Today's poetic words

I read this online,  these are not my words.  There was a thread on infidelity and someone wrote this:

May truth find you gently. May clarity reach you before confusion does. May your heart be protected from deception, and your dignity remain untouched by what was never yours to carry. And may whatever is revealed lead you not to pain, but to freedom, strength, and deeper self-respect.

Isn't that beautiful?  I wish it so,  especially on something as painful as infidelity. 

Often you know the answers, but still you need to hear it

Saw a girl the other day,  well not a girl,  she came to me on her 35th birthday, bringing two best friends to listen on the reading.

She asked about a man she had been dating for two years and drew
2 cups R,  5 of swords,  7 of swords

And I looked at her sorrowfully and said,  oh honey,  he's not good for you.   He is not returning your affections,  your love card is reversed and then you have both the betrayal cards,  he is stealing your swords and making you feel bad about yourself,  and misbehaving towards you.

Her friends looked at her triumphantly,  apparently I had passed the test.   Then she told me she had just broken up with him but she should have done it two years ago.  When they first started dating she had hoped he would be 'the one'.  But when the conversation moved to exclusivity he refused and she let him.   No wonder there were all those swords.   He was never 'unfaithful' because he never promised fidelity but that is such a slippery argument.  She agreed that she should have broken up with him there and then,  but somehow stayed in the relationship for another two years before realizing it was going no where.   We discussed setting better boundaries and listening to people's words, especially if their actions follow suite! If they tell you they are not ready or willing to have an exclusive relationship,  and you want one,  you have to realize that you are not going to get one with them.

She said she knew everything I had just told her,  and I said 'yes,  and then a stranger with 78 pieces of cardboard could tell you it,  without knowing a thing about you!  Next time listen to yourself better.'  She sighed ruefully and promised she would try.  She said she felt affirmed in her decision to stop seeing him. Sometimes we want something so badly,  we lose sight of what we are compromising in order to hold on to it.

Was he unfaithful?

One question I find the tarot can always accurately answer is ‘ is s/he having an affair’ 

However recently I did a reading where a woman asked,  ‘did he sleep with other people while we were together?’ and she drew 

King pentacles / 9 of swords / 6 cups R / 4 cups. 

She felt he could have been a good boyfriend/ but also felt huge anxiety/ she needed to see the situation very clearly, without rose tinted glasses or being overly romantic/ and she was getting lost in her own thoughts.

That is not a clear answer and I was puzzled.  Usually the cards are really specific around this question.

6 of cups

 

So I asked more about the relationship.  Turned out her big fear was that he would be pressured by his family to have an arranged marriage.

Now I can understand the cards. They indicate that he did not sleep with anyone else while they were together, but he was emotionally unfaithful; he did let his family introduce him to other women.  There was no sex, but he did think about marrying them…   

The second I said that she nodded vigorously, that made complete sense to her.

4 of cups

Those cards, they are so subtle...

Drawing the same card twice

Eva and the Snake by Christian Schloe

I recently did a reading for a woman who was contacted by a man she knew 25 years ago, when she was in college, via LinkedIn. This scenario is more common than you may think. 

Both she and the old friend were married, and she agreed to meet him for drinks.  And he gave her that line that is so seductive – she was the one who got away, he made a mistake, he should have married her.  But when it became clear that she would not sleep with him, he abruptly dropped all communication with her.

She wants closure, or friendship, or to know what the hell happened.  She drew Justice Reversed around him.  She was not going to get the closure she wanted,  he had acted badly,  and that was the ending.  At the very end of the reading, when I had drawn all the cards together and was shuffling them to prepare them for the next reading, she asked me if she could just draw one more card around him.  And then she pulled out Justice reversed again. She looked at me. 

And I said, this is your goose bump moment. The cards are clear.  You need to let any thoughts of him go, he’s not coming back.   She sighed and then said she actually felt much better. The cards were so definite, it was time to let him go and move on.

Infidelity

I like Nerve Magazine,  (not just because they did a small piece on me once  )

I was reading them recently and they had a terrific interview with Ira Glass,   and he said something so interesting,  that I really believe, about infidelity:

“For example, before people begin an affair, before they cheat, the real transition begins when they confide in someone else. That’s where the betrayal begins…And as soon as he starts having truths that he doesn’t tell to her but that he tells to someone else…that’s the beginning of the end for them.”  

I see this all the time in the stories people tell me. When you are confiding more to your friends than to your lover/spouse, if you are being more intimate with others than with them, that’s when trouble starts.  It’s not that you can’t be intimate with other people, it’s just that you can’t have stories you withhold from your lover but share with others, especially others you find attractive; that is a tiny crack between the two of you, which can easily grow if you put enough pressure on it.