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First Things Last
Trust your gut. Listen to that “but…”
By M.K. Apruzzese
Published: May 08, 2008
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DEL.ICIO.US
YAHOOThe night I moved into my adorable Malibu villa, I was so excited that I slept on the floor, since my furniture wouldn’t be delivered until the morning. However, my eagerness was short-lived. I was awakened in the middle of the night by a ferocious gurgling in the bathroom—it sounded like a volcano erupting. When I flung open the bathroom door, I was horrified to see my toilet and bathtub spewing out crap (literally). The septic tank had backed up. A little voice inside my head said, “Uh-oh,” but I hoped this could be easily fixed. I ignored my gut feeling to run. The plumbing problem, of course, becomes so big that I had to move nine back-ups and ten months later.
People say all the time that they wished they had listened to their gut. And, just like my relationship with my septic tank, ignoring your gut in a romantic relationship can be disastrous. Like an internal buzzer, our guts tell us loud and clear when something is very wrong—yet many of us choose to move forward anyway.
The night I met Randy, he referenced seeing a rock band when he was 14…in the eighties. A quick calculation revealed he was 15 years younger than me and I knew the odds of him being ready for a committed relationship and family were slim. But I ignored my intuition and started dating him anyway. When he asked me to move in, my gut screamed “No!” But he convinced me I should, citing Ashton and Demi, as if they were suitable role models. I gave in.
Our relationship fell apart within the year. Why? Because Randy finally admitted he wasn’t ready to start a family. And the thing that killed me was that I knew that. “I gave myself too much credit,” he later told me. Really? I didn’t, I thought. I didn’t give my gut enough credit, either.
People say after a break up, “All of the sudden he changed,” or, “I don’t know what happened. I feel like the rug was pulled out from underneath me.” To this I say: hooey. The signs were there all the time and you just chose to pretend they weren’t.
“I saw the signs that Jim was married from the beginning,” says Sandy, a 34-year-old events planner. “He never took a call when he was with me, he always seemed nervous when we were in public, and he never let me see his house. I didn’t equate his behavior at the time with him being married, but my gut was telling me something was wrong. I think I ignored it because I wanted to feel like I had made the right choice.”
So, when our gut starts a-tugging, why don’t we bail? Why do we let the problem get bigger and bigger while our feelings get more and more invested?
Molly, a 36-year-old pharmaceutical rep who has been down this path many times, hits the reason on the nose. “In the beginning of a relationship, we want everything to be perfect so badly,” she says. “I wished I had paid more attention to the feeling that told me to run from my ex-fiance, Vince.”
After Molly’s third date with Vince, she told me, “He’s so wonderful. He picked me up in a limo and got back stage passes to U2. He sends me flowers all the time.” A few minutes later, she divulged, “But, there’s one thing I noticed almost immediately.” She went on to explain that Vince complained she didn’t pay enough attention to him. He was upset that she didn’t want to see him as much as he wanted to see her.
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