Will My Ex Come Back? What the Chart Can Read, and What It Cannot

The question arrives in the same words every day, from a phone at midnight more often than not: will my ex come back. It deserves an honest answer, and the honest answer has a shape that the pages promising a return never give it. A birth chart can read three things about an ex. Whether the period that carried the relationship, the dasha and sub-period in which it began and ran, is still running or has changed, because a relationship that ends inside its own period often resumes and one that ends because the period turned rarely does. Whether the doors of the seventh and fifth houses are open or closing, by the sub-period running now and the transits over them. And when a return, if the chart supports one, would fall, to the season. It cannot read the other person’s mind from your chart, it cannot say what they will do this week, and it cannot make anyone come back, which is the first thing to say to a reader who has found this page at midnight. This article gives what the chart can do, in three settings: your chart alone, your two charts together, and a horary question when you have no birth details for them at all.

It belongs to the complete relationship astrology guide. The breakup itself, why it happened in the chart’s terms, is read in Breakups in the Chart; the reconciliation reading as a method, what it needs and how it reaches a yes or a no, is in How a Reconciliation Reading Works; and the KP horary form of this exact question is in the ex-return horary guide.

Parminder Chahal

Vedic astrologer · author of jagannathhora.com and the article you're reading · builder of this site's calculators

Your chart, or both, or a horary if you have no details for them.

A relationship consultation reads the period that carried the relationship, the doors of the seventh and fifth, and the timing of a return if the chart supports one, from your chart alone, from both charts, or from a horary question when you have nothing of theirs; and it says no when the chart says no.

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In this article

• The three things the chart can read, and the one it cannot
• The period that carried the relationship: still running, or turned
• The doors: the seventh, the fifth, the twelfth and the eighth
• Eight signals in your own chart
• A message is not a reunion: the third and eleventh against the seventh
• What a second chart adds
• When you have no birth details for them: the horary
• Timing a return: sub-periods and transits
• The return that would harm
• The reading that says no, and how to hear it
• Two worked charts: the return, and the period that had turned
• Frequently asked questions

The three things the chart can read, and the one it cannot

Your chart holds the relationship as a period and a set of houses, and both can be read after the breakup as easily as before it. The period is the dasha and sub-period in which the relationship began and lived; its planet is the relationship’s planet, and whether that sub-period is still running is the single most useful fact in this reading. The houses are the seventh, the partner and the partnership, and the fifth, the romance and the pleasure of it, with the twelfth as the ending and the loss and the eighth as the break, the crisis and the transformation; the sub-period running now and the transits over those houses say whether the doors are open. And the timing follows from both: a return, where the chart supports one, falls in a sub-period connected to the seventh or fifth, with Venus or Jupiter over one of them or over the natal Venus. What your chart cannot read is the other person. Their feelings, their decision and their timing are in their chart, and a reading that tells you from your chart alone what your ex is thinking has made the commonest and cruellest error in this branch of the subject. The most your chart says about them is whether the door on your side is open; whether they walk through it is theirs.

The period that carried the relationship: still running, or turned

Find the sub-period in which the relationship began, from the dasha table, and the planet that rules it: it is usually the seventh lord, the fifth lord, Venus, or a planet in the seventh or fifth, and if it is none of those the relationship was carried by a period that did not signify it, which is itself a reading. Then look at the sub-period running now. If the relationship’s own sub-period is still running, the breakup happened inside the story rather than at its end, and a resumption in the same sub-period is common; couples part and return two or three times inside one Venus sub-period, and the reading’s honest sentence is that the period has not finished with this relationship. If the sub-period has changed since the breakup, and especially if it has changed to the twelfth lord’s, the eighth lord’s or Ketu’s, the ending arrived with the period and the return would need a new period to carry it, which the chart may or may not have. The junction between two major periods is the classical time for a relationship to end for good, and a breakup in the last months of a major period is the one least likely to reverse. This one check, the relationship’s period against the present one, settles more of these questions than every other method together, and it is done from your chart alone in ten minutes; the dasha table for any birth is in the Vimshottari reference.

The doors: the seventh, the fifth, the twelfth and the eighth

The seventh house is the partnership as a bond, and the seventh lord’s condition and current activation say whether a bond is available at all; the fifth is the romance, and its lord and occupants say whether the feeling has somewhere to go. The twelfth is the ending, the loss and the letting go, and a twelfth lord sub-period or a twelfth-house transit is the season in which relationships close; the eighth is the break and the transformation, and its activation gives the crisis that either ends the relationship or changes its form. Read together: the seventh and fifth activated with the twelfth and eighth quiet is an open door; the twelfth or eighth activated with the seventh and fifth quiet is a closing one; both sets activated at once, which is common, is the relationship that returns changed, or returns and ends again. The placements of the seventh lord that bear on this are in the seventh lord in the twelve houses, and the two that bear most, the seventh lord in the twelfth and the twelfth lord in the seventh, in the seventh lord in the twelfth and the twelfth lord in the seventh.

Eight signals in your own chart

Two signals from the first half of the table and none from the closing rows is the chart in which a return is supported; two from the closing rows is the chart in which the reading is no for now, whatever the feeling; and most charts have one of each, which is why the timing section and the second chart matter.

A message is not a reunion: the third and eleventh against the seventh

The commonest confusion in these readings is between contact and return. Contact is the third house, communication, and the eleventh, the friend and the network, and a sub-period or transit activating them with the seventh quiet gives exactly what most exes get: the message, the call on a birthday, the like on a photograph, the meeting for coffee, and nothing after it. Venus retrograde over the third gives the message; Mercury retrograde over the seventh from the Moon gives the conversation about the old relationship; neither is the seventh house reopening. A reunion is the seventh with the fifth, the bond with the feeling, and it needs the seventh’s activation by period and transit at once. The reading should say plainly which of the two the chart shows, because a native who is told “there will be contact” and hears “they are coming back” has been set up for a second breakup by the same message. Contact without the seventh is the chart telling you the story is closed and the door is being knocked on from habit.

What a second chart adds

With the other person’s birth details, the reading changes from a reading of your door to a reading of two doors, and it is the reading worth paying for. Their chart is read for the same period question, whether the sub-period that carried the relationship on their side is still running, which is often a different answer from yours, since two people rarely share a dasha; for the same doors, their seventh and fifth against their twelfth and eighth; and for their timing, the sub-period in which their seventh reopens. Then the two charts are laid on each other: your seventh lord in their chart and theirs in yours, Venus and the Moon of each on the other’s houses, the mutual placement of the two seventh lords, which is the synastry read in Synastry in Vedic Astrology. A return is supported when both periods are still open, both doors are open, and the synastry shows a bond rather than an attraction; it is supported for one and not the other when one chart’s period has turned, which is the commonest reading and the one that explains why one person waits and the other has moved on. The second chart also answers the question your chart cannot: whether their capacity for the bond is intact, or whether their seventh has closed for reasons that have nothing to do with you.

When you have no birth details for them: the horary

Most people asking this question do not have their ex’s birth time, and some do not have the date, and the reading is still possible through a horary chart, a chart cast for the moment the question is sincerely asked, or in KP for a number between 1 and 249 chosen by the querent. In the horary the querent is the first house and the ex is the seventh, and the seventh’s lord, its sub-lord in KP, and the applying connections between the two say whether the two are moving toward each other or apart, and when; the Moon’s condition says whether the question is sincere and ripe, and a horary asked in the first days after a breakup is usually not. The method, with its rules and its readings of this exact question, is in the ex-return horary guide, and the general form for relationship questions without a birth time in relationship horary when the birth time is unknown; the number system itself is in the 1 to 249 horary guide. The horary’s honest limit is that it answers the question as asked, on the day it is asked, and a querent who asks it every week gets a chart for their anxiety rather than for the relationship; it is asked once, well, and read beside the natal chart.

Timing a return: sub-periods and transits

Where the chart supports a return, the timing is read like any relationship event. The sub-period is one of the seventh lord’s, the fifth lord’s, Venus’s, or a planet in the seventh or fifth, and if the relationship’s own sub-period is still running, the return usually falls inside it, in its second half more often than its first. The transit gives the season: Jupiter over the seventh, the fifth or the natal Venus, the classical year, read in Jupiter’s transit through the seventh and the fifth; Venus’s own transit over the seventh or fifth, a month, gives the meeting; and Venus retrograde, which happens for six weeks every nineteen months, is the reconnection window in which the past comes back to be reconsidered, though what comes back in it is not always kept. Saturn’s transit over the seventh, in Saturn through the seventh, is the season in which a return is slow and sober or does not happen, and the nodes over the seventh, in Rahu through the seventh and Ketu through the seventh, are the seasons of obsession and of release respectively. The reading names a window of a few months and says which of the three, the period, Jupiter or Venus, is carrying it; a window carried by Venus alone is contact, by Jupiter with the period a return, by the period with nothing else a return that waits for its transit.

The return that would harm

Some returns should not be wanted, and the chart says so before the heart does. A seventh lord afflicted by Mars, Saturn and Rahu together, a relationship carried by a Rahu sub-period on the fifth or seventh, the eighth lord on the seventh with the sixth lord’s aspect: these describe the relationship that returns to the same crisis, the bond that is appetite, the partner who harms, read in The Relationship That Harms. The reading of such a chart does not offer a timing for the return; it names the pattern, says that the pull the native feels is the Rahu or the eighth and not the seventh, and says, as a person and not as an astrologer, that a relationship in which there was coercion, fear or violence is not one the chart is asked to restore, and that the person to speak to about it is a counsellor or a helpline and not a chart reader. The pages that promise a return in such cases, with a remedy attached, are the reason this page exists.

The reading that says no, and how to hear it

The reading says no when the relationship’s period has turned, when the present sub-period belongs to the twelfth lord, the eighth lord or Ketu, when Saturn or Ketu is on the seventh in transit, and when the second chart, if there is one, shows the other door closed. It says no for now, which is a different sentence, when the doors are closed for this sub-period and open in a later one, and it names the later one, with the caution that a return two years away is a return to a different person. Hearing a no is the reason the reading is worth having: it converts a question that has no end, will they, into a fact with a date on it, the period turned in such a month, and the native who has that date stops asking the phone. The season after a breakup has its own reading, when it lifts and what the chart says about the months of it, in Moving On After a Breakup, and it is the page to read next when this one has said no; the marital version of the same question, whether to divorce or reconcile inside a marriage, is the troubled-marriage cluster’s, in Divorce or Reconcile?.

Two worked charts: the return, and the period that had turned

A Libra lagna woman, particulars altered. Venus, the lagna lord, in Aquarius in the fifth; Mars, lord of the second and seventh, in Sagittarius in the third; the Moon, lord of the tenth, in Taurus in the eighth; Jupiter, lord of the third and sixth, in Gemini in the ninth; Saturn, lord of the fourth and fifth, in Libra in the lagna, exalted; the Sun, lord of the eleventh, in Capricorn in the fourth with Mercury; Rahu in Leo in the eleventh, Ketu in Aquarius in the fifth with Venus. Her relationship began in Venus-Mars, the lagna lord’s period with the seventh lord’s sub-period, and ended seven months later, in the same sub-period, over a job that took him to another city, the third lord’s house holding the seventh lord. The reading, done six weeks after, made the one check first: Venus-Mars had six months left to run. The relationship’s own period was not finished with it. The doors: the seventh quiet in transit, the fifth carrying Ketu natally and Venus with it, which reads as the romance that detaches and returns without fuss, and Jupiter due over Aries, her seventh, inside those six months. The reading said a return inside the sub-period, in the Jupiter season, and said it was carried by the period and the transit together, which is a return and not a message. He came back in the fourth month, in the month Jupiter entered Aries, and they married in Venus-Rahu, the eleventh-house Rahu delivering the wish, two years later. The reading had not read him at all; it had read that her door was open and her period unfinished, and that was enough.

A Taurus lagna man, particulars altered. Venus, the lagna and sixth lord, in Leo in the fourth; Mars, the seventh and twelfth lord, in Cancer in the third, debilitated; the Moon, lord of the third, in Scorpio in the seventh, debilitated; Saturn, lord of the ninth and tenth, in Aquarius in the tenth; Jupiter, lord of the eighth and eleventh, in Virgo in the fifth; the Sun, lord of the fourth, in Leo in the fourth with Venus and Mercury; Rahu in Aries in the twelfth, Ketu in Libra in the sixth. His relationship of nearly three years began in Saturn-Mercury and ended in the first weeks of Saturn-Ketu, which is to say at the end of the sub-period that carried it and the start of the one that releases. The check: the relationship’s period had turned, into Ketu’s sub-period, with Saturn, the major period, transiting Scorpio, his seventh, for the next two years, and the seventh lord Mars debilitated in the third, the house of the message. The reading said no: the period had ended with the relationship, Saturn on the seventh would hold the ending, and the next sub-period connected to the seventh, Saturn-Venus, was a year away and would carry a different person. It also said, from the third house and the debilitated seventh lord in it, that there would be messages, and that they would not be the seventh house reopening. There were messages, for a year, and a meeting for coffee under Venus retrograde, and nothing after it. He is in Saturn-Venus now, a year and a half on, the reading’s later door, and the relationship in it is not the old one. Two charts, two honest answers, the first a yes with a season and the second a no with a date, and the second was the more useful of the two to the person who received it.

Frequently asked questions

Can astrology tell if my ex will come back?

It can read three things from your chart: whether the dasha sub-period that carried the relationship is still running or has changed, whether the seventh and fifth houses are open by period and transit or closing through the twelfth and eighth, and when a return, if supported, would fall. With the ex’s chart it reads their door too, and without any details of theirs a horary chart answers the question as asked. It cannot read their mind from your chart, and nothing in it can make anyone come back.

Which house shows an ex coming back?

The seventh, the partnership, and the fifth, the romance, activated by a sub-period of their lords, of Venus or of a planet in them, with Jupiter or Venus transiting one of them; the twelfth and eighth activated instead show the ending holding. The third and eleventh show contact, the message and the meeting, and contact with the seventh quiet is not a return, which is the commonest confusion in this reading.

What is the most important sign that an ex will return?

That the sub-period in which the relationship began is still running. A breakup inside the relationship’s own sub-period often resumes in the same sub-period; a breakup at the change of sub-period, especially into the twelfth lord’s, the eighth lord’s or Ketu’s, or at the junction between two major periods, tends to hold, and a return would need a new period to carry it. This one check, done from your own dasha table, settles more of these questions than every other method together.

Does Venus retrograde bring an ex back?

Venus retrograde in transit over your fifth, seventh or natal Venus, six weeks every nineteen months, is the classical reconnection window in which the past returns to be reconsidered: the message, the meeting, the conversation about what happened. It brings contact reliably and a return only when the period supports one; what comes back in a Venus retrograde is not always kept, and a reading that promises a return from the transit alone has read the calendar and not the chart.

Can I know if my ex will come back without their birth details?

Yes, through a horary chart cast for the moment the question is sincerely asked, or in KP for a number between 1 and 249 you choose; you are the first house and the ex is the seventh, and the connections between the two lords say whether you are moving toward each other or apart, and when. It is asked once, well, and read beside your natal chart; a question asked every week produces a chart for the anxiety rather than the relationship.

How long does it take for an ex to come back according to astrology?

Where the chart supports a return, it falls inside a sub-period connected to the seventh or fifth, usually in the second half of the relationship’s own sub-period if that is still running, with Jupiter’s transit over the seventh, fifth or natal Venus giving the season and Venus’s transit the month; the window is a few months wide. Where the period has turned, the next sub-period connected to the seventh may be years away, and a return that far off is a return to a different person.

Are there remedies to get an ex back?

No remedy on this site claims to bring anyone back, and the pages that sell one, with a ritual or a stone attached, are selling the reader’s grief back to them. What the chart offers is an honest reading, a yes with a season, a no with a date, or a no for now with the later door named, and the date is what lets a person stop asking. A relationship in which there was coercion, fear or violence is not one the chart is asked to restore, and the person to speak to about it is a counsellor, not an astrologer.

Parminder Chahal

Vedic astrologer · author of jagannathhora.com and the article you're reading · builder of this site's calculators

A yes with a season, a no with a date, or a no for now with the next door named.

A relationship consultation reads the period that carried the relationship against the present one, the doors of the seventh and fifth, and the timing, from your chart, from both charts when you have theirs, or from a horary when you have nothing; and it tells you which of the three answers your chart gives, plainly.

✓ Your past read to you first, so you can check me✓ Chart prepared and read before we speak✓ 30 to 40 minute WhatsApp voice call✓ Every message answered by me personally✓ Your details stay private

Book a relationship consultation or message me on WhatsApp

Flat ₹2100 (Indian Rupees or equivalent), no upsells · USD and other currencies welcome