We meet a young woman who has just become engaged to the man of her dreams – a fairly common event during this cycle, with its connection to the seventh house of partnership.  She can’t believe he loves her and treats her so well—all the other men in her life have been rotten.  He wants to take care of her, support her emotionally and financially, and she’s torn between not believing her luck and really not believing her luck.  "What did I do to deserve this?" she asks herself, just like all those other times when the treatment she was receiving was not so loving.

Her decision to marry him will probably be the simplest part of this cycle.  The minute they announce their plans to marry, their excited friends and families pounce, anxious to help, to give advice.  Before the bride knows it, the plans for her wedding day have been taken over and she has ceased to be a flesh and blood person: she is now a “bride,” constantly shuffled around from caterer and wedding consultant and her new in-laws.  As the weeks pass, she shows the strain of constant planning and decision making, trying to please new and important people in her life, trying to keep everyone happy as the plans for the wedding progress -- she becomes more and more frantic and exhausted.

Meanwhile, people are treating her differently.  Her single friends wish her well, but they treat her with a curious mixture of enthusiasm, resentment, and sadness – “We’re losing you,” they tell her, and she wonders with a start if that’s true: will she be one of those women who abandons all her friends when she gets married?  Her friends have helped her define herself, and the thought of losing them is like losing part of her identity.  She becomes anxious that the “I’ will not survive becoming part of a “we.”  She finds herself growing short-tempered and defensive with her husband to be, who tries to be understanding but has worries of his own, particularly about how much she’s spending on the wedding.

Eclipses falling in the first and seventh house axis don’t always describe a marriage, but it is an event that well describes the fundamental crisis of this cycle:  profound challenges to self and identity brought about through close relationships with others.  It’s a cycle that frequently describes turning points such as marriage, divorce, moving away from home.  Like eclipses to Mars, the ruler of the first house, this cycle is a time of marking out important territory for ourselves in the world, and trying to defend ourselves against perceived attacks on our individuality;  as with eclipses to Venus, ruler of the seventh house, we are evaluating our self-worth and values in the context of personal relationship. And because eclipses falling in the 1st and 7th houses often square natal planets in the 10th and 4th houses, we find that changes in our identity and personal relationship status can also have an effect on our career choises, as well as marking a significant change in how we relate to our family of origin.