I do a lot of work in which the querent selects cards face up that describe their emotional state or an experience. What I've found by observing hundreds of people do this is that, while certain cards will turn up more often for a specific kind of event, there are more outliers than there are exact matches! And all the explanations make complete sense once you see where someone is coming from.
As a reader I also find that cards that used to often turn up to mean a particular thing, have not had that same significance for years! For instance, the 7 of Swords at one point came up often to indicate someone sneaking around having an affair. I haven't seen it come up as that in a really long time (although the thought always flashes through my mind and I sometimes check it out as a possibility so as not to overlook the obvious).
I did have a situation a few years back where the 5 of Pentacles from the Spiral Tarot came up (in a spread) as someone seeing their ex in public with someone else. The Spiral Tarot shows someone looking through a window at people inside a building dancing. This person had just had the experience of looking through a community center window and seeing her recent ex and his new girl friend dancing!
