The Lovers — “That Elusive Spark”

“What does he feel for me?”

Women mostly come to me with questions like: does he love me or not; how do I get along with my husband; how do I find the man of my dreams. Behind these questions there’s usually one wish — to get an answer. Yes or no. Are there feelings, or are they gone.

Once a client came to me asking: “What does he feel for me?” She wanted an answer. Yes or no. Are there feelings, or are they gone.

When we started on the reading, something interesting happened. The cards almost immediately took us away from him and toward her. Instead of showing only his feelings, the reading started talking about her state, her fear of losing this relationship, why she was waiting so hard for him to confirm her worth, and why she couldn’t bring herself to make a choice.

And at some point I said to her:

“I think we’re trying to find out what he feels, when it’s much more important to look at what you feel and what you choose. Because even if he loves you, the main question stays the same: is this relationship right for you? Do you want to stay in it?”

And that turned into a completely different conversation.

The Lovers is a card of choice

The Lovers is a card of choice — a choice that touches your values and the direction of your life. Partnership. Sorting out a relationship — as a couple, not as a couple, or with a partner. A life choice. Making peace between inner contradictions, between head and heart. Living through a hard inner conflict before an important decision.

In relationships the card says you need to choose between two partners. Or decide to take the relationship to a more serious level, make it official. And it says you should go where your interest really lies. It’s always about working well together — where a person feels good and enjoys it.

On the path of the Major Arcana, the Lovers come right after the Hierophant. The Hierophant says: “Here are the knowledge, rules, traditions and values that exist.” And the Lovers ask: “Fine. But which of these do I actually choose?” A person has to stop living only by other people’s rules and make their own choice. And this is where the main question comes up: “What do I want?”

The card has a shadow side too: codependency, fear of closeness, a big clash of values with a partner, not being able to make up your mind.

Why you keep choosing the wrong people

Most often people come to therapy with a relationship problem, because every woman wants to get married and have the perfect husband, the perfect relationship. But that’s the whole point: a woman who comes with this request always has weak personal boundaries and not enough love for herself. And until she builds those boundaries and that self-love, and works through the scenarios she picked up from her parents and her childhood, nothing will work.

It’s really important to understand the deep reason behind her reactions. Why doesn’t that one person she’d feel comfortable with ever show up in her life? Because from childhood her mind has got used to reacting in certain ways.

For example, as a child a girl watched her mom and dad argue all the time, and one of them kept running away from the fight instead of sorting it out. When she grows up, she may do exactly the same. When disagreements and problems come up, she’ll walk away from the situation so she doesn’t have to deal with it — because she watched that reaction her whole childhood, soaked it up like a sponge, and now lives by exactly that pattern.

And here it’s important to go into that state, and it’s heavy, really heavy. People are often afraid to look at all this. But if we don’t look at the hardest moments of our lives, the ones that brought us here, we won’t solve our problem.

My story: cutting the knot

I don’t know this from books. For many years I watched how my family lived. Watching my mother’s life scenarios, I always knew I didn’t want to live the same way. I saw that my mum, like many other women, was very afraid of being alone, and so she chose the same scenario again and again — one that supposedly suited her, but every time it played out, she suffered.

In my own relationships with men, the same scenario kept showing up. I’d start a relationship with someone new, but the same story repeated itself every time, and it really got to me. And the last thing hit me hardest: I saw that my mom had been living with a man for thirty years, and the man I was with at the time had the same name, and they had the same patterns of behavior that made us suffer.

I decided to cut that knot. And since I cut it, after a number of practices I did, life gave me the man of my dreams — the one meant for me, who doesn’t fit my family’s patterns at all.

“What do I want?”

Sometimes a person comes for the answer to “does he love me,” but what they really need is the answer to a different question: “What do I want?”

And that question can show a lot more.

I believe tarot is a great tool for working with the subconscious. For finding the answers inside yourself.