The Astrology of Lasting Unions: 16,000 Marriages Analyzed through Jung's Lens

In the eighth volume of his Collected Works, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, Carl Jung explored the boundaries between the psyche and the physical world. He wasn’t merely interested in symbols - he was interested in how those symbols manifested in reality. In his famous “Astrological Experiment,” Jung examined the horoscopes of married couples to see if the stars whispered secrets about human connection.

Jung wrote that the birth-chart “gives a picture first of the psychic and then of the physical constitution of the individual,” arguing that it represents “a system of original and fundamental qualities in a person’s character.” Central to his thinking were the 12 Jungian archetypes - universal patterns of the psyche that shape how we love, attach, and form lasting bonds. He argued that marriage, as a fundamental human institution, should theoretically reflect these psychic archetypes. Jung’s own study involved only 483 pairs. Today, I have scaled that inquiry to 16,861 public figure marriages extracted from Wikidata.

The Methodology: Scaling Jung’s Vision

To conduct this analysis, I developed a Python-based crawler to interface with the Wikidata SPARQL endpoint. I targeted 100+ different occupations to ensure the dataset represented a broad spectrum of human experience. The core of my data gathering relied on a precise SPARQL query, focused on individuals born after 1940 to reflect relatively modern marriage and divorce trends.

SPARQL_QUERY = """
SELECT DISTINCT
  ?person ?personLabel ?dob
  ?spouse ?spouseLabel ?spouseDob
  ?marriageDate ?divorceDate
WHERE {{
  ?person wdt:P31 wd:Q5 .
  ?person wdt:P106 {occ_id} .
  ?person wdt:P569 ?dob .
  FILTER(YEAR(?dob) >= 1940)
  ?person p:P26 ?marriageStatement .
  ?marriageStatement ps:P26 ?spouse .
  ?marriageStatement pq:P580 ?marriageDate .
  ?spouse wdt:P569 ?spouseDob .
  OPTIONAL {{ ?marriageStatement pq:P582 ?divorceDate . }}
  SERVICE wikibase:label {{ bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en". }}
}}
LIMIT {limit}
OFFSET {offset}
"""

Once the data was fetched, I used Python to calculate the duration of each marriage in days, handling ongoing marriages by comparing the marriage date to today’s date, and filtering out invalid records where a divorce date preceded the marriage.

def extract_row(b: dict, occ_name: str) -> dict | None:
    end_date = divorced or date.today()
    days_diff = (end_date - married_on).days

    if days_diff < 0:
        duration_days = 0
    else:
        duration_days = days_diff
        duration_text = f"{days_diff // 365}y {(days_diff % 365) // 30}m"

    return {
        "person_id": b.get("person", {}).get("value", "").split("/")[-1],
        "zodiac_pairing": " × ".join(sorted([zodiac(dob), zodiac(spouse_dob)])),
        "duration_days": duration_days,
        "marriage_status": "divorced" if divorced else "ongoing",
    }

The Findings: Which Signs Stand the Test of Time?

Across 16,861 marriages, certain pairings emerged as clear champions of longevity - and others as patterns of volatility.

The Pillars of Stability

The Cancer × Leo pairing took the absolute top spot, with an average duration of 25.0 years across 217 data points. This was followed by the double-earth influence of Capricorn × Capricorn, averaging 22.4 years over 328 marriages.

The data also revealed strong stability for Capricorn × Taurus (21.7 years, 346 data points) and Pisces × Pisces (21.9 years, 126 data points) - the latter suggesting a unique affinity within the same sign. This seems to validate the archetypal view of Capricorn and Taurus as the “pillars” of the zodiac: reliable, grounded, and enduring. If you want to explore your own Jungian archetype - the deeper psychological pattern beneath your sign - I built a free Jungian archetypal test that maps these patterns in detail.

Capricorn stands out as the dataset’s true “marrying sign,” appearing in many of the most voluminous and stable pairings across the board.

The Volatile Unions

Not every union is built for the long haul. The pairing with the shortest average duration was Leo × Libra, lasting only 14.3 years on average across 241 data points. Close behind was Leo × Sagittarius, at 14.4 years across 200 data points.

In terms of sheer risk, the highest divorce rate belonged to Sagittarius × Taurus couples, where 59.8% of the 179 marriages ended in divorce - making it the most volatile pairing in the entire analysis. Sagittarius presents a paradox: their pairing with Scorpio is one of the longest-lasting in the study (20.6 years, 39.7% divorce rate), yet with Taurus they post the worst numbers of all 78 pairings.

One pattern worth noting across the volatile unions: many of the shortest-lived pairings involve signs with clashing attachment styles - a psychological lens that often maps neatly onto the elemental tensions in astrology.

Sign-by-Sign Breakdown

To give a truly granular look at the data, here is a standalone breakdown for each of the twelve signs. As Jung noted, the birth-chart “represents a system of original and fundamental qualities” - these tables let you see exactly how those qualities interact across thousands of real-world examples.

♈ Aries

Aries shows remarkable stability with Taurus (only 36.7% divorce rate) but faces significant volatility when paired with another Aries or with Leo.

♉ Taurus

Taurus consistently produces some of the longest marriages in the dataset, particularly with Gemini (21.6 years) and Capricorn (21.7 years).

♊ Gemini

Gemini marriages show wide variance, with Taurus as their most stable anchor, while unions with other Geminis are among the shortest in duration.

♋ Cancer

Cancer holds the record for the most successful pairing in the entire study: Cancer × Leo, averaging a remarkable 25 years.

♌ Leo

While Leo finds incredible longevity with Cancer, they struggle significantly with Libra and Sagittarius, where average durations drop below 15 years.

♍ Virgo

Virgo pairings are remarkably consistent, generally hovering between 16 and 19 years, though they find the most “earthy” stability with Capricorn.

♎ Libra

Libra enjoys its lowest divorce rate when paired with another Libra (only 33%), but faces the shortest average duration in the study when paired with Leo.

♏ Scorpio

Scorpio marriages are often intense but volatile. They find their greatest stability with Sagittarius (20.6 years), but suffer high divorce rates with Leo and other Scorpios.

♐ Sagittarius

Sagittarius presents a paradox: a very long-lasting union with Scorpio, yet the highest divorce rate in the entire analysis when paired with Taurus.

♑ Capricorn

Capricorn is the “marrying sign” of the dataset, appearing in many of the most voluminous and stable pairings, especially with Taurus and other Capricorns.

♒ Aquarius

Aquarius finds its most enduring partnership with Capricorn (21.5 years) and faces significant challenges with Sagittarius, where divorce rates exceed 55%.

♓ Pisces

Pisces shows a unique affinity for their own sign, with Pisces × Pisces marriages lasting nearly 22 years on average.

Conclusion: Meaningful Coincidence?

Does a 25-year average for Cancer × Leo versus a 14-year average for Leo × Libra prove that our lives are ruled by the stars? For Jung, the answer was found in synchronicity - meaningful coincidences that appear randomly but suggest a hidden order.

In this analysis of 16,861 public figure marriages, the statistical variance is too significant to ignore. Whether this is due to the inherent archetypal traits of the signs or the cultural narratives we build around them, the data reflects a measurable physical reality. As Jung observed, the “macrophysical” quantities of such an experiment reveal the patterns of the “very small quantities” of our individual hearts.

If you want to go deeper into what your personality type brings to a relationship, it may be worth exploring your MBTI type alongside your sign - the two frameworks overlap in surprising ways. Or, if you’re drawn more to the clinical side, I’ve put together a broader set of psychology self-assessments that explore everything from personality structure to emotional patterns. Jung himself developed the word association method as a way of surfacing unconscious complexes - a technique that feels surprisingly relevant when you’re trying to understand what pulls two people together or apart.

If I were to give advice based on these 16,861 records, I would say: know your sign, but more importantly, know how your sign dances with another. The stars may set the stage, but we are the ones who must perform the play.

The entire dataset and script available on my github.