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Chances are, you already know we’re in Mercury retrograde—and not necessarily because you’re tracking planetary transits. Everyone blames everything that’s going wrong on the Mercury Retrograde that’s happening right now.

True, retrograde Mercury tends to surprise you with the unexpected and unwanted, usually in situations related to your past. (Looking at you exes.)

Actually, this is the point. Retrograde movement back requires — some would say nudges — a look at where you’ve been and what perspectives or past versions of yourself need to be revisited and re-evaluated before you can let them go. Think of retrograde as a time to re-learn all the words that apply to your life. review. Reassess Reevaluate. Refocus.

During the current retrograde, you can add relationships to this list. The dominant astrological sign at the moment is Taurus, which means that everything in our experience is influenced and experienced through the lens of the ruling planet Venus. Venus, revered by the ancients as a goddess, emphasizes beauty, love and culture.

While Mercury is known for failure and misunderstanding, Venus emphasizes security and ease. This retrograde forces you to confront the places where you are running away from dealing with your emotional needs in your old relationship dynamics.

Yes, Mercury retrograde can introduce confusion into situations and thoughts. But this does not necessarily mean something negative or terrible. You may find that this eventually clears up your feelings.

And this is the deeper lesson of Mercury retrograde. It’s about no longer holding yourself hostage to your past situations, stories, and expectations.

How Mercury Retrograde Affects Your Relationships

Each astrological transit affects each person slightly differently depending on the placement of the planets in your birth chart. Whatever house Taurus is in your chart is the area of ​​life most likely to be affected during this Mercury retrograde.

Read before you do anything drastic in your relationship

Take a moment to think about whether your current situation has been a recurring theme in your relationship. If this sounds familiar, maybe it’s time to consider whether the other constant among these situations is, well, you.

This is not an accusation or an attribution of blame. It is an acknowledgment that you are human. With these experiences inevitably come false perceptions and patterns that become the lens through which you perceive the world. Retrograde can cause situations that challenge the story you may have been telling yourself may not match the objective reality of the situation.

Relationship with yourself

There’s no more idyllic time to revisit your relationship with self-love and beauty than with Venus in charge. Let this be a time of re-evaluation and revelation.

Ask yourself again and again, how do you want to see yourself? You may want to volunteer, disrupt your routine, be honest with someone you care about, or allow yourself to believe in your own human capacity.

Are you overwhelmed by the desire to improve your external beauty? There is nothing wrong with that. You can suddenly tidy up your workplace, wash your car, dye your hair that shade you’ve been craving for years, or splurge on heels. Just remind yourself that it’s not the physical changes that matter. What matters is how this change affects the way you feel about yourself and life.

Your primary love relationship is always about yourself. Only from this moment can you make decisions and take action to create a loving relationship with someone else in your life, if you even want it. And in the meantime, be your own soul mate. Make a place to sit and read, schedule a massage, attend a yoga retreat, join that men’s group, or just sit outside at night and enjoy the space.

Casual relationships

Expect the unexpected in terms of interactions with friends, family, colleagues, and yes, flirting that you haven’t seen or thought about in years. These meetings are not meant to bore you. They should lead you to a more objective awareness, regardless of whether it is about a past situation or about a previous version of you.

If you decide to re-enter the situation, try to maintain some level of self-awareness at all times. Do you still feel the same disappointment or frustration that you once felt around this person? Are you able to see the possibility of another version of what happened other than the story you are telling yourself? Are you in a less emotionally charged place where you can talk about what happened?

Significant partnerships

Mercury retrograde under the influence of Venus is bound to make at least a cameo appearance in your most intimate relationships. This is likely to happen where you become emotionally avoidant. (We said Mercury retrograde was misunderstood. We never said it was easy.)

If you’ve allowed deep-seated issues to go unspoken or unresolved, you can’t expect them to go unnoticed in the coming weeks. Ever the deceiver, Mercury creates situations where misunderstandings or lack of communication become more annoying than usual. It will probably become unbearably oppressive. Simply put, there will no longer be an option to continue to let it go unnoticed and get sidetracked in small, drastic ways.

Mercury creates these situations precisely so that you can confront the underlying difficulties and actually solve the underlying problem that you have been ignoring or avoiding. It’s also worth asking yourself, are you still feeling the same frustrations from past relationships and projecting that onto your current partner?

Whatever the problem, it’s time to face it. Or, to put it another way, it’s a chance to reconcile your love for yourself to the point where you can no longer ask for what you really want in terms of an emotionally supportive relationship. This is the influence of Venus.

Situations

If you’re in any situation and wondering whether you want to stay or break up, Mercury’s mistakes can help you come to terms with where you really stand.

Maybe you value physical contact, but your significant other feels emotionally distant most of the time. Or you don’t know how to deal with the fact that your partner is absorbed in work. If you’ve been letting things go, Mercury-induced mistakes are possible that will force you to look at your situation differently.

Essentially, you want to explore whether your issues are a complicated but real part of the relationship, or whether it’s an emotionally unstable dynamic that’s hurting you.

If you refocus on yourself (see “Me” above), you will be able to approach the situation with greater clarity. The more you come back to yourself, the more clearly you will be able to sense your current dynamics. If you feel constant apprehension about whether you can trust your partner, you may feel a heightened sense of need for resolution. figure out if your mistrust is unfounded, or come to terms with the fact that you can no longer tolerate a relationship in which you feel constant mistrust.

There is no need to force a decision. Stay curious and allow yourself to be more and more knowledgeable. But don’t rely entirely on Mercury to take care of the rest. Some changes may be required on your part.

If you are in an emotionally or physically abusive relationship, you can get help at any hour of the day or night with the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Call 800-799-SAFE(7233), text “START” to 88788, or join the chat on their website.

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About our contributor

Supernova is an urban mystic and reiki master. You can follow her travels on Instagram @super_nova01010 and TikTok @supernova01010.