Man, relationships are tough. I thought I had things sorted with my partner, Alex, but about two months ago, everything just felt jammed up. Like trying to drive a car with the handbrake on. We weren’t fighting, which is almost worse—it was just this heavy silence where neither of us wanted to admit we had totally lost the plot on where we were going as a couple. I felt like I was constantly having to steer, and Alex was totally checked out, or maybe they just didn’t see the point of the trip anymore.
The Wall I Hit and Why I Grabbed the Deck
I usually use Tarot for career stuff, for figuring out if a new project is going to land or flop. But this relationship tension was bleeding into everything. I couldn’t focus at work; I was snapping at people. It got so bad that one Tuesday afternoon, I just closed the laptop, went to my study, and pulled out my deck. I needed some harsh, clear direction, not some flowery BS about emotional growth. I needed the GPS coordinates for our love life.
My core question was simple, even a little desperate: Are we even facing the same direction, or are we secretly trying to ditch each other?
I decided to do a three-card spread focusing on Past Direction, Present Conflict, and Future Trajectory. I shuffled those cards until my fingers hurt, really focusing all the frustration into the deck. When I laid them out, the middle card—the Present Conflict—slapped me right in the face. It was The Chariot, upright.
Deconstructing The Chariot in the Relationship Context
Now, The Chariot is usually about victory, control, moving forward with purpose. But seeing it sitting in the “conflict” position? That told me our issue wasn’t a lack of drive; it was a battle over the driving. We were both trying to grab the steering wheel at the same time.
I immediately launched into my deep-dive process. I didn’t look up generic meanings. I focused on the visual details and wrote down what they specifically meant for me and Alex.
- The Driver: This is the ego, the person forcing the issue. For me, that was realizing how much I’d been trying to impose my timeline on our relationship—moving too fast on commitments Alex wasn’t ready for. I was acting like the sole driver, expecting Alex to just sit there and cheer me on.
- The Sphinxes (Black and White): These opposing animals are the key. They represent conflicting forces that need to be aligned by willpower, not physical force, because the driver has no reins. Our sphinxes were our differing life goals: Alex wants to save every penny and buy a house immediately. I want to travel the world for a year first. Two totally valid, but totally opposed, immediate directions.
- The Canopy/Armor: This is the defense mechanism, the walled-off protection. We had both armored up and stopped talking because we were afraid of admitting we wanted different things.
I wrote pages of notes. It wasn’t about whether we were breaking up; it was about realizing that unless we both agreed on the destination, the forward movement itself would be the conflict.
The Practical Application and the Hard Talk
The Chariot revealed a total lack of unified direction. It wasn’t telling me to break up or stay together. It was telling me to stop trying to force Alex to pull my way, and instead, work together to get those two sphinxes facing the same damn horizon.
That evening, I didn’t start the conversation with accusations or trying to rehash old fights. I changed my approach completely. I decided to apply the Chariot’s energy—focused determination—to finding common ground, not winning the argument.
I sat Alex down and instead of saying, “Why are you dragging your feet?” I asked, “What does our future look like when we are both totally happy? What’s the unified destination?”
It was a hard conversation, a messy one, full of uncomfortable truths. We both had to admit we had been holding onto the reins too tightly, convinced our way was the only way to victory. By forcing us to look at the conflicting forces (the sphinxes) and the fact that brute force wasn’t working (no reins), The Chariot made us realize we had to merge our intentions.
Where We Landed (The New Direction)
What came out of that difficult, Chariot-driven analysis? We compromised. Instead of one year of backpacking or buying a house right now, we decided to put the house savings on a slight pause and take a shorter, intensive trip together, treating it as a shared project. It aligns both the desire for adventure (my side) and the desire for efficiency and controlled spending (Alex’s side). It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a unified one. We are finally moving, and the tension just evaporated.
If you’ve pulled The Chariot in a love reading, stop trying to win. Stop trying to control your partner or the timeline. The real challenge is mastering the push-pull of the opposing forces within the relationship. You can’t steer until both sides agree on the map. It’s tough work, but it pulls you out of that standstill every time.
