Strength as feelings in love and relationships – Upright and Reversed
Introduction
The Strength tarot card represents the courage to be vulnerable in relationships. When it appears upright in a love reading, it indicates that openly expressing emotions and trusting your partner will lead to deeper intimacy. However, when reversed, the Strength card cautions against suppressing feelings or trying to dominate your partner, as this damages closeness.
By exploring the upright and reversed meanings of the Strength card regarding love, we can uncover how emotional openness and restraint enable relationships to flourish or falter. This article examines the secrets behind building strong yet tender bonds.
Upright Strength in Love and Relationships: Embracing Vulnerability
Inner Strength to Reveal Your Heart
Upright, the Strength card encourages us to find fortitude within to share honest emotions with romantic partners. Just as the woman in the Rider-Waite tarot image gently yet firmly opens the lion’s mouth, we must exercise courage to articulate our authentic needs and desires without fear of judgement or rejection.
Suppressing feelings erodes intimacy far more than raw vulnerability ever could. The Strength card gives us permission to let down our guard, be sensitive, get emotional, and trust that our partners will respond with care – just as we would for them.
The Beauty of Mutual Understanding
Relationships only blossom through mutual understanding, which emerges from open and thoughtful communication. The Strength card reminds us that conveying fears, doubts, sadness and joy to loved ones forges profound connection. Knowing your partner sees and accepts every facet of your inner world builds confidence and liberation.
Shared Strength in Togetherness
Two souls intertwined in affection possess collective strength exceeding the sum of individual spirits. The Strength card indicates that through mutual support, understanding and inspiration, partners discover resilience against external burdens. United by faith in one another, couples gain the courage to weather any storm.
Passion Through Emotional Exposure
Baring intimate thoughts and feelings also unlocks passion’s intensity. The Strength card suggests that emotional exposure dissolves barriers between lovers, permitting unrestrained physical and spiritual merging. Partners confident in the other’s compassion can wholly give themselves to intimacy’s heights.
Reversed Strength: Suppressing Emotion Corrodes Bonds
Difficulty Trusting and Connecting
When the Strength card appears in reverse position regarding relationships, it cautions us against concealing authentic sentiments from partners. Just as the woman in the Rider-Waite image struggles to restrain the lion, inverted Strength reveals how denying feelings eventually causes them to break free – often destructively.
Fearing judgement, rejection or contempt, we may hide aspects of ourselves from even beloved partners. However, suppressed emotions build pressure within until erupting during arguments, manifesting as resentment or escaping through emotional affairs.
The Illusion of Strength
Paradoxically, inverted Strength indicates that hiding perceived “weaknesses” in relationships ironically demonstrates fragility. We often suppress emotions to seem strong, in control and invulnerable against heartbreak. However, the reversed Strength card reveals that only the weak refuse to admit weakness. True courage manifests as openness despite potential pain.
Imbalance of Power
Additionally, restraining expression in relationships breeds imbalance, as one partner dominates through forced stoicism. The reversed Strength card suggests that without vulnerable communication, we silence our own needs while forcing partners to bear the entirety of emotional burdens. This slowly transforms lovers into tyrant and servant.
Loss of Passion’s Spark
Finally, suppressed intimacy suffocates relationships’ fervor. The reversed Strength card symbolizes how vulnerability enables passion, while restraint slowly extinguishes excitement’s flame. When we hide our authentic selves from partners, our spiritual connection with them withers, leaving us isolated and dissatisfied.
Conclusion: Cultivating Bonds Through Openness
The Strength card upright champions emotional intimacy in relationships, while inverted it warns against suppressing vulnerability. To build strong yet affectionate partnerships, we must uncover reserves of courage to share, support and understand each another through open communication.
Suppressing thoughts and feelings may temporarily protect us, but ultimately isolates us from meaningfully connecting with loved ones. However, embracing authentic intimacy, despite intense discomfort, bonds souls through mutual empathy, inspiration and passion.
We heal, grow and transform each other through our willingness to reveal hidden recesses of our inner worlds. With gentle strength, let us come together in sensitivity, that we may help our partners, and ourselves, shine ever brighter.
