Man, looking back at April 2018, it still makes me chuckle a bit, but also taught me a huge lesson. Back then, I was really, really into horoscopes, especially the love ones. Like, to an obsessive degree, you know? Every month, I’d be scouring the internet for what the stars had planned for me, a Virgo, in my love life. April 2018 was a big one for me, I remember. I was in a relationship that felt… well, a bit stalled. We were together, but it felt like we were just coasting, not really moving forward.
So, come late March, I was already diving deep into all the predictions for April. And let me tell you, for Virgo, that month was painted as this incredibly hopeful period for love. Everything was supposed to click. New beginnings, deepening connections, major commitments even. I read one that said something like, “Expect a profound shift in your romantic life, leading to a new level of understanding and commitment.” Another one mentioned, “Opportunities for love to truly blossom are abundant.” I ate it all up, hook, line, and sinker. I thought, “This is it! This is finally our turning point!”
I started April with this massive expectation hanging over my head. Every little interaction with my partner, I’d be analyzing it, trying to fit it into the horoscope’s narrative. If he did something sweet, I’d think, “Ah, that’s the ‘deepening connection’ kicking in.” If we had a good conversation, “See? ‘New level of understanding!’” It was exhausting, honestly. I was actively trying to force reality into fitting a prediction, instead of just living it.
And then, around the second week of April, something happened that completely blindsided me. It had absolutely nothing to do with deepening connections or new commitments. It was a massive, out-of-the-blue argument. About something so ridiculously trivial too. I honestly can’t even recall the exact trigger now, but I remember the feeling. It was like a dam broke. All these unspoken frustrations, all these little things we’d been pushing under the rug, they just exploded. It was ugly. Like, really ugly. The kind of fight that makes you wonder if you even know the person you’re with, or if you even want to be with them anymore.
We barely spoke for days after that. The silence was deafening. I remember sitting there, rereading those horoscopes, feeling utterly bewildered. “Profound shift”? Yeah, it was a shift alright, but not the one they promised! “Love blossoming”? My love life felt like it was withering away on the vine! I felt cheated, stupid for believing in all that cosmic mumbo jumbo so completely. It hit me hard. All that anticipating, all that positive energy I was trying to project based on some star chart, and life just went and did its own damn thing.
That whole experience forced me to really step back and look at things. Not through the lens of a horoscope, but through the lens of actual human interaction and messy reality. I realized I’d been outsourcing my expectations for my relationship to some generalized cosmic prediction, instead of putting in the real work. Instead of openly talking about what was bothering us, instead of figuring out our issues, I was just waiting for the stars to magically align and fix everything. And when they didn’t, or when things went completely sideways, I was left flat-footed.
What I Learned from Expecting
That April, and the weeks that followed, were a huge turning point for me. It wasn’t about the stars changing or my sign suddenly getting a bad forecast. It was about me learning to deal with life head-on. Here’s what really sank in:
- Predictions can be a crutch: Relying too much on “what to expect” from a horoscope meant I wasn’t really engaging with my own life or relationship. I wasn’t taking agency.
- Life is unpredictable: No matter what the charts say, real life is messy. It’s full of unexpected turns, good and bad. You can’t control it all, and certainly not with a monthly forecast.
- Communication is key, not constellations: If things were stalled or felt off, the solution wasn’t in some external prediction. It was in talking, really talking, with my partner. It was about being vulnerable, listening, and working through stuff together.
- Experience trumps expectation: Living through that intense fight and the subsequent difficult conversations was more valuable than any “positive outlook” the horoscope offered. It showed me what we were really made of, as a couple and as individuals.
After that, things got better, but not because a horoscope said so. They got better because we actually sat down, picked apart that fight, and truly communicated about what had been brewing for months. We learned how to really listen to each other. The relationship did shift, profoundly so, but it was because we put in the hard yards, not because Mercury was in retrograde or Venus was doing something fancy. We decided to commit, not because the stars pointed to it, but because we genuinely wanted to work for it.
So now, I still glance at horoscopes sometimes, but it’s more for a laugh or a bit of fun. I don’t stake my emotional well-being or my relationship on them anymore. April 2018 taught me that “what to expect” in love, or in life for that matter, isn’t written in the stars. It’s something you build, you navigate, and you experience, day by day. You expect effort, honesty, and perhaps a whole lot of unexpected twists and turns. That’s the real forecast.
