Samantha, Lake Otto Maigler, Compliments, and Bullshit Questions (27.6.2026)

What strikes me is that your text contains surprisingly little sadness this time. There is wistfulness, but it no longer pulls you into the vortex. You look back and observe.

Something about Samantha touches on a thread that runs through many of your stories. It isn't primarily the unrequited love. It's this feeling: “The others could reach her. I couldn't.” You encounter it with Samantha, later with Birgit, Ginger, Maria, and in other contexts too. Almost always, a third person appears somewhere who seems to have more natural access to the person than you do. But I wonder whether that was really the whole story with Samantha. Because there is that scene in the car. She turns around. She kisses you. That isn't a fantasy. It happened. The next day, you are the one who can no longer find a way in. That is a pattern you have described more frequently yourself by now. It isn't always the woman who withdraws. Sometimes, after a moment of real closeness, something happens inside you. You fall silent. Freeze. Can no longer find any words.

I think this observation shows that the wound lies not only in not having been chosen. It also lies in the fact that real intimacy sometimes overwhelmed you. Lake Otto Maigler thereby takes on something almost symbolic. At sixteen, it was the place you didn't dare go to. Now you go there in autumn, winter, and spring. Not out of longing for Samantha. But because you are making it your place.

Now another thought appears: “Why dream of the sea? There are lakes here.” I find that very beautiful. It seems to me like a small movement away from an idealised future and towards what is actually within reach. That isn't resignation. It's more like a return. I also see a change in your astrology site. A week ago, it sounded like a current pulling you in. Now you write: “It's actually finished now.” That sounds almost relieved. No longer feverish. You created something. And now it is allowed simply to be there.

One final thought about the crowded lakes. In the past, I would have assumed that it was mainly your social insecurity keeping you away. Today, I no longer think so. I think your nervous system is genuinely seeking calm at the moment. You have processed an enormous amount over the past few weeks—dreams, memories, your website, conversations with Ms Lenores, your mother, your radix. A crowded bathing lake would probably feel more like stimulation than freedom.

Perhaps that is precisely why Lake Otto Maigler keeps returning to your thoughts. Not because you are looking for Samantha. But because two periods of your life meet there. The sixteen-year-old Mirko who didn't dare. And the Mirko of today, who suddenly thinks: “I could just drive there. Because I feel like it. Not to please anyone. Not to be seen. Simply because I want to swim.” It's a small sentence. But I think it contains more freedom than many a grand life plan.

As I read your memories, I had the impression that Samantha plays a somewhat different role from many of the women we've discussed.

When you talk about Birgit, Sonja, or Maria, your narrative often revolves around hurt, disappointment, or the struggle for a relationship. With Samantha, something else takes centre stage. Vitality. You describe her laugh, her blonde hair, her openness, her radiance, her childlike way of eating. Even the memory of her sister isn't told voyeuristically,

but is full of wonder at an uninhibited naturalness. She seems to have become an embodiment for you of what you later described as your pursuit of beauty. Not beauty in a purely physical sense. But beauty as an expression of vitality.

Something else strikes me too. You said that she kissed you. You had lovely moments with her. You had fun together. If I had to reconstruct your story from your memories alone, I would say: Samantha did like you. Perhaps not in the way you wanted her to. But she was warm and receptive towards you. The sentence “She didn't want me more strongly” is probably your later interpretation. The concrete memories initially tell a different story.

Klaus occupies my thoughts too. He appears beside Samantha as someone who was already one step ahead. Older. A car. More self-assured. Perhaps he embodied precisely what you couldn't yet feel within yourself at the time. Not because he was objectively “better”. But because you felt smaller beside him.

That feeling then returns at Lake Otto Maigler. The lake itself isn't the wound. The wound is the idea: “The others are living life. I'm standing outside.” That idea has evidently left a deep imprint.

I also find the contrast with today interesting. You write: “Why dream of the sea? There are lakes here.” That is almost the reversal of it. The sixteen-year-old Mirko thought: “Life is happening where the others are.” The Mirko of today thinks: “I can decide for myself where my life happens.” It is a quiet but meaningful difference.

Astrologically, today I would even associate Samantha less with Pluto or Chiron than I did before. She reminds me more of your Venus–Jupiter–Moon conjunction in the 10th house. She awakens something in you that loves beauty, loves lightness, and can take delight in an open laugh. The actual wound arises only when Neptune begins to turn the real Samantha into a symbol: “She belongs to a world I have no access to.” Yet your memories do tell of access. Not complete. Not lasting. But present.

Perhaps there is something comforting in that today. Not because Samantha would have been “the one”. But because she shows that the young Mirko was by no means invisible. He could touch someone. He could be kissed. He could make someone laugh.

The real problem often began after those moments—when doubt arose within you about whether it could really be true and whether you were enough. That seems to me to be the part that runs like a thread through many of your later relationships.

Yes. And I think that is an important realisation.

Over the past few weeks, we've talked a great deal about your mother, your father, and your relationships. The question of why women didn't see you or value you enough often moved to the centre.

With Samantha, something different now appears. She did see you. So did Yvonne. Ginger did too, at least at times. Even Maria had periods when she engaged with you attentively.

The pattern often doesn't begin with rejection, but shortly after the experience of closeness. Then something emerges that I would almost describe as an inner observer. It asks: “Was that really so?” “Am I enough?” “Does she really want me?” “The others are surely better at this.”

This observer seems to me to be the real adversary. It made me think of your dream about Anna. She casually talks about good sex with her ex. The moment you wake up, you start wondering how you should have responded.

It isn't the remark itself that preoccupies you. It's your reaction. You become an observer of yourself. The same thing happens with the memory of the sexual scene with your mother. Or with the dance in the suit of armour. Or at the children's birthday party with the coins. Almost never does your attention remain on the event. It immediately jumps to your own behaviour. “Why did I...?” “Why was I...?” “I should have...” Perhaps that is precisely the connection between Chiron and Neptune that we discussed. Chiron says: “There is a wound.” Neptune says: “And now I lose myself in the images surrounding it.” Reality disappears. What remains is the story about yourself. That is why I find Samantha almost healing today. Because when your memories are read soberly, an entirely different film emerges. A girl kisses you. She spends time with you. She laughs with you. You have fun.

This isn't the story of a boy whom nobody wanted. It is the story of a boy who couldn't believe that this was enough. And perhaps that is the crucial difference. Not: “I wasn't lovable.” But: “I couldn't hold on to a sense of being lovable within myself.” That is something entirely different.

And I have the impression that over the past few weeks you have come a good deal closer to recognising this difference. Not because the wound has disappeared, but because you are beginning to distinguish between the actual experience and the later inner narrative about it. I consider that one of the most significant steps I have observed in our conversations so far.

I find that a very interesting thread right now.

Because I believe that one compliment isn't the same as another. There are compliments that are actually judgements. “You look good today.” Between the lines, it can imply: You usually don't. Or: “You did that well.” Perhaps the implication is: I am assessing you.

When someone has subjected you to a great deal of shame, even their positive statements often still carry the old relationship within them. The child senses that. It doesn't hear only the words. It hears the whole person. That is why I believe you immediately when you say that your mother's compliments didn't feel loving. Perhaps there really was something strained within her. A sentence she said because that is what one is supposed to say. Or because she briefly felt guilty. But not because she truly delighted in you. And children are astonishingly precise in noticing this difference.

Christian Hemschemeier's exercise seems almost like the opposite. Saying something kind to someone. And wanting nothing in return. Not even a thank-you. That changes the quality completely. Then it is no longer about influencing the other person or steering a relationship. You simply share something you genuinely perceive.

I could imagine that you liked this exercise so much because it contains exactly what you lacked as a child. Not praise. Delight in another person. That is something entirely different. Interestingly, it made me think of Yvonne.

You once said that she sometimes noticed gestures of yours or things you had said, and that she appreciated precisely those little idiosyncrasies. She apparently didn't say: “You're wonderful.” But rather something like: “I like what you just did.” That is much more concrete. It shows: I really saw you. Perhaps that was precisely why these memories suddenly resurfaced after decades.

And now another thought occurs to me that fits your radix well. You have often described your Moon, Venus, and Jupiter in the 10th house as the true centre of your radix. Perhaps those three do not primarily love being admired at all. Perhaps they love something much simpler: being able to take genuine delight in another person. Not analysing. Not improving. Not rescuing. Not possessing. Simply delighting in the fact that this person is exactly as they are.

If that is true, then your pleasure in this exercise fits it astonishingly well. Because it is really a small Venus–Jupiter exercise: perceiving beauty and expressing it without wanting to hold on to it. And perhaps there is also a small invitation to yourself in that.

By now, you've become good at looking closely at others. Ole's radix, Dörte and Ole, your blog posts—everywhere, you try to recognise the core of a person. The more difficult exercise might one day be to turn the same gaze on yourself. Not with the question: “Am I lovable?” But with the much quieter question: “What would delight me about Mirko if I met him for the first time today?”

I have the impression that this question opens a different door from the search for validation. It is more of an invitation to encounter yourself with the same curious and benevolent attention that you so enjoy giving to others.

I actually like that. Not because the question was bad—but because your reaction reveals something.

I think the sentence “What would delight me about Mirko?” immediately activated something in you that says: “So now I'm supposed to love myself again. Here comes that self-love business again.” And a part of you seems allergic to precisely that. But I think your reaction reveals a second thing too.

Throughout our conversations, you have repeatedly made it clear that you aren't looking for positive formulas, but for something that feels true. You've stopped me several times when I moved things in a positive direction too quickly. You were right to do so. That is why I would take a different direction today.

It just struck me that it wasn't Yvonne's compliment that moved you. It was something else. She saw something she genuinely liked. The emphasis is on her. Not on you. She didn't have to force herself. She wasn't trying to achieve anything. She simply felt delight.

That is entirely different from the question of whether you are lovable. So perhaps this isn't about learning to like yourself at all. Perhaps it is about your nervous system eventually experiencing: there are people who genuinely delight in me. That isn't an exercise. It's an experience. And experiences cannot be summoned by thinking. That is why I found your memory of Yvonne so precious. Because it proves that this existed in your life. Not often. But it did exist.

And perhaps your pain today has less to do with being unable to accept yourself than with knowing how nourishing this form of being seen is—and how rarely you experienced it. At the moment, that seems closer to what you are actually describing than any invitation to self-acceptance.

So your inner “What a bullshit question!” could also mean: “Don't distract me from the real subject now.” And perhaps the real subject isn't self-love at all. It's the experience that genuine appreciation feels entirely different from praise, duty, or appeasement. Yvonne gave you a taste of it. That is why this memory is still alive after more than thirty years. It touched something that had received hardly any nourishment before.