Sun Trine Sun Synastry: When You Each Go About Life in a Similar Way

Every chart has a Sun, and it does one job: it is who you are. It is the self you steer by, what you want, where you are heading, the energy you bring into a room. Sun trine Sun in synastry means your Sun and their Sun are about 120° apart, a third of the way round the zodiac, give or take a few degrees.

A trine usually joins two signs of the same element (fire, earth, air or water), though not always: a trine that starts near the edge of a sign can reach into the next element. That is geometry, and it is why this contact tends to read as likeness. You are not the same, as in a conjunction, where two Suns share a spot. You are two separate Suns that go about life in a similar way.

Because both of you have a Sun, the contact is the same from either side: your Sun and their Sun, and their Sun and your Sun. There is no one who brings one thing and one who brings another. Each of you is both the one being met and the one doing the meeting.

It can turn up between friends, siblings, colleagues, flatmates, or a parent and their child just as well as between partners, and it is only one of many contacts in any two charts.

For each of you, the experience tends to be of being met by someone whose sense of direction does not push against yours. You may say what you want, how fast you want it and how much fuss you can stand, and find the other already works that way. You do not have to win them round. Often you do not have to explain.

Suns that go about things in a similar way tend to give each other room. Your will does not crowd theirs, because it is aimed at something that sits comfortably beside it. One of you can take the lead on a decision, and the other can follow without feeling reduced by it, since the choice is one they could have made. Next week the roles may swap, and it tends to feel just as natural.

There is also a plain pleasure in being seen accurately. A person who shares your way of going about life tends to notice what you are good at, and to say so, because they can see it from the inside. Praise from someone who understands how the thing is done often means more than praise from someone who does not.

And the likeness is not copying. Because the two Suns are in different signs, you each have your own style inside a shared element. One of you may be quick and the other thorough, one loud and the other quiet, and still both want the same sort of life.

Each of you tends to give the other the experience of being backed without having to ask. In a Sun trine Sun, giving and receiving run the same way, so there is usually little friction in it.

What each of you tends to give is easy agreement about direction. You can say "I think we should do this" and have the other's reasons already be close to yours. You tend to take their plans seriously because you can see how they got there. Your encouragement often fits, because you are encouraging something you understand.

What each of you may want in return is mostly to be taken as you are. Being treated as capable, left to lead when it is your turn, and not being second-guessed all matter to many people, and here they can come without a fight.

What this contact does not tend to supply is the thing neither of you has. If you share an element, you may also share its blind spots: the way you each tend to overreach, avoid or hurry. Neither of you may have a different view from which to notice them.

These are sketches, not reports: illustrations of how the contact might show up across different kinds of pairs.

• Flatmates. One of you suggests splitting the chores by who minds each job least. The other was about to propose the same thing. The rota is on the fridge by the evening, and nobody has had to be persuaded of anything.
• Parent and child. A parent and their teenager both like to decide things for themselves. Neither tries to take the other's decision away, and the parent can say "your call" and mean it, because they would want the same said to them.
• Colleagues. Two colleagues are given a shared project. One sketches the plan; the other reads it and says it is how they would have done it. They agree who does what in five minutes, and each gets on with their half without checking in.
• Siblings. Two siblings who left home in different directions find, at a family gathering, that they have reached similar ideas about what they want from the next ten years. They are a little surprised, and compare notes for the whole afternoon.
• Friends. Two friends in a group argue less than the others do. When the group cannot settle on a plan, these two notice they would both be happy with the same option, and say so at the same moment.
• Partners. One of you says over dinner that they are thinking of changing direction at work. The other does not flinch. They ask a practical question or two, as someone who understands the pull of it.

In each sketch the same thing happens: one person's way of going about things meets another way that is different in detail and the same in spirit, so it goes through without a fight.

Because a trine usually keeps to one element, the element colours the whole contact. In plain terms: fire is enthusiasm and action, earth is practical steadiness, air is talk and ideas, water is feeling.

Fire. You both tend to want to begin, and to believe it will work. It might look like two friends who decide on a Friday to enter a race, and who are both warmed, not alarmed, by the other's confidence.

Earth. You both tend to trust what is solid and to build slowly. It might look like two colleagues who each distrust a rushed launch, and who check the same details without coordinating.

Air. You both tend to live a lot in talk and ideas. It might look like two siblings who spend a long train journey trading theories, each finishing the other's sentence and neither feeling interrupted.

Water. You both tend to go by feeling and to sense what is not said. It might look like a parent and their grown child who sit through a family dinner, notice the same tension, and exchange one glance that says it all.

The ease is real, and it can leave things out that belong to a shared kind of Sun in particular.

First, nobody is much challenged. Someone who understands where you are going is lovely to have around. It is not the same as someone who asks whether you should be going there. Two Suns that agree can follow a plan for a long time without either of you questioning it, because it rarely upsets anyone.

Second, you may both reach for the same thing. When there is one place at the table, one promotion or one last say in a decision, two people who go about life in the same way tend to want the same prize and to go about getting it the same way. It need not be rivalry; sometimes it is just two capable people asking at once.

Third, the shared element may mean a shared habit. If fire tends to hurry, earth to resist change, air to talk round a problem or water to wait for it to pass, both of you may do it, and each may take the other doing it as proof that it is normal.

Fourth, ease can mean you stop looking at how things work. Because they do, you may not ask how, and when something does need to change it can take a while for either of you to see it.

None of this is a flaw in the contact or in either of you. It is what this kind of ease is like to live with, and it comes with a plain advantage: a hard thing tends to be easier to say, because each of you often assumes the other is on your side.

• You often reach the same decision from different directions.
• One of you can lead and the other follow without either minding.
• You do not have to explain what you want, and rarely have to defend it.
• You can disagree about a detail and still be after the same thing.
• Now and then you both miss the same thing, and it takes a third person to point it out.