You know, for a long time, I just thought tarot cards were a bunch of hocus pocus. Like something out of a bad movie, all crystal balls and spooky predictions. I mean, come on, really? Me? Looking at pictures to figure out my life? Never thought I’d be that guy.
But life, it throws you curveballs, right? My relationship with Jenny, bless her heart, was just… stuck. We weren’t fighting all the time, not exactly, but it felt like we were just orbiting each other, not really connecting. We’d talk, sure, but it felt like we were speaking different languages. We’d try to work stuff out, but it just went in circles. I was getting pretty fed up, and honestly, a bit worried.
I remember one night, I was just scrolling, feeling completely useless, and some random article popped up about using tarot for self-reflection. Not for telling the future, it said, but for understanding what’s going on inside. And for some reason, that clicked a little. Like, maybe if I could get my own head straight, things would look clearer. Desperate times, you know?
So, I bit the bullet. Ordered a basic deck online. Nothing fancy, just a simple Rider-Waite Smith deck. When it arrived, it felt a bit silly, unwrapping it, looking at all these strange pictures. I just sat there with it for a while, not really knowing what to do. I watched a few super basic videos, not the fancy mystical ones, but the ones where people just kinda showed you how they shuffled and laid out cards. That felt more my speed, more like just playing with a deck of cards than performing some ritual.
I started really simple. I’d just shuffle the deck, thinking about Jenny and me, and just pull one card. See what came up. It was mostly confusion at first. Like, what am I supposed to do with a picture of a guy hanging upside down? But then I started to think, “Okay, if this was about my situation, what could it mean?” And slowly, slowly, a tiny bit of something started to click. Not some grand answer, just a little flicker of a different way to look at something.
After a few weeks of that, just pulling one card, I stumbled upon this simple three-card layout for relationships. It wasn’t anything official, just something someone shared online, and it looked manageable. No crazy spreads with a dozen cards, just three. That felt important, keeping it simple. I figured I couldn’t mess up too badly with just three cards.
Here’s how I started doing it, pretty much every other week when things felt fuzzy with Jenny. I’d sit down, usually on a quiet Sunday morning. I’d hold the deck, close my eyes, and really try to focus on us, on our relationship, on the questions I had swirling around my head. Not like, “Will we get married?” but more like, “What am I missing here?” or “What’s really at the heart of our recent disagreements?” It was about getting to the root, you know?
Then I’d shuffle. I’d shuffle and shuffle, not counting, just feeling the cards slide through my hands until it felt right. Sometimes I’d cut the deck. Sometimes I’d just stop. It was all about gut feeling, not some rulebook. Then, from the top of the deck, I’d pull the first card, lay it down, face up. This one, I designated as ‘Me.’ It was supposed to represent my role, my feelings, my perspective in the relationship at that exact moment. What was I bringing to the table, good or bad?
Next, I’d pull the second card. This one was ‘Them,’ meaning Jenny. It was about her role, her energy, how she might be feeling, or what she was experiencing. Now, this was always tricky, because you can’t really know what someone else is thinking or feeling. But the point wasn’t to know her mind, but to try and step into her shoes, to imagine things from her side based on what I already observed and understood about her. It was about empathy, really, forcing myself to pause and consider her perspective.
Finally, I’d pull the third card. This one was ‘Us.’ This card was meant to represent the dynamic between us, the overarching energy of the relationship itself. The challenges, the strengths, the potential path forward. It wasn’t a prediction, more like a snapshot of where we stood together, an insight into the combined energy we were creating. What was the current story of ‘us’ that this card was telling?
Once those three cards were laid out, I wouldn’t rush to interpret them. I’d just look at them. I’d let my eyes wander over the images, taking in the colors, the figures, the symbols, everything. I’d feel a little something in my gut for each one. Then, really slowly, I’d start to connect the dots. “Okay, so this card for ‘Me’… huh. That actually makes a lot of sense given how I’ve been feeling lately.” Or, “The card for ‘Us’… wow, that’s a bit heavy. Is that really how things are feeling for us right now?”
It wasn’t about finding definitive answers, not at all. It was about kicking off my own thought process. It made me reflect on my actions, on things I might have said or done, or things I hadn’t said or done. It made me consider Jenny’s situation with more patience. Sometimes a card would just spark a memory of a conversation, or a moment, and suddenly, something that felt tangled would loosen up a little in my mind.
One time, my “Me” card was the “Eight of Swords,” which is all about feeling trapped and unable to see a way out. My “Them” card was the “Queen of Cups,” very emotional and intuitive. And the “Us” card was the “Two of Cups,” partnership and connection. At first, I was like, wait, how can I feel trapped, and she’s all emotional, but we’re also connected? But then, it hit me. I was feeling trapped in my own head, not seeing solutions. She was being very receptive and wanting to connect emotionally. And the “Us” card, the “Two of Cups,” wasn’t saying we were perfectly connected right now, but that the potential for strong partnership was still there, if I could just get out of my own head and actually talk to her, really listen to that emotional side. It wasn’t magic, it was just… perspective. It made me realize I was overthinking and under-communicating. The next time we talked, I approached it differently, and things actually started to shift, slowly.
So, yeah, that’s been my journey with it. It’s not about predicting future dates or anything like that. It’s a tool. A way to slow down, pull my thoughts together, and actually look at what’s going on inside me and in our relationship. It’s a way to unlock little bits of clarity, one simple layout at a time. It’s helped me understand myself better, and that’s what really helps the relationship.
