Hi @mrsjackrussell, you asked what path your marriage will take. I understand you're feeling very sad at present and so I'll do my best to give you some good news, but ultimately I have to try to reflect as honestly as I can what I see in your cards. I've also got a long backlog of readings now which I'm trying to work through, so I'm throwing fairly small spreads for the time being and I apologise if my interpretation is relatively brief. I've chosen a 5 card 'Relationship Cross' for you:
Your position in the marriage at present appears almost to be a silence, does that mean anything to you? It's as though you've said all you can and have now withdrawn into your sadness and contemplation, hoping for some positive change and trying to believe it will come despite all the evidence that things have really got stuck. Often in our lives it can be appropriate to give other people the benefit of the doubt, and we have an amazing capacity to expect the best even when all the indications are that things aren't going to end well. I feel you've been trying to hang onto that hope for quite some time, patiently and quietly waiting for an upturn in the relationship and its circumstances. However, there are no guarantees that such faith will pay off, and right now you might be starting to conclude that hope is running out. Your realisation is leaving you wondering where on earth things can go from here, and although you're trying to remain calm it's likely that you're struggling to do so. A dream may be dying.
Your partner's position appears to be - and I apologise for my bluntness - selfish, grasping and entrenched in values which you struggle to share. Is there a dispute regarding your home? It looks like he has made property and/or finances a priority over any heart-led values and this has put you in an unhappy position. Or he has been 'grabby' in some other way. You might be feeling as though you don't even recognise him, so grotesque has his attitude and behaviour become. His very polarised priorities prevent any movement of feeling, so bound up is he in what seem to be relatively petty concerns which certainly are not putting the marriage first. You asked what path the marriage will take, and it looks like he's walking his own path and it's not one you can take because it highlights a fundamental difference in your perspectives on what's important and acceptable.
The marriage, as represented in your third card, is likely to have changed beyond recognition before now. Do you feel as though you've been aware for quite some time that things weren't going well or as you'd hoped they would? Because I'm seeing a powerful transformation in the past position. It might be that a significant loss or ending brought you together originally, and your relationship emerged from that difficult time. But however the marriage began, it seems to have lived out its span already and either couldn't continue in its previous form or has, to all intents and purposes, been over for some time. I apologise if that's difficult to hear, but the likelihood is that you've been living in a semblance of a marriage, but there has been no real life to it for a while. Yet for reasons I feel you're aware of, it has been difficult to accept and face this reality. You've been in a very painful position and the sense is that it has brought you to a lonely place, apprehensive about what direction to take now, and uncertain about quite how you'll move forward. Part of you is still hoping for the best, but another part of you recognises the extent of the destruction that has already occurred.
Your fourth card refers to what lies between you both at the moment, and I'm seeing a refusal to accept the truth - which is that change that would disrupt the appearance of an 'intact' marriage must happen if you're going to move forward in any real sense, in any healthy sense. Pride and perhaps an unintentionally stubborn refusal to acknowledge the very real limitations of what's possible now might be holding you back. I'm even seeing a kind of "Who will blink first?" scenario being played out, an attitude possibly of hanging on just because one or both of you fears it would 'look bad' if the reality of the situation was really revealed and acknowledged. There might be an element of comparing yourself to others, or worrying about what others will think. It's cloudy, but the certainty is that a point of instability has been reached, and change is the only viable way forward. The unpleasant truth must be swallowed before your life can be opened up to renewal and healthy possibility. The advice here is not to concern yourself with how things might look to other people, but to save yourself, particularly if, as I suspect, there has been some form of abuse involved. I'm picking up on a possible undercurrent of nastiness and controlling, which has had the effect of wearing you down and left you feeling diminished. However it has played out, you're unlikely to be feeling self-confident at this stage, and that's probably making you anxious about what possibilities there would be for you beyond the marriage. As difficult as that might feel right now, the marriage has been weakened somehow and a big question mark hangs over it. Do you honestly feel it can survive?
The future of the relationship looks ambivalent at best. Either it's a matter of rebuilding trust (if that's even possible under the circumstances), or else the question of trust belongs to your finding the strength to walk away and rebuild your life. Whichever it is, the message of the card is about a struggle to regain a sense of wholeness, and reaching out to others in order to do that. This card is about support from others, trusting that it'll be there for you and allowing yourself to rely on it until you're feeling strong enough to need it less. But it's important to accept the necessity of allowing yourself to be vulnerable for a while so that you can get beyond the extremely unsatisfactory position you're in just now. You've been through devastation and you've been punishing yourself, or sticking around to be bullied, or both, so it's understandable that you're apprehensive about what the future holds. But it looks as though you have to let go in order to be caught safely again, which is a sort of compromise that life is urging you to make. There is light ahead of you, but you have to reach up to it, go towards it instead of hiding in your silence and the darkness that seems to characterise the marriage now.
@mrsjackrussell, please accept my apologies if this reading is way off the mark. Having done so many readings here in the last week, and always with the bare minimum of background info and without any dialogue before laying the cards out and during the reading, I'm feeling quite uncertain about the amount of assumptions and tentative connections and wild guesses it can involve. The last thing I want to do is cause unnecessary concern, so forgive me if there are details or themes here that you simply can't apply to your situation. Take anything inaccurate or downright wrong in my interpretation with a generous pinch of salt, and accept anything that rings true and might be useful with my best wishes 