you consistently underrate it because the output feels domestic rather than artistic. The distinction is one you inherited and it has no commercial reality. Price the work as work.
Learning to be the one who is looked after
The long practice here is receiving. You are highly skilled at the giving half and genuinely unpractised at the other, to the point where being cared for produces something closer to discomfort than pleasure. Sit through it without deflecting, once a month. The discomfort fades with repetition, which is the only method available.
You host the fun and rarely attend it
The gathering happens because you organised it, and you spend it in the kitchen. Everybody has a wonderful evening including, in a limited sense, you. Try arriving at somebody else's event with nothing to do. The restlessness in the first hour is the point of the exercise rather than a sign it is going badly.
The body needs play, not only rest
Recovery for you has been defined as stopping, and stopping alone does not restore this placement — something has to be enjoyable rather than merely restful. Swimming, dancing, games, anything with pleasure and movement in it does more than an extra hour asleep. Schedule it the way you schedule obligations, because that is the only category your week currently recognises.