If your idea of love is to be told how you're not measuring up, then this is the week for you! Critical Virgo and her ruling planet Mercury hog the spotlight through Sunday, pushing Venus and Mars off to the sidelines. But they've been getting way to much attention anyway, so it's only fair that they share the stage.

On Monday, Mercury stations direct in Aquarius. That's right, Mercury retrograde is over, so you can safely talk to your lover about wanting to "open" the relationship without being misunderstood. (Caveat: Mercury doesn't leave its "shadow" until March 10, so the coast is not completely clear.)

After the Sun's ingress into imaginative Pisces on Tuesday, it opposes the Virgo Moon on Wednesday, resulting in a Lunar Eclipse. Emotions come to a head in matters of health, work, daily ritual, service and efficiency. More likely than not, you or your partner may feel criticized. Whether it's how you stack the dishes or organize the bills, it's always easy to come up short in your partner's eyes. Remember that they're trying to help you improve. Your sweetie loves you -- it's just that some of your behaviors are so irritating! Why can't you just do things his or her way? Life would be so much easier!

On Sunday, the Pisces Sun opposes Saturn in Virgo. This is one of the most depressing aspects known to humankind. Saturn limits and weighs down the creative life force of the Sun, the center of the personality. In Pisces, the Sun wants to indulge in idealistic fantasies of peace on Earth and union with God ... while Saturn in practical Virgo confronts the Sun with cold, hard reality. In a way, it's good, because Saturn can help the Pisces Sun manifest those fantasies that have a chance of surviving life on Earth. But it's still a bummer.

What does this have to do with love? If you have Virgo or Pisces Rising, the Saturn-Sun opposition and the Virgo Lunar Eclipse will be falling on your Self-Partner Axis (the First and Seventh Houses of your chart), highlighting the conflict between the needs of yourself and another. If you want to fetishize the Virgo-Pisces polarity, you can play "nurse/patient" in the privacy of your bedroom.

First photo by Glen Bowman, second by MegElizabeth_

Labels: horoscope