Questions to Ask Tarot Cards About Relationship
Twenty questions for reading cards about a relationship you are in, kept on your own side of it rather than trying to read your partner's mind.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What is the honest state of this relationship right now?
Why ask it
Open here rather than with the crisis. If you cannot sit with a plain description before getting to the grievance, the reading will spend all its time on the last argument.
What is working that I have stopped noticing?
Why ask it
Long relationships bury their own evidence. The answer is usually something logistical, like who handles which chore without discussion, and it is easy to dismiss precisely because it never fails.
What do I keep starting arguments about that is not the real issue?
Why ask it
Recurring fights about dishes, money, or lateness are rarely about those things. Watch whether the answer names an underlying feeling, because that is the fight you have not had yet.
What is my share of the last fight?
Why ask it
Note how quickly you produce mitigating detail. If you cannot answer without describing what they did first, you have your answer and the cards are only slowing you down.
What am I not telling them?
Why ask it
There is nearly always something, and it is usually less dramatic than the secrecy suggests. The size of the withholding matters less than how long it has been going on.
What are they trying to tell me that I keep hearing as criticism?
Why ask it
This stays on your side of the line, which is what makes it fair to ask. It reads the way you receive things, not what they secretly mean, and only you can check the answer.
Which of my reactions predates this relationship?
Why ask it
Look for the response that is out of proportion to what triggered it. Reactions that were reasonable in an earlier relationship or in your family tend to arrive fully formed and feel justified.
What do I need that I have never asked for directly?
Why ask it
Hinting is the common failure here. If you find yourself thinking they ought to know already, that expectation is worth more attention than whatever the need turns out to be.
What are we both avoiding?
Why ask it
The shared avoidance is usually a decision with a date attached: moving, children, money, a parent who needs care. Naming it does not decide it, but it stops the drift.
Where has the balance of effort tipped?
Why ask it
Read this in both directions. People are quick to see where they are giving more and slow to see where they have quietly stopped, and a reading that only flatters you has failed.
What has changed about them that I have not adjusted to?
Why ask it
Partners keep being treated as the person they were five years ago. The answer is often something they told you about themselves and you filed as a phase.
What would I want if I were not worried about being alone?
Why ask it
This separates the relationship from the fear of ending it. If the answer is the same relationship, that is genuinely reassuring. If it is not, you have learned something you will want to sit with.
What am I hoping will fix itself?
Why ask it
Waiting is a decision that does not feel like one. Ask how long you have been waiting, and whether anything has actually moved in that time, because usually nothing has.
What is the difference between what I say I want and how I behave?
Why ask it
The gap is the finding. Someone asking for more closeness while working every evening is not lying, but the behavior is the better evidence of what they can currently manage.
What would this relationship need to look like in a year for me to stay gladly?
Why ask it
The word gladly rules out staying by default. Answer in specifics you would notice, not in adjectives, so you can tell in a year whether it happened.
What am I willing to change, and what am I not?
Why ask it
Both halves matter. A list with nothing in the second column is not generous, it is vague, and it will produce resentment the first time you are asked for something you never intended to give.
What have we never repaired?
Why ask it
Old ruptures that were dropped rather than resolved tend to be the reference point for every later fight. If you can date the incident to the week, it is still live.
What am I owed an apology for, and what do I owe one for?
Why ask it
Asking both at once stops the reading becoming a case for the prosecution. If your side of the ledger comes out empty, do the pull again with only that half of the question.
Is the problem the relationship or the timing?
Why ask it
A bad year, a new baby, a sick parent, or a brutal job can look exactly like incompatibility. The distinction matters because one of them passes and the other does not.
If nothing about this changes, can I live with it?
Why ask it
The hardest question and the right one to end on. Answer it about the relationship as it actually is, not the version you keep describing to friends, and then stop reading for the night.
Reading About a Relationship
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Where to draw the line
Read about the relationship, not about your partner
"What do they really feel" produces an answer you cannot check and will act on regardless. Rephrase as what you would do if the answer were the worst case, which is a question you can use.
Do not read during or straight after a fight
In that hour every card confirms whatever you already decided about them. Wait a day. If the reading looks different by then, that difference is more informative than either version.
Say what you want the answer to be before you shuffle
Naming the hoped-for answer in advance is the simplest guard against reading toward it. Write it down and compare afterward.
Keep the reading to yourself unless it changes what you do
Telling a partner the cards said they were withholding turns a private reflection into an accusation with no evidence behind it. Bring the conversation, not the spread.
Ways this goes wrong
Reading for someone who has not asked
Pulling cards on a partner's private life, their ex, or their intentions is surveillance dressed as reflection. It also gives you conclusions you will never be able to test.
Re-pulling until they look worse
If the third spread is finally satisfying, the reading stopped being about them several pulls ago. Note the pattern and put the deck down.
Using cards to postpone a conversation
Most of the questions here end in something you need to say out loud. A reading that consistently produces more reading is functioning as a delay.
Cards where there is harm
If you are frightened, being controlled, or being hurt, this is not a question for a deck. Talk to someone who can actually help, and do not read your way around it.
Two sittings
After a fight that keeps repeating
- 1Ask what the argument is actually about, if it is not the stated subject.
- 2Ask for your share of it, and write the answer before you soften it.
- 3Ask which of your reactions predates this relationship.
- 4Ask what you need that you have never asked for directly.
- 5Turn the last answer into one sentence you can say this week.
When you are deciding whether to stay
- 1Ask what is working that you have stopped noticing.
- 2Ask what you would want if you were not worried about being alone.
- 3Ask whether the problem is the relationship or the timing.
- 4Ask what a year from now would need to look like for you to stay gladly.
- 5End on whether you can live with it unchanged, and decide nothing that night.