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Love In A Time Of Mercury Retrograde

A friend of mine recently wrote and asked:

“Is the advice that ‘Don’t get together with someone during a MERCURY RETROGRADE because what they appear to be is nothing but LIES upon a throne of DECEIT!!!’ worth paying attention to or not?”

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If you’re anything like me, by the end of a Mercury Retrograde you’re ready to blame pretty much everything and anything on it. That’s not fair — even in my case this time, where my communications have been particularly screwed up lately.

It’s easy to generalize out from communications and contracts and short trips going screwy to assuming that the universe and everyone in it is somehow out to get you. I’d like to set this straight right now. And hey — let’s use math!

Let’s do some simple math to demonstrate what I’m getting at. Astrologer Linea Van Horn has calculated that Mercury is retrograde 19.1% of the time. This means that if you pick up a calendar and randomly pick a day, there is about a 19.1% chance that Mercury is retrograde on that day.

Now make two lists. In column A list all of your previous and/or failed relationships — everything from “you got married but it ended in an ugly manner” to “I had a first date set up but he/she didn’t show up, or it went nowhere.” Then in Column B, place “1” if you are currently in a relationship based on the definition provided above, and place “zero” if you are not currently in a situation like that.

Now, you will see that if you compare the numbers from Column A and Column B you’ll discover that OH MY GOD, I AM A COMPLETELY UNLOVABLE MONSTER AND I WILL DIE ALONE. Sorry… I didn’t mean to editorialize there. This is about you, not me.

See how easy it is to screw something up as simple as a statistical analysis of your love life when Mercury is retrograde?

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My original point was this: I don’t believe that humans are any more or less deceptive or deceitful than usual when Mercury is retrograde. I simply think it’s more likely that their deceptive or deceitful nature might be accidentally exposed. Or at least as likely, you are going to detect something that looks like trouble… but maybe you’re wrong, because, well, Mercury Retrograde.

Sometimes, when someone hangs up on you, it really is just because they’ve lost cell phone service. Or maybe they did it deliberately using their cell phone service as an excuse. What really matters is the follow-up behavior from this person.

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This leads me to one special observation for those of you who have become involved in long-distance relationships (isn’t the internet awesome?).

Suppose you discover that the cutie from the store down the street is single and you ask him or her out. Next week, you’re having dinner with that person. Fine. That’s one thing. But it’s often the case in our modern era that we get built up into relationships that last for months of pure talk before there is any chance of an actual in-person relationship. And in a time like that it is both possible that a communications glitch can be can seem like a much bigger disaster than it actually is. That, and by the time you meet, it can carry the weight of an arranged marriage rather than a first date. This in turn tends to make us overthink things like the cell phone glitch that I mentioned.

In conclusion, relationships are complicated. human hearts are complicated. And Mercury Retrograde can just complicate your perception of things. Don’t worry, it’s not you and it’s not them. It’s just the damn humans.