We are all wanderers on this earth. Our hearts are full of wonder, and our souls are deep with dreams.

Saturday, February 02, 2013

Get the Most Out of Your Relationship Reading: Do's and Don'ts
14 comments





Life is messy and nowhere does it seem to get messier than in relationships.   I often read tarot on matters of the heart, primarily relationships with significant others or those we want to be significant others.  But other relationships also puzzle, such as relationships with our children, co-workers, friends, and parents.  Most often we want to know what that person is likely to do and why.  Why someone else's choices matter to you corresponds directly with how great or small their decisions impact you. But honestly, we have a hard enough time trying to figure ourselves out much less someone else. Turning to a trusted tarot reader can help, a lot, but maybe not quite in the way you think.


While it's natural to want to know what someone else is going to do so we may be prepared, it's not really helpful to be aware of the probable outcome when all you can then do is sit and wait for it to happen.  Besides, life and relationships don't really work that way.  A million small and seemingly insignificant choices and circumstances factor into how something comes to pass, and nowhere is this seen more obviously than in human relationships.  What with the Butterfly Effect and all, wouldn't it be better to take at least some control over your situation and relationship and impact your own life?  Therefore, these are some suggestions, a list of do's and don'ts,  to help you get the most from your next relationship reading:

1.  Don't ask when your next significant romantic relationship will be.  Why would you want to know this?  Some readers are quite talented with extracting timing from tarot and some are not, but even if they can provide the exact date and time of the moment you will meet Mr. or Ms. Coming Attraction, how does this serve you?  Does it take you that long to choose an outfit? What are you going to do in the meanwhile?  Are you going to sit home every night until that day knowing that all other potential suitors are a waste of time?  What happens when the appointed time comes and...nothing? Because we are all interconnected, what you do now has an effect on what happens later.  Doing nothing will effect nothing.  

2. Do ask what you can do to raise your chances of meeting someone special.  Rather than wait on someone else's timetable, get some insight into the parts of yourself that may be blocking or inhibiting the connection you are seeking.  While hitting it off with someone is not entirely in your control, some of the dynamic is.  If someone tells me they are repeatedly dating assholes, part of the problem is there are a lot of assholes out there.  But another part has to do with the expectations they have about others, themselves, love, etc.  Some of these run quite deep and stem from unlikely sources.  Why we are initially attracted to someone may be linked to unfinished business in our past and our subconscious keeps leading us to people with whom we feel familiar.  Not always a good thing when familiar equates to being treated like dirt. 

3.  Don't ask how things are going in your love interest's relationship.  A lot of people find themselves very attracted to people who are already in another relationship.  By itself, this is not wrong.  And sometimes that other person is in the process of leaving their relationship and could potentially become available to you.  And sometimes a romantic relationship happens between people with other relationships in the mix.  I'm not going to judge.  Here's the problem (among others): Asking about the status of that other relationship is not going to tell you anything about what is likely to happen in your relationship.  Relationships are complicated and on any given day, or hour, it is likely to be tense and angry or sweetness and light.  How your love interest deals with their other relationship does not actually give you any indication whether they will finally leave them and pair up with you. The only true proof is if they actually do. Besides, there are a lot of readers who won't even address this kind of question.  They view it as a kind of spying, an invasion of someone's privacy.




4.  Do ask whether this person is being honest with you, whether they have other hidden agendas or obligations that will prevent them from committing to you.  These things don't always mean the person is with someone else.  There could be many other circumstances and reasons why someone may not be forthcoming.  And I wouldn't ask this question too early in the relationship.  This is a question best reserved for a time when your own intuition is throwing red flags up and you're getting a sense that something is "off" with the other person.  This usually happens, if it happens,  when you've been seeing someone for a while.  This question may also be off-limits to some readers.  Privacy and all that.

5.  Don't ask whether the relationship will "work out."  What does that even mean?  Does it mean will you stay together?  Longevity does not equal happiness.  Does it mean will you be happy together? I can answer that without cards and the answer is not always.  Will it work out for you or for them?  Sometimes a relationship "works out" by ending.

6.  Do ask what you can do to better the relationship.  The answers may surprise you.  The cards may indicate you need to take more time for yourself, devote more time to your own interests and activities.  They may tell you to lay down firmer boundaries and stop putting up with so much bullshit.  The advice may be to spend more time seeing and commenting on the positive aspects of your partner and appreciating them rather than the negative.  Be prepared for stark honesty with this question as the cards usually don't play around with this.  They will tell you straight up.

7.  Don't expect miracles.  If you haven't heard from your love interest for six months and the last time you spoke they told you they were moving on, don't expect the reading to reveal they will contact you in a week with apologies and professions of true love.  Not going to happen.  Stop asking.



8.  Do ask what you can do to heal and move on.  When a relationship ends it can take a good while to sort it out within ourselves, to grieve its passing and the death of our hopes.  We miss the other person.  It hurts.  We're angry.  We need closure.  This is a process and sometimes we need direction and assurance.

9.  Don't ask what you can do to make someone do as you want.  Tarot isn't going to help you manipulate others.  Besides, even if you can get someone to do what you want, this kind of approach still leaves you in a passive, reactionary position which depends on other people's choices and actions for your happiness.  And it doesn't work in the long run.  The other person inevitably figures out your game and gets pissed off, with good reason.

10.  Do ask what you can do to meet your own needs.  It could be that you should have a heart-to-heart talk with your partner.  It may also mean you have needs they can't and should not be expected to meet.  Being in control of your own happiness and fulfillment is much easier than trying to get someone else to do it for you.  Ultimately no one really can make you happy, only you can do that for yourself, so it's better to focus on your own actions and perspective. 






14 comments :

  1. What a great post - thank you. It is one of the healthiest approaches I have read yet on relationship readings.

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  2. Hi Ginny, this is such a wise and helpful post. Being relatively new to tarot, I initially found the same cards were appearing when it came to advising about certain relationships (work and social), I then began to understand that in order to attract positive friendships it was important to be kind to oneself and rethink my priorities in order to become a rounder and more approachable person. As a result i've walked away from alot of negativity and begun forming more stable and pleasing friendships.

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  3. Although I completely understand the desire to know what that other person is probably going to do, and I honestly don't mind throwing a few cards on these nagging questions because those are the ones that keep us up at night, they just shouldn't be the primary subject of the reading. Thank you for sharing that experience, Sally. It's true that tarot will keep showing you to yourself until you get it. :)

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  4. Superb wise post, hooray for you!

    I wrote an advice for relationship readings post a couple of years ago, with its own 'helpful and not-so-helpful questions' - it looks as though we're thinking along similar lines!

    I'm not keen on 'nosey puppy' readings (brilliant illustration, by the way!) - not so much for any absolute moral reason as because I don't think I've ever seen anyone actually helped by one. Readings as a help to understanding in conversation - superb. Readings as an alternative to conversation - quicksand. What's your experience with that?

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  5. Hi Hilary,
    That's just it. A reading...for what? Information, sure, but what can you actually DO with it? I've experienced the "quicksand" readings. We can delve deeper and deeper into the other person's life, thoughts, potential actions and to what end? It ends up being absolutely useless to the querant beyond satisfying a bit of curiosity. And even then, how do we know for sure whether what is being shown in the reading is accurate? We don't and we can't unless the other person somehow confirms it. Which means I will indulge curiosity only so far, because...well...we're human and we just want to know, but beyond that, no. We all need something to take away from the reading, something to DO that is productive and affirming to moving ourselves forward.

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  6. Mm. Very good point, about even then not knowing for sure. People come in search of confidence and trust - self-trust, in the end - and maybe not every line of questioning is going to help with that.

    And about something to take away - to do, or not do, or be, but anyway some way to complete the sentence, 'I need to know this so I can...'

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  7. Fantastic advice! I'm taking notes so I can share some of this with my clients!

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  8. I so agree with this. A lot of Tarot clients come for relationship readings. It just so happens that a lot of time they are in denial or desperate about their situation. If I don't tell them what they want to hear they may find another psychic until they finally get it. I have also helped a few clients get closure as well because coming to a reader was the only way to get those answers to questions they may have wanted to ask in order to move on. Good advice.

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  9. It's pretty easy for me to empathize with my clients. I've been all kinds of stupid in love and feeling awkward and sheepish when asking for a reading, or doing my own reading after reading after reading on the guy...*le sigh* I know this well. I entirely understand the "I neeeeed to know" feelings but I also know what really works and what doesn't via tarot, so between both my sad experience and my knowledge and skill with tarot, I do hope to help. :)

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  10. Thank you, thank you! Not just for this particular post, but for years of blog entries. I only just discovered your blog last night and I have been eagerly reading through it all! So many good tarot thoughts are running through my head right now.

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  11. Once again, a very good post. I agree in most points but I often find it hard to communicate it to my querents, especially the ones I'm personally close to. I have friends obsessing about relationships who keep asking me to do readings for them asking all the wrong questions and it's difficult to explain my view of things without sounding patronizing.
    Especially when they keep asking the same questions about the same relationship and I keep coming up with the same answers, it can be pretty frustrating.

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  12. As long as you are sure you are excluding your own personal bias as much as you can, I think they will tire of hearing the same message again and again. The one thing I must stress, however, is that personal bias. There have been many times when the cards have advised an action I would personally not have endorsed. I have been surprised at times but remain the willing messenger of the cards, even if I, in all my own "wisdom" (heh) disagree. Sometimes the cards tell someone to wait it out and their love interest will come around. Personally, I might have said to dump them, but since the cards are saying otherwise, I say otherwise. More often than not, the cards are absolutely correct.

    That said, often the client is not ready to follow through on the cards' advice. This is why I tend to place certain limitations on clients asking for repeated readings on the same question or situation. I tell them that I am happy to read for them again when something within the situation (or within themselves) has changed or when a certain amount of time, say a few months, have passed.

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  13. Yes, it's the same with me. Often what the cards say goes against my better judgement but sometimes it's just evident from the beginning that the relationship will not work no matter how much the querent wishes for it to change and it's difficult to turn someone down then.
    I also refuse to read on the same matter in quick succession but I have a friend who is very good at working the "but this and that has changed, now the overall situation must have changed" technicality. ;-)
    So sometimes I just give in and do another reading which says exactly the same thing again.
    Funnily enough that friend also consulted another reader - a man this time - and he said almost exactly the same thing. But whereas she never really took my advice seriously, she seems to believe him. Perhaps sometimes it takes a complete outsider.
    My experience with that sometimes makes me ask whether I should refuse to read for friends or people I'm closely related to.

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  14. Perhaps it does help to be an outsider - if only because that means the person *knows* you can't be influenced by what all their other friends and family are saying/ thinking. It helps to be completely new to the situation, too.

    But also, sometimes you're just not ready to hear something, until you are. It's an inner change - and the next time the message is delivered to you, whoever or whatever delivers it this time, suddenly you can hear. It's not always the qualities of the messenger that make the difference!

    (I do this: I'll receive a reading as a complete revelation, then later look back through readings from years ago and find they were telling me precisely the same thing - it's just I was quite deaf at the time...)

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