Those with Moon-Saturn aspects in synastry show feelings of deep responsibility for one another. However, this contact can be an emotionally frustrating one at times. Many people stay in these situations for a long time carrying feelings of rejection, isolation, and sometimes loneliness. A feeling of un-comfortableness can happen in this relationship and a sense of being blocked or controlled by the other. It is hard to imagine anything more different than the Moon and Saturn and it may create some emotional discontent.
The Saturn person offers the Moon physical containment and strength but may be overly critical of the Moon's core emotional needs and act a little awkward and defensive. This often means that the Moon person feels like they are being treated like a baby when they are only expressing the most natural part of themselves. The Moon represents our needs, instincts and private feelings. It is when the Moon person is being their most natural and vulnerable self that Saturn stands there shaking his or her head in disapproval. Saturn can come across as unsympathetic and showing a deeply uncaring response to the Moon, but there are usually fears and inhibitions standing in the way of a more natural response. Sometimes it results in controlling behaviour like a lack of affection and a "I know what is best attitude" and both end up feeling defensive and deeply hurt.
Again these two may be acting out parental roles and one partner often feels a heavy sense of responsibility for the other. Both need security and they must examine issues of dependency, mutually supportive roles and responsibility to one another. The Saturn individual may feel they have the acquired maturity to counsel the Moon individual regardless of age. Sometimes there are conflicts over responsibilities of family, domestic situations and professional duties. At best this combination can blend nurturing and practicality, loyalty and responsibility into the bond. The aspect in synastry usually bears well for emotional consistency, and is bound to tradition, past habits, and bondage. The contact places a serious tone on the emotional connection between them both. Some may feel they have to play out traditional roles and one partner feels they need to gain their emotional freedom back.
The Moon is the dependent part of our being while Saturn relates to caution, hardness and self-sufficiency. According to astrologer Stephen Arroyo, Saturn connections in synastry may leave the individual feeling that Saturn has something over them. They tend to respect and admire the Saturn person, at least for a while, and it is usually the person with the personal planet involved who feels most obligated to the other for a long period of time. The downfall of this combination is that the two people form an unhealthy, isolated state of dependency.
The Moon person may feel deeply hurt by Saturn's overly cautious and sometimes harsh response to their feelings. It can, at times, come across as emotional coldness. Saturn in this relationship finds it difficult to respond as freely and so may tend to pick on the Moon quite a lot.
Saturn attempts to create space between himself and the things or situations which have hurt him while the Moon attempts to draw everything to herself as part of her own subjective experience. The Moon clings to those areas which are most disturbing to Saturn, and this becomes apparent even in the realm of personal habits. It is common to find Saturn irrationally irritated by a small and often meaningless personal idiosyncrasy of dress or habit expressed by the Moon for it is only a symbol of a deeper disturbance. By Liz Greene