So many questions remain unanswered. So many emotional issues are yet to be resolved. Will it ever be any different? Will everything in your world eventually become settled and sorted? Let us hope not, for then there would be no more adventure, uncertainty or excitement. You don't need to clear everything up now, you just need to clear up some of it. That's not as difficult as you might imagine. One brave conversation, attempted in a spirit of sincerity and friendliness, will yet produce a very positive result. 

Too many people play too much chess. It's a fine game, but it creates a dangerous impression. Players end up believing that everything can be carefully planned and intelligently thought through. With strategy, forethought and analysis, all problems can be avoided. Well, no they can't. Not even if you are a grandmaster. By all means, consider your options now, but there are some emotions you cannot legislate for. Only plans made with an allowance for the needs of the heart will prove truly constructive as time goes by.

'Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.' So said the 17th century cavalier poet, Richard Lovelace. Was he right? Well, those stones and bars can do a pretty good impression of a prison if you are trapped inside them. Still, though, such impediments are as nothing compared to the mental and emotional limitations we impose on ourselves from time to time. It is time to break out of the box you are caught in. What's making you feel trapped? There really is now a way to break free... if that's what you .

 Some battles can never be won. No matter how determinedly we fight, we discover that our opponents are just as highly motivated and well equipped. So we end up in a dreadful stalemate where antagonism continues yet resolution remains irritatingly unlikely. Are you in such a situation now? You may fear as much, but things seem much worse than they actually are. Don't despair. And don't give in either. You are not going round in circles. You are simply revisiting old ground so that this time you can truly conquer a fear. 

Why move on if you are happy where you are? Why fight if you'd prefer to surrender? Why feel that you must do something when nothing is a perfectly fine thing to do? You have lately gained a lot of momentum. You won't lose it if you now stop pushing quite so hard. Indeed, you could do with a chance to draw breath, to check the extent to which change is starting to happen and to adjust the plan you have been following. It may not take as much as you think to achieve as much as you are hoping for. 

'If you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully.' So said the great poet Kahlil Gibran. The message here is about vulnerability. How important it is that we allow ourselves to feel this, if we ever want to experience life's most deep, true magic. There is something you are afraid of now. Don't be afraid.

Don't argue. Just do as you are told. Knuckle under. Acquiesce. Agree. Surrender. Capitulate. Why are you so reluctant? You are only being instructed to do what's good for you. Show a little gratitude and humility. Bow, curtsey or touch your forelock. If you won't demonstrate due deference to your superiors, you deserve all the trouble and conflict you are likely to get. Also, (by the way) all the success and satisfaction that this is likely to lead to. It is time to stop being the victim of your fears and your fantasies.

You had an idea. It seemed good at the time. Now you have your doubts. You may even reach a point soon where you wonder what on earth possessed you to imagine it, far less try to follow it through. None of this, though, proves that you are wrong. We all have misgivings - even, at times, about the arrangements that are the smartest we have ever made. You are now having to reconsider your commitment to a policy. It may well be, though, that having thought it through again, you decide to stick with it.

Tick. Tock. Tick... Tock... Ti... ... ck. To... ... ck. T... We can't speed up the passage of time. Nor, when we really want to, can we slow it down. Ah, and when we don't want to... That's another story. You don't mind waiting for something now. You recognise that, to some extent at least, you have no option, other than to be patient. Really, though, a process is becoming painfully long and drawn out. This is not procrastination or prevarication; it's purgatory. But there may just be some good news in your emotional life very soon.'

When you are content to be simply yourself and you don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you.' So said Lao Tzu, in China, a few centuries BC. Nobody is sure exactly when he lived, but most experts place him as a contemporary of Confucius. I wonder if they ever got together for a pot of green tea and a friendly contest to see who could come up with the deepest one-liners. Anyway, back to your love life forecast. Re-read the quote. That's your advice. Take it, trust it and prepare to start living like a legend.

In the fairy stories there are always three wishes. Fairies, witches, leprechauns, whatever they may be, invariably give birth to their blessings as triplets. Heroes and heroines often make a muck-up of their opportunity. They waste the first wish on something silly, the second on fixing the problem they have created and the third on getting things back how they were. What should their first wish always be? 'Grant me the wisdom to wish for the right thing.' You've only got one wish now. Make it that one! It's all you need.

The world is full of people who bend the rules and break the laws. It often appears as if they are getting clean away with this. Even when they get caught the penalties are often surprisingly mild. Should you then lower your standards? Are you a fool to hang on to such high principles and codes of behaviour? Of course not. The issue is not one of punishment; it is one of reward. Being ethical and generous will yet bring you greater satisfaction in your emotional life than you could achieve in any other way.