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 Gut feelings - E
I'd like to hear from others who have struggled with
trying to find that gut/intuitive feeling and have felt
like they still didn't know the best decision when faced
with staying or leaving a significant relationship (one
where strong personality conflicts/differences and strong
love coexist)-- I'm also interested in hearing from
others who have tried couples therapy (or currently are
in it) -- am wondering how long you've tried the therapy
-- have you seen positive changes happen and, if so, how
long did it take for real change to manifest?
I've been given a lot of advice to pray about this and
would be really interested to hear from others who have
felt or been in the same situation and what road you've
chosen. Thanks!
 From: Bernd
I find gut feelings are a lot like a wise, good friend
- who talks in Greek! I know he’s got something
important to tell me (and he often tugs vigorously at my
shirt), but I also found that - although I THOUGHT I
understood what he was saying at times, it’s only
when I really take the time to listen, that I’m able
to take healthy advantage of his wisdom and insight.
My gut feelings never let me down. My jumping to
conclusions based on what I THOUGHT they were trying to
tell me got me into plenty of swamps though. When Lynda
was having her affair, I wanted quick answers - and I
wanted those answers to make logical sense. What
I’ve found over the past few years is that the
directions my gut feelings often lead me seemed
absolutely insane or crazy at the time, but in hindsight
have made perfect sense.
“Knowing” is not the same as
“doing”, and I think this was one of the
hardest things for me to learn - or unlearn. It seemed
that I couldn’t break the connection between finally
admitting she was still having her affair, to feeling
that, if I admitted that truth to myself, I’d have
to DO something about it - such as leave. It was a breath
of sunshine when it dawned on me one day that, in
listening to my gut, I didn’t have to DO anything
with what it was telling me. In fact, just accepting what
it was telling me usually let it take me to the next step
- of giving me guidance that felt solid, and caring.
Confusion and doubt are healthy. They are the pebbles
on the path of serenity. Allowing myself to feel
confused, and be okay with it, also helped me
tremendously in listening and understanding how my inner
voice was trying to help me.
Regarding therapy - my wife and I are still in
therapy, because we want to be. When all hell broke loose
in our marriage, I dragged her to couples therapy for a
while, but she resisted - and rightly so - because my
focus was trying to fix “the relationship”.
That meant, of course, that SHE would need to change too,
and she resisted that attempt at control. When it finally
dawned on me that I needed to heal for ME, and not to fix
“our marriage”, things began to improve in ways
they never had been able to before. Lynda’s in
therapy now because SHE wants to, because healing and
feeling more alive is important to HER. My own therapy
has helped me understand how important it is to me and to
her to give her the complete freedom to make those kinds
of choices.
It’s taken us 5 years to get to this place in our
relationship, but if I had to do it all over again,
I’d hang in there for 20 years, or whatever it took.
It’s been very worth it. There’s no human being
on this earth that deserves to be rejected from love
because their choices (even the “bad” ones)
aren’t what their partner likes. That doesn’t
mean we have to stay close to them all the time, if it
means being abused. But they deserve to be treated with
love and kindness, something we can only truly give them
if we’re giving the same kind of love and kindness
to ourselves. THAT’S the hardest part, giving the
genuine stuff to ourselves. But we can only give to
others what we have inside ourselves. That’s what
I’ve discovered, and it works as universally as
gravity, in my opinion.
That’s my 2 bits:)
From: chatwme
I've been with my husband for more than 13 years. He
cheated on me twice (brief affairs) way before we were
married. He cheated again almost 5 months ago. I HAD A
GUT FEELING EVERYTIME. My advice is always listen to your
gut feeling because most of the time it's correct. If
you're gut feeling is he's doing something wrong, then
chances are, he is. If you're thinking about making a
decision based on your gut feeling then I would listen to
it but confirm your suspicions just to make sure. Anyway,
I wish you luck and if you have anymore questions, I'd be
happy to give you my opinion.
From: Oregon
I'm struggling with this too...My gut feeling changes
with the wind to a certain degree. So I try to find a
balance between voicing these questions (I feel they
really must be brought out in the open) but not sound
like I doubt what I'm doing every second. The whole
process of reconciling (whether that leads to staying or
a healthy separating) strikes me rather like two
gunslingers in the wild west, hands on their
pistols--just ready to draw at one misstep. On the whole,
I admit my gut feeling is to give up on my current
relationship...my partner has been very slow to really
put her heart into trying or counselling, and there is a
desire (hers for me) issue going back a long while
between us that remains and is now even larger because of
her affair. (Quick bio: Together 8 years, lived together
4...I had an affair 4 years ago, she did recently) But it
seems that ones gut feeling is the essentially a fight
versus flight struggle. Very Primitive, and thus not
always reliable. For me, for NOW, my gut feeling has a
faint taste of cowardice...my own unwillingness to face
up to damage I did to her and us. Yeah, it would be
really easy to just wash my hands of all this
thinking/talking/counselling/etc.) (and it is wearying)
and put it out of my mind. But I suppose Id simply repeat
it all in the next serious relationship (maybe even a not
so serious relationship). I confess that I feel
susceptible to cheating these days, I have a slight
desire to hurt her, and to provide a back-up plan for
myself, and to just feel uncomplicated love and desire
for someone....it would be SO easy to fall into something
that gave me that feeling of being in love and loved,
without all the complicated crap. And in short, I guess
that's why people cheat, to avoid the complicated crap of
relating intimately with humans. I try to remember how
bad that would be for me in the long run.
We've been in fairly intense counselling for 7
sessions now. When we first drifted apart, and the affair
occurred, and I confronted her about it...in my heart (I
was not saying this to her) I thought Id know what I
wanted in four sessions....but mostly I was just so
pained and felt so much time and effort already invested
in the relationship that I was eager to minimize the
length of the pain and cut my losses. But I've learned
that you can't minimize what you feel, and you can't cut
your losses. We are making progress, and I'm able to
finally air feelings that I've had for years in our
relationship...So, yes, things are improving as a result
of counselling. For us, to a degree-though slowly. But
for me, dramatic improvement..I want her to be a part of
this, but even when she's not (she still vacillates) I am
healing and learning.
Nowadays I don't really have a time-line- a vague one,
maybe. But I trust myself to know if things aren't
getting better, to notice my needs and judge them for
fairness and then decide if they're getting met. But this
is thinking, n not gut. My gut feeling seems pretty
unreliable. I've always lead life by instinct or
gut-feeling, but it was that instinct that got us in this
mess...if we had been matter-of-fact and discussed our
needs, if I had openly acknowledged my needs on a
thinking basis and asked for them more I might not have
had an affair. Or maybe I would have had to leave the
relationship. I'll never know. If I had *thought* about
my partners behavior and experience with me, I would have
seen she was heading for an affair... One thing that
might be helpful is to learn a bit about your personality
type. Myers-Briggs is a common, widely available test for
this. You can learn a great deal about how you process
conflict and change from this test. For some highly
analytical types, I suppose gut feeling might be their
best indicator.
I've written to much, and rather wandering, too. But I
hope it has some helpful info.
From: E
Thanks for sharing... without waxing too sentimental
here, it really helps to know I am not the only sailor
trying to navigate these rough seas alone.(even though it
seems I am on the Atlantic and you may be on the Pacific)
I really understand that image of the two gunslingers in
the wild west -- staying in the relationship or healthy
separating feels very hard at this point. I, too, on the
whole feel like my gut says give up on the relationship
but I've really wanted to try to see if things could
change. My partner and I came together because of some
strong similarities and common goals but day-to-day
compatibility and personalities seems to be very
challenging. He has also been slow to put his heart into
counselling, but we have gone a few times and have
benefited from it. It's hard to see concrete change
though and I have this fear that things may never change
to the point of the kind of growth I would like for us to
experience -- It's kind of strange but I've felt in my
heart for a long time what I've really wanted was to
experience a very compassionate relationship one
committed to growth and I keep doubting my feelings about
whether or not this road (with this person)I am on with
him is really the right path toward what my heart really
desires
I think one of the ways I have dealt with the
cowardice (the stuff that we blame ourselves for) is to
try not to judge so harshly on being human. If you reach
out to another while you are in a relationship it usually
indicates there is something that either you need to find
within yourself for fulfilment or some basic needs you
aren't aren't being fulfilled in a relationship. It can
be so easy to feel guilty or to place blame, but I think
it's best to look at our transgressions a bit more
lovingly, and place our pasts behind us as real stepping
stones for growth. I really believe that these stepping
stones are for helping us to better understand and learn
who we are and who we are not.
I am at a point where I wonder how long to invest in
counselling, how long to wait to see if changes really
happen. I've been trying to use the same thinking about a
time-line, but it's been hard because I, too,have made
most decisions based on gut/instinct.
From: Bernd
Hi Oregon, Based on my own experiences, I just wanted
to mention a few things.
You're both still in the early stages of dealing with
her affair, and I suspect that she's never really
emotionally dealt with YOUR affair. So much is confused
and hurting inside, and there's a been a lot of old
childhood trapdoors of past hurt flung wide open. All the
different thoughts and feelings that are swirling thru
you are perfectly normal, in my opinion. Thoughts and
feelings aren't actions. They can all give you lots of
insight as time goes by, but right for now, I'd suggest
writing often in a private journal, which will give you a
healthy and constructive outlet, and help you with
flashes of insight as you see your own words.
You have some solid insights in your posting. As much
as I wanted to "hurry" things, one of the
things I had to learn (and the affair aftermath was a
damned good teacher, btw!) was patience, and being ok
with just letting the "process" work. My inner
guide knows that change and healing - for it to be solid
- isn't something that can be rushed, or should be. A
rose takes its own time to grow, and any attempts to try
to force it to blossom early only damages it, and
eventually destroys it. Remind yourself to let go of your
need for some deadline. Imagine yourself on a trip where
focusing on the destination robs you of all the magic the
scenery and sights offer along the way.
Lastly, I was so used to using my brain to find
solutions most of my life that I let it drown out my
inner voice over and over again. My brain is only a small
part of me, and there are some things it can do really
well, and other things it's almost useless for. Figuring
out another person and their motives is one of the things
it just can't do, or predicting the future. Many of my
past troubles have been directly because I tried to use
it to figure out things it wasn't designed for. Like
trying to pick up a spoon with my nose - don't work very
good. The ironic thing is that there have been many times
since I learned to "let go" of trying to figure
some things out, when as soon as I accepted "what
is" with genuine inner calm, the answers would come
to me out of nowhere. Love how that works.
Anyway, I try to stay away from giving advice, so take
what works, and leave the rest!
From: Caring
How do you confirm your gut feeling? I have had the
gut feeling that my husband has been cheating on me and
that is the source of alot of our arguments. He denies
this emphatically and gets really defensive about it. His
previous marriage ended because she cheated on him. Any
advice would be appreciated.
From: Bernd
The hard way is by getting "evidence".
Problem was, it never solved anything for me, because I
just ended up going from the frying pan to the fire when
I DID get solid evidence (confrontation, yelling, more
anguish). Plus, the snooping consumed me, and made a
wreck out of my life.
The thing I had to learn was to trust my own gut
feelings, without "needing" evidence. Boy was
that hard, but very worth it. It took many sessions at
Al-anon, and therapy, and many hours of journal writing
and quiet meditation before I was even able to begin
doing so. But it brought my destiny back into my hands,
and under the guidance of my soul - not under the whims
of whether or not I'd find out the "truth" that
day, or whether or not I was "smart enough" to
figure out who was trying to snowball me.
Let go a little each day of needing the truth from
your partner, and learn how to trust that inner voice
inside. When the pool of water inside is calm enough,
you'll be able to see a lot of things more clearly, and
be solid with them no matter what anyone else tells you.
From: STEVE
Every time my SO was involved w/MY gut feeling, things
have turned out right as I knew they would (from feeling
them, of course). I can't say that that'll happened 100%
of time, but right now, I"m really counting on my
gut feeling about NOT loosing my angel. I know I could be
setting myself up for the worst heart ache ever recorded
in history...but that's a chance I'm willing to take. Oh
well.hope this meant something to someone out there.
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