The following is an excerpt from The Year Ahead 2005: Your Ultimate Astrology Planner by Susan Miller.

Aries
In 2005, love will turn serious and should bring interesting life lessons. This comes as a result of teacher planet Saturn, which is due to enter your fifth house of true love in late July for a two-year visit. If you have found love hard to find, ask yourself if you are avoiding a relationship due to a past disappointment. If you want love and have been unconsciously been avoiding attachments, being aware of this tendency may help you move forward much more effectively.

If you feel you have an excellent relationship you may find that a few obstacles keep cropping up. Your sweetheart or spouse may need to travel a great deal, or be preoccupied with studies or their job. It’s even possible your other half my need to live apart from you for a while for any number of good reasons, such as to take a rare job opportunity overseas, attend to a complex family matter, or to serve in the armed forces.

You may also discover that a new partner is not fully available, perhaps due to an impending divorce that has not yet been finalized. Saturn will set up these barriers to test the depth of your feelings, and to teach you to be more practical, patient and realistic about what to expect from another person in a relationship. Despite these problems, the outcome to a new or present alliance could be quite upbeat, thanks to the presence of good fortune Jupiter in your house of marriage. You could get engaged or married sooner than you think—watch April or October for reasons to move up your timetable. If you are already wed, your chart shows that your partner will do exceptionally well in 2005, and you will benefit as a result.

Taurus
Mars will give you enormous sex appeal during in the second half of 2005. You’ll feel sexy and energized, and you may find yourself flustered at the ease you are able to attract intriguing new people to your orbit, almost like bees to honey. If you fell in love last year---or if you are already married---your deepening attachment this year will show you what love is all about. Watch for thrilling romantic developments to take place near your birthday, and in November.

A number of disruptive eclipses over the past two years that fell in Taurus and in your opposite sign of Scorpio have brought you may sudden ups and downs in matters of the heart, but you seem ready to leave that phase behind. You can now look ahead with healthy optimism, and with good reason. Jupiter, the planet of good fortune, vision and expansion, will enter your house of marriage at year's end—to stay there until the end of 2006—and will bring you all the opportunity you need to paint your heartfelt dreams on a grand canvas.

Gemini
2005 rates a “ten” for love and romance in this golden, glorious year! Jupiter, the great benefactor, will increase your powers of attraction many fold. An important new relationship may come up in spring or fall. Jupiter will be traveling in Libra most of this year, the sign that rules marriage, so you may find yourself moving rapidly through the many of the stages of love, from first meeting, courtship, engagement, marriage, to baby, in short order. If that’s what you want, Jupiter will help you realize as many of those steps as you feel ready to take. Romance will take a number of twists and turns, but whatever occurs will only thicken the plot and give your love life added zest. When it comes to love, in 2005 you’re the zodiac’s golden sign.

Cancer
Saturn’s recent visit to Cancer had some influence over your romantic life. It must have been hard to allow yourself to be vulnerable in love under such difficult life conditions. If you broke up, new love will grow again in the second half—watch November for absolutely thrilling signs of life. Those who are attached and stayed together can rejoice—part of this trend was to test the determination of you and your partner to stay as one.

If you are single, keep in mind: Jupiter, the giver of gifts and luck, will move into your fifth house of true love for the first time in twelve years at the end of October and remain there thirteen months. This is fabulous news, for this one aspect will give you one of the best opportunities in over a year to find the love you know you deserve. Many people report that they meet their true love when Jupiter takes up this position in their chart. If you are married, this same house is the house of “baby” so your wish for a child may be granted this year, a very exciting prospect. Jupiter’s position suggests that you will be able to spend more time tending to your private, personal life, and maneuver it just so, to make it all that you have imagined it to be.

Leo
As you enter the New Year you’ll be in no mood to buckle down to a dreary schedule—and there will be no reason to do that! Just the opposite, your chart shows that socially, you’ll be just cranking up! Your spirits will be high, so if you hope to meet someone new and intriguing, plan to be out circulating.

A relationship started in January could set the tone for the rest of the year. Valentine’s Day could be the best you’ve seen in years, for it brings a near ideal meeting of Jupiter and Neptune, the glamorous planet of romance.

Summer will bring a decision-point about the person you’ve been dating—and no matter what decision you make, it seems to work in your favor, so do so with confidence. The social tone of the year won’t quit. By December you’ll be the brilliant sparkler at any gathering.

Married? You may have plenty to celebrate when you hear that the stork is about to deliver a little bundle of joy. Most of the year, no matter what your status, you’ll have more invitations for parties than you could possibly attend. Male or female, you’ll need more than your usual number of outfits to wear to all these lavish affairs!

Virgo
Romantically, if unattached, January through March should prove to be a captivating time to find new love. Later in the year, the winter holidays will also sparkle with New Year’s Eve 2005 one of your best ever. Plan to ring in 2006 in style.

Attached Virgos may have some sleepless nights over the erratic behavior of a long-term partner. Watch February, May, June and September as months when hidden resentments may come out in the open. As hard as these moments might be, they will allow you to clear the air and start fresh. If your partner pushes you too hard, you’ll leave, possibly quite suddenly. If you both love each other, you will work through things. In that case, you could make your relationship stronger than before.

A rather important trend involving Saturn’s departure from Cancer in mid-July should have a very upbeat effect on your social life too. You may have felt that you had too few supportive friends, perhaps because you moved to a new locale and haven’t had time (or the luck) to make new friends. Or, you may have worried about the welfare of a certain friend, such as if your friend was ill and needed certain treatments. Perhaps you even went with your friend for a visit.

Libra
The eclipses last year fell in Libra and your opposite sign of Aries, and will continue to do so in 2005. Years in which eclipses in our own sign falls almost always are transformational years. The eclipses in Aries are there to change the status of your present relationship, possibly for the better, as eclipses encourage the parties involved to share their true feelings. If you are in love, you may become engaged or married, most likely within six weeks of your birthday.

On the other hand, if you come to the conclusion that the differences you see in your relationship are irreconcilable, you will more likely now break up than wait to see if things improve. Extremes like this are common under these type of aspects, but with Jupiter protecting all your interests, no matter what happens, you will move to a far better place of the mind and spirit.

There is one other way the eclipses in Libra and Aires might play out in regard to your relationship. Instead of experiencing changes in emotion (either finding you grow in love, or grow apart) you may have become concerned over the health or well being of your partner. This episode will give you a chance to demonstrate your love, and could bond you together ever more closely in years to come. Throughout this phase you will gradually redefine who you are, and may undergo an exciting transformation.

Scorpio
If you are single and looking for love, March, May and June should be extraordinary—you are sure to generate plenty of heat and light. Jupiter’s entry into your sign in late October could herald the start of a major new relationship if you are not attached by that time.

If you are part of an established relationship, recent eclipses over the past two years have tested your commitment to your partner. Strong relationships were to become stronger, but weak ones were ended (or will soon). You have one more eclipse in this family of eclipses (Taurus-Scorpio) in 2005, which is set to arrive on April 24—it will be a milder one than most. By then you will have all the information you need to know where to bring your relationship next. If your birthday falls near October 24 you will feel this eclipse more strongly than other members of your sign. November-born readers may not notice any shifts eclipses that have already come by in 2003 and 2004 were mathematically closer to the degrees of your Sun.

Try to settle any disagreements that you may have with your partner during the first ten months of 2005. If you’re in the midst of a divorce, this advice will be doubly important to heed, for Mars’ impending six-month visit to your seventh house of partnership, beginning on July 28, suggests negotiations about division of property could become contentious. Try to nip any problems in the bud before they become overblown.

If you are happy, your partner will play a dominant role in the relationship and push it forward in 2005, especially during the second half. This means you will more likely follow your partner’s lead rather than be the leader yourself, may be very content to do so!

Sagittarius
During most of 2004, your career provided such snap, crackle and pop that you almost had to relegate romance to second place. That emphasis finally changed in October 2004 when your ruling planet, Jupiter, moved into your eleventh house of people/ parties/ events and brought back some of the carefree fun to your life that you so sorely missed.

Happily, bountiful Jupiter will continue to spice your social life for the first ten months of 2005, so this sweet trend is not due to end any time soon.

If you are single, your chart suggests that a friend will be your main conduit to a major romance in months to come, so don’t wave off social events that your pals recommend you attend. While you may date quite a bit in 2005, your serious new love relationship will most likely surface in April or May, and could be with a busy, successful entrepreneur. (Yes, male readers: your new sweetheart could own her own business.)

Married Sagittarius will enjoy a calm, peaceful time, which has to be music to your ears. That was not the case during the years 2001-2003, but apparently you have closed the door on that phase, and you won’t experience anything similar any time soon.

Single or married, the best time to take a vacation would be in late June or July when Mars will increase your magnetism to irresistible heights—a trip taken then could turn out to be a romantic dream.

At holiday time 2005 many planets in Sagittarius will make you glitter and glow at any holiday party. What a year!

Capricorn
Romance may have been a sore spot for some Capricorns. If you are single and looking for love, your romantic prospects will be very bright for 2005. If you’ve been alone, with energetic Mars lighting your house of true love from end of July 2005 through February 2006, you will be able to make up for lost time. The months of May, mid-July, August, September and December are particularly promising.

You’ve learned a lot about human nature over the past 18 months, so now armed with that knowledge, you won’t make the same mistakes twice. More practical now than ever before, you now know what’s reasonable to expect from marriage and a marriage partner. It’s onward and upward! The universe truly has planned a lovely period for you in the second half.

Aquarius
If you are dating seriously, this year, you may need to decide how satisfying your current relationship is to you and how much you are willing to do to make it grow. If the answer is “a lot” then you will work to solidify your commitment—marriage is a real possibility. If you are already married, your partner may need to lean on you temporarily. It’s a new role for you, but it is not an unpleasant one. Other Aquarians may suddenly discover serious areas of disagreement and need to decide whether those differences can be resolved.

Single (and not dating) Aquarians have a different outlook. If that’s you, expect to be adored in February and pampered in June. A more serious mood overtakes you from August onward though, due to the arrival of Saturn in Leo. Will you and your new lover become exclusive? Could be---that’s your call! Admittedly, the idea of settling down is becoming much more attractive to you by the minute ---and that’s a thought that used to horrify you!

Pisces
Over the past few years, love seems to have brought many frustrating obstacles. If you fell in love, you soon discovered that the object of your affections was either still attached to someone else, or still in the process of trying to recover from bruises inflicted by an ex.

Separations that came up between you and a new love interest, were either due to conditions that could not be helped (a tyrant boss, a medical residency, or lack of a visa) or ones that could be helped but somehow weren’t fixed, such as differences in romantic styles and needs. Overall, it’s easy to see why romance did not play the major role you wanted it to play in your life. You may have begun to wonder if you could ever handle a relationship again---or if you whether you would even want to do so.

This year, by mid-summer or fall, it looks like you will be ready to take a new chance on love. Your new love will be worth the wait, so hang in there! Saturn, the culprit here too, will move on in July, releasing you to a better chance for love!