Does your love life feel like it’s stalled or going backwards? If you’re attached, do you feel like there is more of a ‘distance’ between you and your beloved? Are you wondering who you can rely on friendship wise or who your friends really are? Are you spending time thinking back to happier days and to people you have loved and lost along the way, lovers and friends included?

If so, it’s a fair bet that you’re feeling the effects of an important and relatively rare astrological transit that is happening right now (all month and into April) known as Venus retrograde.

You might have heard of Mercury retrograde, but Mercury is not the only planet that goes into retrograde cycles. However, whereas Mercury retrogrades around four times a year, Venus – the planet of love – retrogrades only around every 18 months. So when this happens, it’s time to work with it!

Venus, which is currently in retrograde

So what does it all mean?

All you need to understand is this: any planetary retrograde takes us back to the past or makes us go over something again.

So when love planet Venus goes retrograde, it’s a time when many of us will start to have another think about our love lives, our friends and even our professional relationships. Second thoughts and second chances can happen.

Venus retrograde is also a time when we may start to reconsider our finances, but today I'm focusing on the most important thing in the world – relationships.

The dates for the 2017 retrograde are March 4 to April 15. If you want to live consciously, use this time to work on your love life, your friendships and all relationships – family and professional ones included.

It doesn’t matter if you’re single or attached, we all have relationships with family, friends, lovers and exes.

This is the time to think about them, ask yourself how you’re doing with them, sort them out if you need to!

1.     One of the main things about Venus retrograde to understand is this; it stirs up the emotions! As a result, many people are really feeling their feelings SO strongly right now – and that’s a good thing! Venus retrograde reminds us that we need to take care of our emotional baggage. We can’t leave it sitting there forever!

2.     Venus retrograde is also why so many people are looking back over their past loves and wondering if they made the right choices. (Venus retrograde is often when exes come out of the closet too. We all get a chance to really think about what really matters to us – did that person really count for something? Sometimes there is closure and sometimes there is reconciliation.)

3.     There can also be shifts within friendships when Venus goes backwards and reminds us of who and what really matters to us. If you fell out with someone and you would really love to make up, this is the time to get back in touch.

4.     Our values come up under this cycle. If you’re not living in accordance with what you really consider worthwhile, then it’s time to pivot and change your way of life, agreed? Venus retrograde is the time to do it.

Being conscious of the energies is the first step to actually working with them. If you want to live consciously, start to see Venus retrograde as your every-18-month chance to make some adjustments in your relationships and your priorities. Values do change over the years – we need to make sure we’re living our lives in accordance with what we really care about. Venus retrograde will give you pause for thought about all this.

One very easy exercise to do under Venus retrograde is to make a list of the top 5 people, places, situations, things in your life. Once you have this list, really think about it. Are you living your life in according with who and what you really care about?

Below you will find a video giving you more ideas for how to work with Venus retrograde. If you are feeling the Venus cycle, I’ve also created a free five-part video series to help you navigate it. If you need some help with your relationships, please sign up here.

Yasmin Boland is the author of best-selling Hay House books including Moonology, Astrology and Angel Astrology 101 co-authored with Doreen Virtue. You can read her Daily Moon Messages on her website www.moonology.com.