Why Did Her Intuition Have To Yell?
When Intuition Speaks
A client texted me something fascinating today. A second friend of hers had just called off her wedding.
Both women had previously been divorced after discovering that their husbands had cheated on them. Later, both fell in love again and got engaged. And in both cases, after saying Yes to the dress, something happened:
Their bodies screamed, “HELL NO.”
My client asked me: Are you seeing this too? Or is it just a coincidence that two of my girlfriends have done this?
My answer? Yes. I’m seeing it.
I’ve worked with women who seemed able to keep moving forward in a relationship—right up until the moment they agreed to marry the person. Then suddenly there was anxiety. Sleeplessness. Dread. Sometimes physical symptoms. A powerful feeling of I cannot do this.
First, I want to say something important about people who call off engagements: That takes guts—in more ways than one. It is hard enough to leave a relationship you’re unsure about. It’s much harder when you’ve announced your intention to marry, your families know, people are celebrating you, and maybe there’s a ring on your finger, a venue booked, money spent, and a date on the calendar.
At that point, staying can feel easier than admitting: I made a mistake. So I have tremendous respect for people who stop instead of staying and wasting more time on a relationship that will not work out.
Because here’s a science-backed truth: Intuition is real, and it can contain information worth listening to. What we call a “gut feeling” can arise before our conscious mind has put into words all the cues and patterns we’ve noticed.
And when I’ve asked clients, Has your intuition ever told you to leave, and you stayed, and your intuition turned out to be wrong? the answer has always been No.
But only 100% of the time. :)
But there’s another part of this that fascinates me: Why did the No become unmistakable only after their intuition screamed at them—not before?
Intuition is evolutionary, my dear Watson. It can help us make rapid judgments when something feels threatening, sometimes before we can consciously explain what we’re noticing. So if you’ve ever had that feeling that you were near a stranger who would hurt you if they could, your intuition may have been picking up information before your conscious mind could explain what was setting off the alarm.
Another place intuition can become particularly useful is where we have deep experience. We recognize patterns—sometimes before we can articulate exactly what we’ve recognized. And these two women had experience: They hadn’t just been divorced. They’d been divorced from men who had lied to them for years and years about the affairs they were having.
Here’s the thing: It’s only human to want a love relationship to work. It’s only human to turn a deaf ear when intuition whispers and love is jumping up and down, especially after being so hurt before.
When it’s not about an immediate threat, intuition usually whispers before it speaks, and speaks before it yells.
So when it comes to dating—an area where many of us at 50+ have some experience—we probably have noticed things. Maybe we haven’t consciously assembled them yet: an inconsistency here, a value conflict there, something about the way conflict gets handled, a need we keep minimizing, a future we don’t really want, or a part of ourselves we’ve had to make smaller to keep the relationship working.
Individually, we may explain each thing away. But the closer we get to Forever, the more insistent our intuition can become.
For some, an engagement changes the question. Before, the question was: Do I want to keep dating this person? Now it’s: Do I want this to be my life?
And suddenly all those little pieces of information, all those small whispers that were easier to dismiss, have somewhere to land.
The whisper becomes a shout: HELL NO.
If that happens to you, please don’t ignore it. But I want something even better for you: I want you to become skilled enough at choosing that you can hear and confidently heed your intuition when it’s at whisper-level.
Because very often, it is possible to discern a serious mismatch much earlier—before the engagement, before years of investment. In my experience, many serious mismatches can be identified before the third date, or even sooner—if you know what you’re looking for.
That doesn’t mean dating without emotion. It means learning to combine emotion with information, attraction with alignment, intuition with observation, and hope with the willingness to see what’s actually in front of you.
The goal isn’t to become so analytical that you never make a mistake in love. Nobody can promise you that. The goal is to become better at noticing the whispers—so you don’t have to wait for the scream.
If you want to get better at knowing who’s right for you—and recognizing important mismatches before you’ve invested years in the wrong relationship—I created a free 15-minute training for successful singles over 50.
You can watch it here:
coaching.lovesciencemedia.com/freebie
Photo by Eric Soubeyrand de Saint Prix on Unsplash
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