sharing your Tarot experience with your spouse

My dh will pull a card for the week if I hold them out and say pick a card for the week. He'll look at the artwork with me if I bring a deck to a bar - we have a pretty neat one in our small town - it's all craft and imported beer and is nicely aged - but won't initiate anything. He's never asked me to read for him and I don't think he will but does at least pay attention to the topic if I talk.

I agree, as others have posted, that I wouldn't want to be with a partner
who I had to hide my tarot interests from.

When I first started collecting tarot cards, my husband was very hesitant;
he has had some negative "occult" experiences in his life, and I'm sure he
was wondering if tarot could act as a gateway for demons, the dark side, etc.
But when I started explaining how the cards can be used for artistic appreciation,
archetype study, empowerment, self-reflection, and so on, he became quite
interested. I don't believe he would ever use tarot cards himself, but he
enjoys looking through the cards with me whenever I receive a new deck.

I'm unpartnered at the moment, but I think Gregory's partner-politics about Tarot is just-about perfect.

I had a partner who was initially drawn to me because of it, but later grew to hate it and used to randomly choose decks to destroy. *After* I wrapped them all up and put them away! Was happy enough to drink all of my Tarot-readings money, though.

Most of my other previous partners have been blessedly indifferent, and allowed me to get on with the business of being myself without interfering too much. One, however, shared an interest in Tarot as part of a wider interest in esoterica. At first it was okay - then they tried to dominate me and be constantly superior. It was amazing how trespassed-on I felt, even before it became restrictive. It was MY thing, dammit!

My OH is behind me no matter what I do as long as I'm happy. He will sit and listen for hours about me talking about Tarot, the history, decks even you guys .

He buys me new decks and sits with me when I open them. He always oooos and ahhs in the right places when I show him new cards but he's not interested in the Tarot but he pretends to listen really well! He lets me read for him, at the end of the reading he will always say how well I did nothing about what was said for him. He's a sweetie.

I think from this, this can go 3 ways when you share with your partner....

• They are really against it and it's a big issue - Some people on AT in the past have posted about how much their partners / husbands / wives are against it, usually with big religious judgement of them. If it's a huge problem for them, I think for me I don't think I could stick around but other people are often trapped in the circumstances by other matters. This can be quite tricky as a situation to handle.

• They are just happy for you, whatever your interests - This is probably the most common response or situation. They have no interest in tarot themselves but they support you whatever your hobbies and interests are. Maybe they are happy to get a break for a while as you both go off and do your own things

• They are also a tarot reader - I sense fighting over deck sharing ahead

But I think partnerships are about sharing each others weird interests and hobbies and respecting each other. They may have no interest in it at all and don't want to be bothered or they may have some interest. But they might want to be left alone and they won't be able to relate if you say "I had a 5 of Wands day today". I think we all have to work out the line and respect their non interest as they respect our interest in it

My partner knows about my passion for the Tarot and my collection. He has no problem with it since his sister is somewhat clarevoyant. He's more of a down-to-earth guy, so he doesn't show much interest in these themes. I will lighten him up on symbolism and tradition if he asks (or when satanists raise a statue of Baphometh) though.

But I feel reluctant of reading in his presence. I only read when I'm alone or in company of a fellow reader. Sometimes, however, it seems he has more interest than he likes to show.

I'm happy reading in SO's presence - on the whole - but I do find it a bit distracting - and if I haven't said BE SILENT he may inadvertently interrupt me. I avoid being in the room when he is writing poetry for the same kind of reason. I have accidentally ruined poems for him before now, when I spoke at a bad moment and he lost his thought

But Daniel's right - the issue is respect - to which I would add acceptance. Unless I had developed an interest AFTER we got together I would expect that he accept ALL of who I am. And shows at least a small interest simply in that it is part of me, so he needs to, kind of.

My sister, who is seriously into rocks, invited my mother to go with her to a rock exhibition very locally to my mother.

Mother: "Why on EARTH would I want to go to something like THAT ?" (she didn't go. But that's my mother for you...)

Sister, sadly, later, to me, "Maybe to learn a little about something that matters very much to your daughter...."

Exactly this.

Thank you for so much input and sharing so many intimate stories.
I'm glad to see that the majority of stories are positive.

What I thought was very interesting was the completely different viewpoint my SO gave me; As said, I was really struggling with this deck and a few of his comments just blew me away and made me appreciate it on a completely different level.

I am now planning to work through different decks with him.

I'm very lucky. My spouse is into anything that makes me happy and vice versa. He always has my back. I should say anything within reason lol.

gregory said:

But Daniel's right - the issue is respect - to which I would add acceptance. Unless I had developed an interest AFTER we got together I would expect that he accept ALL of who I am.

Click to expand...

I totally agree with this. My "other half" is now my ex "other half" because he just wouldn't accept my love of Tarot or respect it.(or even try to understand it). He would make a point of telling complete strangers how many decks I had in the hope that they would agree with his judgement that I had too many. It got to the stage where I put a lot of decks into storage boxes just so that he didn't notice them.

The first thing I did when we broke up was to take the decks back out and pile them up on my shelves again.

Just because I could.