Trust Your Instincts About Certain Men

Yeah, this is a pretty “touchy feely” quote from Oprah for a man to be quoting to you but it also happens to be true. If you want to succeed at the dating and love game you’ve got to be able to do the following:

Hear/feel your gut instincts in the first place. Follow their lead.

Interestingly enough, it’s easier to hear/and or feel your gut instincts in dating and romance (even sex) when things are rolling along nicely, when you feel good about yourself, you’re enjoying meeting new people and you feel you can afford to be choosey because you’ve got a selection.

It gets tough, however, when loneliness sets in, when we have a dry spell and start to second-guess ourselves and our desirability and ability to attract the right partner, or any partner really, who thrills us. You begin to fear that you’ll never again really “click” with someone so you’d better take those who make themselves available.

Don’t – or at least proceed with caution if you have second thoughts about spending time with a particular man, or are dreading the idea of him in anyway. It doesn’t mean the guy’s a cad, he just might not be right for you.

Recently a friend of mine began to dread seeing a man who services the equipment at the business she works at. One night she’d stayed late because it was the only time he could make the needed repairs, and they had a nice time talking, but after that whenever his name came up at work my friend got a very uncomfortable feeling.

At first she thought she was over reacting. After all, absolutely nothing had gone on between them except a conversation where my friend learned how this man had recently separated from his wife, and she’d agreed (as a friend) that they could meet for lunch sometime because she thought he needed someone to talk to.

As the days past she still had an uncomfortable feeling about him, and later when she checked an online dating site she’d forgotten she was a member of she found a note from the very same man saying he wanted to get to know her better.

This man had been on his own not more than two weeks.

Let me be clear. A man who hasn’t been on his own for even a month, a man who hasn’t filed his divorce, in fact, a man who hasn’t been single from a marriage for six months is pretty much a walking disaster.

For those of you who like to slide from one relationship to another I might seem prude. I’m not. I’m practical. When you jump from one relationship to another without finishing the last it always comes back to bite you in the ass. Always.

When you behave in this manner you aren’t following your gut, you’re following your whim, you’re running from loneliness, boredom, doing it out of spite – a whole mess of emotions, but you’re not following your gut.

But I digress.

The point is my friend’s gut reaction was right. In the future she’ll have to be careful not to give this man any encouragement, because chances are if she sat him down and said she had a “weird feeling” about him and his intentions towards her he’d certainly deny it.

These days with the Internet it’s a bit tougher to get a clear reading on a potential date, but it can still be done. You don’t have to grill a man, you don’t have to have a questionnaire he needs to fill out before he can go on a date with you, but you can certainly put the breaks on things if you don’t feel right about the sort of date he wants to set up.

Here are situations I highly recommend you avoid:

-Meeting a man that same night. This is a man looking to fend off loneliness RIGHT NOW, not interested in meeting someone he wants to date seriously. Of course if you’re only interested in fending off loneliness too, go for it – but be safe about it.

-Meeting a guy whose spend the entire time in email, or on the phone, ragging on his ex-girlfriend. This is a man who only has space for you to listen to him rant, not for you to be a someone special.

(Another friend of mine went on a date with a man who was a attractive and successful, but he spent the evening talking about how he’d never wanted to ask his girlfriend of many years to marry him – and when he finally did she said it was too late. After going on and on about this saga for a couple hours he looked at my attractive friend and said, “isn’t this the time in the evening when we should kiss?” She didn’t agree.)

-Meeting a man who’s totally ignored your tastes and preferences – or didn’t take them into account in the first place. For example, if you wanted to meet for a coffee and he insists on a drink.

-Meeting a man who wants to be overblown and romantic before he even meets you in person. There are men who are in love with love, ladies. They live for the first bloom of romance and they don’t really care too much who it’s with. Just like some women. If a man says something like “I have a special feeling about you” when all he’s done is see your picture, or had a five minute conversation with you, I’d move forward with extreme caution.

If you look back over your dating and romance life with complete honesty you’ll find time and again you knew ahead of time when something wasn’t going to work out well – but you ignored your instincts.

Next time don’t. You’re smarter than you know. And your gut may not be telling you not to move forward with a certain man, it may just be telling you to move forward with some caution.