L,

I have no idea how I make decisions! LMAO

Of course your gut can be wrong...allegedly.

Live for today, forget about tomorrow. Wait...forget about today, live for tomorrow....

Ummm...damn....

My gut told me for a year and a half something was going on between my stbx and his whore/boss. I chose to believe my stbx, that it was all in my head and I was the problem. Unfortunately, the person I trusted the most and wanted to believe in, was the same person lying directly to my face. My gut was right. My heart was wrong. Which is why I'm here. Go gut.

Seashells1 wrote: "My gut tells me what my head already knows but refuses to believe right away." That's a great analogy! My experience has been that when my gut starts talking to me, I'd better listen up for a number of reasons -- one of them being the knowledge that very few people these days have any personal integrity.
Years ago, my psychiatrist told me that it is my PERSONAL INTEGRITY that gets me into trouble -- BECAUSE someone with personal integrity always wants to assume that everyone else lives by the same high standards of truth and honesty. It is difficult to accept that MOST PEOPLE will do selfish, hurtful, and deceitful things to others because WE would NEVER do it! A double-edged sword.
Our life "conditioning" can also come into play, but by the time we reach mid-life, our personal experiences should be well enough engraved on our brains to prevent us from making the same mistakes over and over again.
TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE! I listen to my heart and my head and my intuition these days. If something smells funny, I avoid it like the plague. It takes time and lots of practice to stop second-guessing -- AND over-thinking situations. And when you find people who live by the same sense of integrity, it becomes a lot easier to navigate the waters of life.
Good luck to you, my dear.

My STBX... would talk about how her gut feeling was ALWAYS right (well... according to her, ANYTHING she said was ALWAYS right).
When in reality, she was paranoid and often expected the worse out of people, and would have had more correct predictions had she simply guessed.
But she just went and forgot all those times she was wrong.
I guess we all do something similar, but her's was to an extreme.

After that... I tend to shy away from things not supported by evidence and inflection.

This is a great question. The heart/head/gut combination is so tricky - I used to trust my gut, but right now I question my reaction to everything. My gut is telling me that my stbx knows he made a huge mistake and doesn't know how to come back - when the facts are so clear and smacking me in the face that he has moved on. I am trying to reconcile my feelings of fantasy vs reality, quite the struggle. At the end of the day I think people act how they feel - and he is acting like we are done so it is up to me to face and accept this. I have had a few experiences recently where my gut has screamed RUN or GO FOR IT - and I've followed those feelings and it has proved to be right. So maybe there is a little light shining towards me. I think it's a part of recovering your self confidence after your soul/heart and self esteem has been crushed. We all matter in this world, and no one has the right to take that from us. So I am trying to take that back.....trying to trust the voices inside me again. All of us made good choices in the past and will again in the future - whether it's based on head, heart or a combination of both.

Thank you for all your replies...much info to sort through and I appreciate it all.

When our "gut" spots a red flag, it is so easy for us to convince ourselves that "it's all in your imagination".....it's so easy to over-analyze our own feelings and instincts....

Protect yourself to a point....then you have to take the leap of faith...

Why are you questioning your gut? Is someone telling you that your feelings aren't right or are you second guessing yourself? Unfortunately when it comes to relationships there really isn't a right or a wrong, and making decisions is hard. Your gut, your head, your beliefs... they only take you so far, and at some point you have to make a decision based on something. I am struggling so much with this myself. I feel one way and feel conviction in my own feelings, and then I talk to my husband or receive a text from him and start to question everything that I'd just convinced myself to be true. I don't know where to get the strength to believe in myself, but I know I have to. Your guy may tell you one thing and your head may tell you another, but I think once you figure out what you need to believe to be happy, your gut and head and beliefs will all be in agreement. If you can, try to think of "wrong" not being an option. There are two roads, they'll both take you somewhere, maybe neither way is wrong.

I tend to go with my gut, and it is almost always right. Like jb, I will get a text, then start questioning everything, and it throws me for a loop every time.

Makes gut almost like a brain and it's not. Don't go against gut and try to use brain if possible:).

My initial gut feeling... is always right.

The head...nope.. I tend to overthink things....and try to find the logic...grrrr...
The heart...always is too emotional...so that does not work for me.