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Might sound silly, but I feel like that’s one of my biggest struggles. After being betrayed I don’t trust my own judgment anymore. I’m always overthinking and questioning my own intuition. It’s almost been 10 years…. Has anyone been able to move past this and trust themselves again?

Trusting myself is no problem. Trusting other people is another story. I look at everything and everyone with scepticism.

I have a heightened sense. I now trust and follow my gut. My problem was ignoring it. Never again.

In my mind, when you say "intuition", I think "gut"; and yes, I trust mine completely. You should too!!!

My wife's affair was 12 years ago, but 10 years ago there was a night where she went out with her two best girlfriends, and I knew something wasn't right -- just wasn't making sense in her explanation about a late night phone call and a couple google searches. For 10 years I trusted my gut, while she lied to me, but she seemed so sincere that I sometimes questioned myself (my gut).

On January 1, 2021, 10 full years after the night in question, she admitted her lie (at least she partially admitted it). She's been an adultery 101 case study, and every admission comes as a minimization at first, so I expect there's more to come, but that's another discussion.

To get back to your question, in short, YES - TRUST YOUR INTUITION!!!

RaceTheDream,

I identify with not trusting my intuition or judgement after betrayal. My reasoning for that was if my judgement and intuition were enough to tell me an affair was happening, I would have known and stopped it. After d-day, my PTSD and trauma response had me on high alert and always looking for things that weren't happening which further confused me.

I am 5+ years out and starting to resolve the issue. There's a saying that "People judge themselves by their intent but others by their actions". That wasn't true for me in the past. I usually gave others the benefit of the doubt and assumed their intent was what mine would be in the situation. If their actions were suspect, I assumed they didn't know better but had a good intent. I'm trying to do better and watch actions.

Intuition is a complicated set of knowledge based on a variety of factors. By that definition, a person is always gaining intuition and better judgement through a variety of learning more of human nature like personal experience, listening to others experiences, reading books, etc.

When I look at situations now (not just infidelity related), I can see signs that my intuition and my gut are trying to warn me. I can see where that is right. I can see areas where I need to learn more.

Yep I did not trust my own gut for sometime after. I think it’s normal. It’s part of the real, what’s not real. The gaslighting, lies and betrayal make your spidey sense seem like it wasn’t working. But if you look back I bet you felt something was amiss. But we live in denial. Giving a person the benefit of the doubt. I found I transitioned into trust but verify. Don’t believe what someone says believe what they do . And you can check on what they say. There is no guarantee on what another person will do. At the end of the day you can only really trust yourself. It really is very disconcerting when you feel you can’t trust your instincts. But this also lets us use our gained experience to be more prepared if it happens to us again. As shitty as betrayal is , it’s one of those learning the hard way experiences. If you think your going back to how you were before, I know I thought I was , it just didn’t happen for me. I found my trust in everything just went to a lower level. And it took some time to adjust to that.

Trusting myself is no problem. Trusting other people is another story. I look at everything and everyone with scepticism.

It was a struggle — at first.

However, once I understood what I missed, or the clues I ignored before, I have more of heightened sense of security now. Sort of like being burned by fire or a hot stove, it only takes ONCE to understand that kind of damage.

Learning to trust myself again was a big part of my recovery.

The biggest part is I also trust I will be fine if somehow I do miss something. I’m good with me. Solo or in a new relationship, I will be fine. I trust that most of all.

Yes. I trust myself.

My problem is I gave my husband the benefit of the doubt, after he did "all the work." Plausible explanations were offered. In my case, we had our third child, and I slept 3-5 hours a night for 13 months, straight. Sleep deprivation was a real issue for me.

It's a benefit my husband no longer enjoys..

Trust but verify, for us, was worthless. In order to verify, I would had to quit my job and physically be next to my husband 24/7. Considering I bring in 75% of my family's income...that was not an optional route.

I am far less trusting now. But, I like to reframe that. Not everyone deserves my trust without proving themselves. So, I'm much more careful about that.

Yes, I do. If I have a gut feeling about something being wrong or off, I will never, ever believe my husband over that intuition again. No matter how deep we are into recovery, no matter what new happiness we have found. That ship has sailed. Over the horizon, off the end of the world, plunged down into the depths of hades, sailed.

But if we were to go the divorce route, I think trusting my picker would be a huge obstacle. I don’t know if I’d have the energy or desire to ever get truly close to someone again.

Trust yet verify.

Trust but protect myself.

Lower my expectations so I am not disappointed.

I am sorry that you still feel this way. I am over 10 years out too. I absolutely trust myself. Remember this... it was never wrong to trust in your vowels... that was always the right thing. Your intuition was right to trust in that... He failed.. not you... Now, you are smarter and wiser, and apparently full of grace. God Bless.

I struggle with the difference between intuition and ptsd residual reactions. For example my WH would ask me what day I plan to go in the office (we still only go to the office randomly and quite rarely) and my brain instinctively goes to "why does he want to know, what is he planning that day?"

However most of the times I’m capable of doing a logic assessment and remind myself that I did know something wasn’t right a bit less than 5 years ago and I didn’t stop digging until I found the A.

You know what I fully trust though and brings me a huuuuge amount of peace? My capacity and ability to kick him to the kerb should he mess around again. I’ve bounced back and designed my new life so well that him cheating again would hurt no doubt, but it will not hit me as it previously did.

[This message edited by Luna10 at 6:17 PM, Tuesday, February 8th]

Not a silly question at all. I have this question almost daily and it goes round and round in my head because I feel my gut nudge me... trying to tell me something

Is it my gut or my trauma response? I don't know. And I want to trust my gut, but am scared because i don't know what its going to tell me.

I dont know.. i'm working on it. To try and trust myself again? or im just learning to trust myself.

I trust my intuition a lot more now because I’m not as naive as before, then I let my shrewdness take over.

I trust myself implicitly.

However the sad reality that WH had blind faith trust and blew that to Hell and back. That's on him.

You know what I fully trust though and brings me a huuuuge amount of peace? My capacity and ability to kick him to the kerb should he mess around again.

This. This right here. To know that if the God Forbid happens - the pain would be immense. But I could and would walk and look at myself in the mirror and know I did everything in my power.

I don't think that would happen. But I sleep a bit better knowing I have far more strength than I ever thought before.