It was Summer 2011 when I met a guy who for all intents and purposes we will call Hot And Funny Engineer (HAFE). I was instantly drawn to HAFE, but early on, he told me he was still tangled in a pretty tight knot with his ex. I remember sitting on the puffy pink circle couch in my studio apartment and texting him that because of his unresolved case of the ex, I couldn’t see him anymore. I then retracted my statement a few days later. It fizzled a few months later, thanks, of course, to the tangled ex knots.

To date, my gut has never been wrong when it comes to me and the opposite sex.

Aside from HAFE, I can think of several other men that I’ve dated or at least been intertwined with whom I’ve had visceral gut instincts about. And, those visceral gut instincts have always told me to exit stage left. Walk the other way. Leave. Run. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200 dollars. Just get the fuck out while your dignity is still in tact.

Up until now, I’ve rarely listened. I became a master at blatantly ignoring the flashing red lights that said someone isn’t quite right. Instead of gracefully exiting, I’ve waited for storms, blowouts, and tears to do everything short of shoving me out the door. I’ve even sometimes tried to pry my way back through some of those doors once they were long shut. Like many twenty-something women, I haven’t always been resolute and decisive when it comes to my love life or lack thereof. At times, I’ve just let my love life happen, serving as a passive spectator to playing fields brimming with flames. And, that is a perilous and frightening way to live.

I could drop a lot of Carl Jung on you about what intuition is and what it isn’t. But, at least for me, intuition is rarely unfounded. I’m not a psychic and I don’t have premonitions about people simply based on the way the wind blew or how my eye twitched. But, I have learned that people will be honest. They will present you with raw truth. And, to borrow from a popular quote that the beautiful Dr. Maya Angelou once said to Oprah Winfrey, “When people show you who they are, believe them.” The gut sentiments I have gotten always arise when the facts fuse with my feelings.

It’s a sin against self-respect to ignore the palpable perceptions we have about our lives and the people in them. Those perceptions that rise from our bellies and sometimes become strong enough to choke our vocal cords. Those perceptions are so judicious that not even the most convincing slew of explanations or devil’s advocacy will prove them wrong.

I recently had an internal battle about a beautiful and short-lived romance
stemming from my intuition. But, this time, unlike many times before, I decided being a grown up means being resolute about my fucking life for once. As I vacillated between all that was good and not-so-good about the situation, it was the maxim of a friend that served as the catalyst to walk away. “Know what you need to for you and do it. Anything less is not respecting or loving yourself.” Sometimes you walk away from good enough and put blind faith in amazing.

Intuition rarely fails us. We just far too often fail it.

Xoxo,

Tyece