Something. Something… different.
It rings a little alarm bell in your mind. It makes you tilt your head. You can’t put a finger on it… but something’s not right. Something doesn’t make sense.
That’s your intuition. Trust it. It knows its stuff.
But you second guess it. You don’t have anything blatant to work off of. You don’t have any evidence. You might be jumping to conclusions.
Stop right there. Trust your intuition. It knows better than you.
Hey, I hear ya. It can be hard to put a finger on a feeling. But it’s far easier to put your finger on behavior. Your gut is telling you something’s off… because it is assigning meaning to a change in the status quo.
The key: Pinpointing the change
What is the change in the status quo? That’s the key.
Take this example from my (sad) dating life: I was seeing a guy recently who seemed sweet as pie. He said all the right things, he was affectionate, he genuinely seemed to care, he was generous… yet I was skeptical. When I told him of my doubts, he was patient and understanding. My friends urged me not to write him off, and we really were having a great time, so I continued seeing him.
Then something happened. I called him one Saturday afternoon to go over our loose plans for the weekend. He didn’t answer the phone. But he texted me back, explaining he drank too much the night before and would be out of commission for the day. “But I’ll see you tomorrow, right?” he added.
Hmmm.
It didn’t feel good. It left a bad taste in my mouth. And it continued to bother me all day. I wondered, should I really be upset? People get hangovers. And our plans were not written in stone. But my intuition wouldn’t let up….
… because there was a change in the status quo. This was different than every other time. The results were not what I’d expect. Something was missing.
| My action | His action | |
| STATUS QUO (PAST): | I call. | He calls back. |
| UNEXPECTED NEW RESULT (PRESENT): | I call. | He texts back. |
| NEXT ACTION (FUTURE): | Not having it. | …. crickets … |
I didn’t have anything concrete. I didn’t have any evidence. I had my intuition, which is far more powerful. I could go deeper; I could theorize about his activities on Friday and Saturday; I could’ve questioned him. But I didn’t. A single break in the status quo was enough to raise a flag and break the trust we had built.
Anyway… He. Never. Called. Back.
A final word of caution
Don’t allow yourself to be “mansplained” out of trusting your intuition. As women, we get called crazy. I’ve heard, “How could you possibly have come to that conclusion?” “Where’d you get that idea?” “What did I do to give you that impression?”
If you are put in a position where you are defending your gut feeling… that’s just even MORE cause for alarm.
Intuition is a powerful thing, ladies. Find the root of it, if you need to. But trust it. And then let him go.
