Man, I never thought I’d be posting about relationship stuff, especially not mixing it with the cards, but here we are. I’ve always used the Tarot for my career trajectory, maybe a quick check on the next project rollout, but never for the heavy emotional lifting. Until I was forced to.
I pulled the Five of Swords for my current relationship outcome after what was, hands down, the most draining three weeks of my adult life. I had busted my butt doing a massive life overhaul—we’re talking cross-country move, new job setup, sorting out the entire apartment lease, everything. It was supposed to be a joint venture, right? A partnership. What I ended up with was just me, handling everything, while my partner sat back and critiqued the damn boxes I packed.
I just kept thinking: I won. I got us here. The apartment is signed. The electricity is on. So why do I feel like I just got absolutely leveled? That’s when I spread the deck. I asked: What is the real, underlying energy here?
The Five of Swords Smacked Me Across the Face
I know the Five of Swords often gets boiled down to conflict and victory at any cost, but when it lands in the context of a stable relationship outcome, it’s brutal. It’s not about fighting; it’s about the person who claims victory walking away with nothing but resentment, while the other person, the one who didn’t even lift a finger, got exactly what they wanted without consequence.
This is where I started my practice record. I grabbed my notebook—the same one I use for documenting server side hiccups and deployment failures—and started logging the relationship equivalent of system errors. I needed empirical evidence because I felt like I was losing my grip on reality. Was I being unreasonable, or was this person genuinely treating me like cheap labor?
I quickly realized the Five of Swords wasn’t a warning about an upcoming fight; it was describing the inherent, underlying selfishness that was already running the show. My partner was perfectly happy to let me struggle, absorb my emotional and physical resources, and then stand over the wreckage claiming shared success.
The Logged Warning Signs: How Selfishness Manifests
Over the next few weeks, I shifted my focus from trying to fix the relationship to simply observing and documenting the patterns. And man, did the patterns jump out. If you’re pulling the Five of Swords in a love reading, you need to watch for this stuff. It’s not about cheating; it’s about emotional theft.
- The Zero Compromise Rule: If we had to decide on a movie, dinner, or weekend plans, my partner would throw a fit or shut down until I conceded. I realized I hadn’t made a genuine choice about where we ate dinner in six months. It was exhausting.
- The Convenience Factor: Whenever something needed doing—laundry, scheduling the repairman, making a tough phone call—it was always framed as, “Oh, you’re just so much better at that than I am.” Translation: “I don’t want to do it, so you handle it.”
- The Effort Discount: I tracked hours on setting up our new life. I had 120 recorded hours of admin and manual labor; they had less than 10, mostly spent on researching video games. When I brought it up, the reply was always, “Well, I was emotionally supporting you.” That was the classic 5S move—minimizing my cost while inflating their non-existent contribution.
- The Selective Empathy: They only cared about my day or my problems if it directly impacted their comfort or plans. If I was stressed about work, they’d demand attention because my stress was making them feel stressed. It was always about the ripple effect back to them.
I saw these signs and understood the card perfectly. This wasn’t a team effort; it was me carrying the weight while they walked ahead, collecting the trophy I earned.
Handling the 5S Partner: My Strategy Shift
Once I documented enough evidence that this was a systemic issue and not just a bad week, I stopped trying to reason with the selfish behavior. You can’t negotiate with someone who sees compromise as personal defeat. I shifted my entire operational strategy.
First, I stopped enabling the convenience factor. If the clothes needed washing and I didn’t have time, I simply didn’t do them. When they complained, I used their exact words: “Oh, you’re just so much better at scheduling the repairman, so I left that for you.” This caused friction, massive friction, because suddenly they had to step up, or things failed.
Second, I initiated radical non-participation in their drama. The Five of Swords thrives on the winner getting emotional energy from the loser. When they tried to create conflict over petty things (like my choice of TV show), I just disengaged. I physically left the room. No argument, no defense. I just eliminated the target.
It sounds rough, but this practice record wasn’t about saving the relationship; it was about saving myself from being permanently drained. Realizing the partner was living in a perpetual state of “winning” by having me do everything was the key. My victory wasn’t changing them; it was recognizing the pattern and pulling my energy and resources back where they belonged: with me. That’s how you counter the hollow victory of the Five of Swords—you make sure the victory they claim cost them more than they anticipated.
