Personally I’ve found that sometimes what comes to light in either a Mercury or Venus retrograde is something about the person that you haven’t seen before, or just plain haven’t wanted to see. I think many women, whether with friends or lovers, have a tendency to always want to make-up and put the past behind them. Which is an admirable thing unless some sort of subtle abuse, whether verbal or emotional is going on. Our best friends know things about us and therefore are in a privileged position when it comes to saying things that can hurt our feelings. It’s important to be direct and honest in letting someone know if they’ve hurt your feelings and asking them not to in the future. If the person is any friend at all they will apologize, after acknowledgng that they most likely unknowningly hurt your feelings, and they will say that they will try not to do it again in the future. Anything less than such an apology might mean that you have some serious thinking to do as to whether or not you have a true friend on your hand or instead have someone who may only enjoy the friendship when they have the upper hand or are always right in an argument or even worse, when they feel they are controlling your life and decisions you make.

And that might mean making the decision to let the old friend go. Especially if you’re asserting yourself as to what kind of behaviour you’ll tolerate in the friendship and what you won’t. For instance, I lost my oldest childhood friend last year over what seemed to be at the time a simple miscommunication. However, it was compounded when after expressing my hurt over what my friend said, instead of consolation and genuine apology I was met with hostility and blame for even asserting any sort of boundary whatsoever in what my friend could say was the “right” plan of action for my life. Yes, she knew me well and for a very long time, but in this case, she was clearly telling me something that while might have been good for her, wouldn’t have been good for me. But she continued to insist that she was “right” even if my feelings were hurt, and therefore, my feelings didn’t matter.

Unfortunately, when we tried to discuss it further and I confronted her in a calm manner with my point of view, as well as the fact that she’s not in charge of my life she started screaming at me. This was something that I decided I could not and would not tolerate. I told her later that if she had a change of heart from her anger and missed our friendship and wanted to fully apologize for her poor behaviour and let me know she realizes she doesn’t know what’s best for me always because she’s not me, then to call me up.

However that did not happen and I had to emotionally let her go even though she was my oldest friend.

So I think that as far as reconcilliations go, whether between friends or lovers, the main issue is whether or not the person you want to reconcile with also wants to reconcile with you. As they say, it takes two to tango and it takes two to make up and be friends again. Real relationships involve two people, giving and taking, not one person trying to control another’s life. If you asked for a genuine attempt at making up and they’ve been ignoring you, then I think the message is clear that they don’t really want to be friends any more. It can be painful to accept that a friend just isn’t a friend any more, even if they used to be in the past. More important is making choices about what kind of behviour you’ll accept from your friends, as this will affect all of your relationships down the road.

So if you’ve spent this time during a Venus Retrograde realizing that relationships from the past are not working in the “now” and you know that the other person isn’t genuinely making attempts at reconcilling, it may be time to may a break. Venus is going Direct tomorrow and the future, your future, lies ahead. Make it what you want it to be.