The Lovers tarot card represents commitments and significant choices, and sometimes, those choices you make can mean life or death, such as continuing to eat emotionally to soothe frustration and pain or utilizing other therapeutic forms to soothe, such as writing. 

The Lovers tarot card in the Major Arcana is closely associated with love, relationships, values, and alignment. 

They can also symbolize lovers, such as Adam and Eve, or lovers throughout time; this couple has quite a symbolic history. The Lovers card asks if you are finding the proper balance.

You see a bond between two men and two women who attempt to hold onto their individuality and give in to a higher spiritual love.

You can interpret the Lovers tarot card as asking if they have found proper balance in the components that make up their being: spiritually and physically.

The Lovers in a relationship can also represent a polarity: an internal battle with temptation towards unity or disconnection through infidelity.

It is common for lovers to have this issue when confronted by someone they find desirable enough.

In some decks, the Lovers couple has the same face, representing their oneness and how they are lovers first and foremost: one entity. Let's discuss how the Lovers tarot card means choices and commitments.

The Lovers also represent being raw, honest, and clear about who you want. It also encourages you to choose and stick with that choice. You can see how it usually applies to relationships. However, it can sometimes have to do so.

You can think you need to make a positive change in your life, but you cannot be wishy-washy about it.

For instance, if you want your mental and physical health to improve, you have to be raw and honest about how your habits are causing you to stay unhealthy, such as people-pleasing. It is not comfortable to face, but it is the truth.

Then you know that you need to change to get into better health, which you know will improve your mental health too.

That means choosing to start implementing healthier eating habits, setting boundaries, finding a therapist to help you if you feel going down that route is necessary, and increasing activity in your life.

And when you decide to do this because you want to be physically and mentally healthy, you must commit to getting there. And that is what I had to do. 

I had to choose between allowing myself to keep eating emotionally and keep up with the battle of yo-yo dieting or ending the vicious cycle by utilizing other healthy forms of therapy, such as writing, to soothe my emotions by venting. 

I Chose to End the Emotional Eating-Yo-Yo Dieting Train

I have been a yo-yo dieter since I was 15. I struggled with my weight since I was 11, as I ballooned after hitting puberty, along with struggling with acne.

That was one of the reasons I was the ideal bully target. And that was when I began to turn to food to soothe the pain I experienced from the bullying and also the hypercriticism I got from home. 

I remember so well when I was 14, and I would steal money from my mother's purse to go to the convenience store to get candy and fast food.

I did this for a while, and surprisingly, she never said anything about how she noticed money missing.

I stopped for a while when I was 15 because I wanted to have a boyfriend, and I knew I had to lose weight.

Not long after my 15th birthday, I slapped myself on a 1,000-calorie diet (stupid, I know), and I lost weight quickly. 

Then I got bored with the diet, started eating again, and then gained the weight back, and kept rinsing and repeating for decades.

However, I did not lose and gain more than 30 lbs at a time until I was an overly stressed and depressed caregiver to my son with complex special needs. 

I ate for comfort and gained over 100 lbs, and I am sure the high cortisol levels in my body contributed to the weight gain. I have PCOS, so that in itself made the situation dangerous. 

Then, after my son was transitioned to the therapeutic residence, four months after decompressing and realizing that I did not need the weight to "protect me" anymore, I made the radical decision to lose the weight. This was in early 2018. 

I did it without seeing a doctor, as I slapped myself on a 1,500-calorie diet, which was also stupid as I was suffering a lot at the beginning, but the weight was dropping.

Thinking back, I should have gone to the doctor to be referred to a dietician to help me get onto a better plan as I likely was in an extreme deficit as I probably was consuming well over 4,000 calories a day before. 

I lost over 60 lbs in six to eight months, and I decided to maintain as this was in 2019, and I did, for the most part, do that okay until I gained a lot back again during the pandemic. 

Instead of sitting with my feelings while being stuck at home due to the lockdowns in 2020, guess what? I did it again. I ate. Therefore, I gained.

And in 2021, I wanted to lose weight again, so I yo-yo'ed until January 2023. That was when I decided I had enough, but I also knew I needed intervention, which was more than psychological therapy. I wanted to jump on the Ozempic train. 

I saw my doctor about it, and he said that I had to have my blood sugar tested because if I were not even pre-diabetic, then I would not be approved for it, but there were other options for weight loss, he said. 

Well, sure enough, to my dismay, I discovered I did need Ozempic as I am indeed diabetic.

Well, it is not a surprise between decades of yo-yo dieting, and it being in the genetics as my father has it, and the chronic unmanaged stress I was under for years, as well as having PCOS, increases the risk right there. 

I was approved, and Ozempic has not only helped me lose weight and keep my sugars in control but also helped me find other ways to deal with complicated feelings other than eating them away.

So now I write. And if I sometimes have to toss out dirty laundry, so be it. It stops me from emotionally eating. 

What does this have to do with the Lovers? It is all about my choice to get onto a treatment to stop emotional eating so it can help me find other ways to cope with painful emotions. 

My choice and commitment was to end the yo-yo dieting and utilize a tool to help me successfully do that.

I also realize I need to be on this for life, or else the weight will come back, and even though I have developed new coping mechanisms, who is to say I won't slide back? 

Life can happen and be cruel, so it is easy to say now that I will never slide back, but no one can predict that.

So yes, I am choosing to stay on Ozempic. Think about a significant choice you have had to make for whatever reason, as the Lovers represents that. 

Now, let’s check out the esoteric connections to other tarot cards to the Lovers. 

Esoteric Connections to Other Tarot Cards to the Lovers

Mercury rules Gemini, and Gemini is associated with Lovers. Therefore, there is an esoteric relationship between Lovers and the Magician because of the Magician's association with Mercury.

Lovers represent the union between the physical and spiritual realms, or salt and sulfur, and Mercury binds them together. 

Mercury is one of the leading Greek pantheon gods, possessing both male and female qualities, choices and indecisiveness, truth and lies.

When you look at the Lovers card from the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, is the female figure the Empress, representing salt, and the male figure the Emperor, representing sulfur? 

Lovers is the lower octave of the Devil, as Lovers is the sixth card, and the Devil is the 15th, which reduces to six.

Six numerologically is the number that represents alignment, harmony, and adjustment. And when you commit to a choice, which is what the Lovers is about, that is what you want to achieve - harmony and alignment. 

However, 15, numerologically, is a lot bolder as you have the energies from one, which is the number of creations, and then you have chaotic five. 

When you merge these numbers to find some alignment, there is a lot of power, possession, and control. The Devil is not only about extreme commitments, but it leads to unhealthy attachments and obsessions. 

Lovers indirectly relate to the Hermit because Mercury's association with Virgo rules the card.

When you make a significant choice, there must be time to pull away to reflect on it, which is what the Hermit is about. 

The Lovers also indirectly relates to the Eight, Nine, and Ten of Swords.

The Eight of Swords relates to Jupiter in Gemini, as the card is about self-imposed imprisonment, as that is a choice you are making to think that way. 

The Nine of Swords is related to Mars in Gemini, the nightmare card, as it can indicate you are making an agonizing decision that keeps you up at night and induces anxiety.

The Ten of Swords relates to the Sun in Gemini, known as the card of endings, but sometimes, it can mean the consequences of making some hard choices, leading to the loss of something. 

Those are the cards that have some esoteric relations to the Lovers. There you have it. Next week, I will analyze the Chariot and tell you my story that relates to it.