Is Venus conjunct Saturn a difficult aspect?

It is a slow one, which is not the same thing. Saturn's authority is over time and standards, so the contact reads as delay and selectiveness rather than as coldness. What it withholds early it tends to keep late.

What is the orb for a conjunction?

The widest margin any aspect is allowed, shared only with the opposition. That width is worth knowing before reading much into a conjunction: a great many of them are wide.

How is it different from Venus square Saturn?

The square sets the two at right angles, so the caution can be heard arguing with the wanting. The conjunction has no angle, so there is nothing to overhear. The same two faculties are involved and only one of the two arrangements feels like a conflict.

Aspect

Venus conjunction Saturn

Venus conjunction Saturn is affection and caution occupying the same place. A conjunction is the one contact with no angle in it: the two sit together, so what would elsewhere be an argument between wanting and weighing arrives instead as a single gesture.

That is why this contact is so rarely experienced as a struggle. It is experienced as temperament.

What a conjunction does that an angle cannot

Saturn's subject is time, limit and standard. What the tradition assigns it is structure and discipline, mastery and authority, and the years of work that produce them. Brought into contact with Venus it does not stop being that. It applies to affection the standards it would apply to a craft.

A square keeps two planets audible as two, and a person can hear themselves hesitate. A conjunction fuses them, so the reserve is not a brake applied to desire — it is part of the shape the desire already has. People carrying this contact tend not to describe themselves as cautious. They describe themselves as not interested in the easy version.

Saturn is a social planet and Venus a personal one, which is to say Saturn is the slower of the two, and in a fusion the slower planet sets the clock. Attachment forms later than the surrounding evidence suggests it should, and then does not move.

How it tends to show up

A few long attachments rather than many short ones, arrived at without ever quite deciding.

Taking a compliment as information to be verified rather than as a gift.

Loyalty that outlasts the reasons for it, and is not withdrawn when they go.

Finding that the things built slowly are the things still standing.

What changes the reading

The conjunction carries the widest margin the scheme allows, shared with the opposition, which is why it is claimed so often. A pairing at the far edge of that margin behaves far more mildly than the name suggests. Nearer to exact is louder.

The sign the two share decides which of them sets the tone. In a sign Saturn governs, the contact leans toward Saturn and reads as gravity; in a sign Venus governs, it reads as taste.

Other contacts to Venus matter more here than they would across an angle, because the fusion supplies no contrast of its own. Whatever else touches Venus is where the relief comes from.

Questions

Is Venus conjunct Saturn a difficult aspect?: It is a slow one, which is not the same thing. Saturn's authority is over time and standards, so the contact reads as delay and selectiveness rather than as coldness. What it withholds early it tends to keep late.
What is the orb for a conjunction?: The widest margin any aspect is allowed, shared only with the opposition. That width is worth knowing before reading much into a conjunction: a great many of them are wide.
How is it different from Venus square Saturn?: The square sets the two at right angles, so the caution can be heard arguing with the wanting. The conjunction has no angle, so there is nothing to overhear. The same two faculties are involved and only one of the two arrangements feels like a conflict.