I follow my intuition, go with my gut, all that. The times I haven’t? Well, things didn’t exactly have what I would call an optimum outcome.<\/p>\n
Does this mean I think, “Well, I feel<\/em> this way, so it must<\/em> be true!” is the way to go.<\/p>\n Not. Even. Close.<\/p>\n We get a lot of pushing to follow our feelings, trust our intuition, go with our guts — as if digested waste can think<\/em>. The problem comes in with the misunderstanding of what “gut feelings” are for and how they work.<\/p>\n It’s not mystical, really.<\/p>\n The human brain is set up to gather and integrate data very quickly — so quickly that we’re doing so without thinking of it consciously. Think of catching a frisbee. It’s physics, and you can write the equations by which you perform the actions, but you’re not consciously figuring vectors when you see the disc coming at you. You just catch<\/em> it. Doesn’t make it magic.\u00a0 But if you study the physics, you can describe the exact mechanism pretty clearly.<\/p>\n If you just go with your feelings without looking for facts, you’re running around with one eye poked out. You have no depth perception.1<\/sup> You’re missing the other viewpoint, and it’s an absolutely necessary one to make sure you have a clear 3D picture of what’s going on.<\/p>\n I wanna digress a little bit and talk about facts. It’s basic and simple and people get it wrong all the time. If it happened, it’s a fact. If it hasn’t happened, it’s a theory or a prediction. If you hold a kitten over a working blender and open your hand, the prediction that it will fall in is actually not a fact. It’s a theory. It’s a theory that has a whale <\/strong>of a lot of evidence to point to the probability of kitten puree2<\/sup>, but it’s not a fact<\/em>. We clear? Good.<\/p>\n So where does someone who finds her intuition a good tool get off lecturing about facts?<\/p>\n Simple. If you trust a feeling without digging for supporting facts, it will bite<\/em> you. As Franklin Veaux wisely commented, \u201cJust because I feel bad doesn\u2019t mean someone else did something wrong.\u201d If you feel bad, the fact is that you feel bad. Doesn’t prove a thing.<\/p>\n I’m gonna admit to a slight hypocrite moment here. Recently I made a business decision based on no facts <\/em>I could find. I had taken a temp job that felt<\/em> wrong — I mean, soul-suckingly, sleep-deprivingly bad. From a factual, logical point of view, the job was mostly positive. It got me a shot as some experience I would not have otherwise had, had more secure income than I’m used to as a freelancer, and several other good things. I decided to go on feelings and resign from that job. Yeah, it turned out quite well. I found other avenues to replace in the income and experience. But I cannot pretend for one second that I found appropriate backing facts before <\/strong>I made that decision. I tried, but at the time, the thoughts weren’t thinking. I can see now <\/em>that taking a temp job with no specific end date or end to the project wasn’t going to work with my business plan, but that was hindsight in terms of my decision-making, and hindsight should be suspect because justification is easy at that stage.<\/p>\n What I didn’t do was fool myself. I didn’t pretend facts that I wasn’t seeing. I didn’t make anyone else responsible for how I felt.3<\/sup> I didn’t fool myself that it was risky. The fact (it happened, so it’s a fact) of the positive outcome wasn’t some mystic anything. It was that I was not<\/em> fooling myself about the risk and got my ass in gear in a big way to hustle and get the positive outcome I wanted.<\/p>\n This applies to relationships. If something happens where you feel bad or something feels “wrong”, you owe it to yourself to examine your feelings then look for facts<\/em>.<\/p>\n Scared a Dear Love is gonna leave you?\u00a0 Well, are you scared for a genuine reason or not?\u00a0 What are the supporting facts?\u00a0 What, specifically <\/em>has happened that says that it’s in the Dear Love’s character?\u00a0 Can you recall at least one (if not more) instance?\u00a0 If there’s nothing, your feelings are coming from somewhere else.<\/p>\n Is a Dear Love late home for the umpteenth time?\u00a0 Are you spinning out of control because you’re edgy about it?\u00a0 What are the facts of the matter?\u00a0 Not the supposition, not the extrapolation. What are the facts?\u00a0\u00a0 Don’t know them?<\/p>\n Give it up. Go take a hot bath.\u00a0 Have a cup of tea.\u00a0 Think about something else for awhile.<\/p>\n Wait till you can get the facts.<\/p>\n 1<\/sup>Which could lead to an interesting essay on ole Mr. Wednesday, but that’s not for a poly column. I follow my intuition, go with my gut, all that. The times I haven’t? Well, things didn’t exactly have what I would call an optimum outcome. Does this mean I think, “Well, I feel this way, so it must be true!” is the way to go. Not. Even. Close. We get a lot of pushing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-relationships"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n2<\/sup> This image was shamelessly stolen from a friend of mine. Ten points if you can find the essay. It’s a favorite to which I often refer.
\n3<\/sup> ‘Cause… well, they aren’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"