How does he experience me?

He registers you almost entirely as thinking, not feeling — and something about that registration is currently misfiring, in his favour of keeping it that way. The cards do not report his inner state; they describe the shape of how you read him from the outside.

• Past — Five of Swords reversed: the early read of you was a cold one: sharp, hard to read, someone who wins the exchange or leaves it. Reversed here, the edge was walked back — something you two did later cost him the comfortable version of you being just difficult.
• Present — King of Swords reversed: right now the King sits in his thinking rather than his listening. He has a position on you, and he's keeping it tidy and sealed; coldness, control, and distance are his default posture, and the block is his inability to let the position be less finished than it is.
• Future — The Devil reversed: a loosening, but only under a condition. If the tension gets said out loud in plain words, this reads as the chain coming off. If it stays unspoken and only gets managed, the same card turns into a quieter, tighter bind.

Two things worth naming: all three sit reversed, so the whole picture is internal, blocked and unfinished rather than decided; and two of three are Swords, so whatever he feels about you is arriving as a thought about you, not a feeling about you.

So: if you go back over the last few exchanges and find he does initiate — asks, follows up, brings something up out of nothing — that fits the release reading. If you find he only ever answers, or only ever responds after you move first, the Devil stays reversed the other way, and no amount of warmth on your side changes that.

One step before the weekend: open the last real message thread you two have and mark, line by line, which questions you asked and which he started. That record tells you something no card can — and it's his behaviour you're reading, not his mind.

Want the three-card spread drawn as a picture?