He's With Someone Else. Do I Have a Chance?
Sometimes, and the honest answer is that the odds are poorer than hope suggests and the cost is higher than it looks. Tarot can show what is genuinely between you, which is worth knowing before you spend a year on a situation that is structurally against you.
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You did not plan this. Almost nobody does. The feeling arrived, he is not available, and now you are trying to work out whether to wait, to act, or to put it down. What follows is not a lecture. It is the honest arithmetic of a situation that is more common than people admit, written for someone who wants to make a decision with their eyes open rather than be told what they already suspect.
Which cards speak to this
The Lovers is not the romance card here — it is the choice card, and in this situation it points at a decision someone has to make and has not. The Seven of Cups says options are being held rather than chosen. The Two of Swords is the stalemate: he is avoiding a decision, and the avoidance is itself a position. The Devil speaks to an attachment that has become compulsive, and the Eight of Cups says something in you already knows what this costs.
What actually tells you
The useful signals are about his situation, not about how he feels toward you. Feeling is rarely the limiting factor here and treating it as the evidence is what stretches these situations into years.
Watch whether anything has structurally changed since this began. Has he told anyone. Has anything about his life moved. If the answer after several months is nothing, the arrangement is working as it is, and comfortable arrangements do not evolve.
Second: notice who carries the risk. If all the secrecy, the waiting and the ambiguity fall on you while his life continues unchanged, that imbalance is not incidental — it is the structure.
Third: the timeline he offers. A specific, dated, externally verifiable plan is different in kind from "when things settle". The first happens or does not. The second renews indefinitely.
And the sign worth respecting: whether he is honest with you about what he is not offering. Some people in this position are, and it changes what you are dealing with.
How long this usually takes
There is a well-worn shape. The first months feel intense and hopeful; somewhere between three and six the lack of movement becomes noticeable; past a year the situation is usually stable rather than transitional.
The important asymmetry is that time works against you specifically. For him the arrangement stays roughly constant. For you the cost accumulates — the other relationships not had, the years, the sense of yourself.
If there is a genuine external date — a separation in progress, a lease ending, something on a calendar — that is different, and it deserves a defined window plus grace.
If there is not, six months is an honest period in which to see whether anything moves. Not resolves; moves. People in this situation who wait longer than that overwhelmingly report knowing by month five, and the extra months were spent hoping rather than finding out.
What to do with this
Get clear on what is actually being offered, out loud, from him. Not what you both feel — what he intends to do and by when. Vagueness here is not confusion; it is the only sustainable position for someone who wants both things.
Then decide what you are willing to accept as it currently stands, not as it might become. If the honest answer is that the present arrangement is not acceptable, that is a decision you can make without his participation, which makes it the only reliable one available.
Protect your own life while you decide. Keep dating if you are not exclusive. Keep the friends. Do not put anything real on hold for a situation that has no date, because that is where the lasting damage is done.
And find one person to be honest with. These situations are sustained partly by secrecy — not his, yours — and saying it out loud to someone who knows you tends to clarify a great deal quickly.
What this question usually gets wrong
The first misreading is that intensity means it is meant. Situations with an obstacle are reliably more intense than ordinary ones, and the intensity comes from the obstacle rather than from the connection. Remove it and many of these fade — which is one reason the ones that do resolve so often disappoint.
Second: believing that his unhappiness in the other relationship predicts an ending. Many people are durably unhappy and stay for years. His dissatisfaction is real and it is not a timeline.
Third: taking on the moral weight alone. Whatever you think of the situation, he is the one with a commitment, and quietly accepting all the guilt is both inaccurate and a way of staying.
And the honest limit: no spread will tell you he is going to leave, and be very careful with any reading that suggests it — this is the exact question where people want certainty most and where it does the most harm. What a spread shows well is what is actually between you now, and what the waiting is costing you.
What are you being offered, exactly, today?
Not what could exist — what is on the table. That is the only thing you can actually accept or decline.
Cards in this answer
Questions people ask next
Do men in relationships ever leave for someone else?
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Sometimes, and far less often than the people waiting expect. When it happens it is usually because the existing relationship was already ending, not because a better option appeared.
Should I wait for him to sort it out?
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Only with a real date and visible movement. Waiting on 'when things settle' has a poor record, because the arrangement is comfortable for the person who is not waiting.
Is it my fault?
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The commitment is his and so is breaking it. What is yours is the decision about what you accept from here, and that is worth more attention than the blame question.
Which cards show whether he'll choose me?
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The Lovers points to a choice being required, the Two of Swords to one being avoided, the Seven of Cups to options being held. None of them names an outcome, and any reading that does is guessing.