4.6
September 26, 2019

Sideswiped by Divorce: Intuition tried to Warn me, but I Refused to Listen.

Everyone loves surprises, right?

Surprise parties, surprise engagements, surprise gifts. People live for the stuff.

Well, not me! In fact, I loathe being caught off guard. I am a woman of predictability.

So imagine how I handled the surprise of divorce papers.

When a relationship deteriorates, our behavior in the relationship changes. We subconsciously slowly pull away without knowing how or why. Our inner dialogue about the relationship changes. It becomes less of a priority. In retrospect, some warning signs are obvious and some sneak up on us as if they have been hiding in the shadows just waiting to pounce.

Intuition and denial are also fierce competitors within our soul. They both levy for first place. The paradox of denial is that it’s our protector and our villain all rolled into one.

I remember the day denial kicked my intuition’s ass and took over. A strange energy filled our home. Something was slightly amiss.

As I stood in the kitchen sipping a glass of wine, I thought to myself, Is it me, or is his eye contact very poor tonight?

That moment marked the start of self-doubt, second-guessing, and ultimately refusing to admit the road we were heading down. That was the moment I began to ignore my inner voice. Destination Divorce was knocking at our door, and I wasn’t going to answer it.

We were just three months into our marriage when he started to pull away from me. At first, it was subtle. It started with an absence of the cute texts I once loved and looked forward to receiving. They just ceased.

Then he began spending more time away from the home. Happy hours with his friends. Dinners out with other people in his life. They were small changes that eventually became the new normal. It was a normal that plummeted me into an emotional tailspin that lingered for months.

Reciprocity is fuel for a relationship. It propels our relationships to deep levels of communication and even intimacy.

By the end of our marriage, reciprocity had died. The only one giving a damn about our marriage and relationship was me.

Denial had tried to protect me from this truth. Denial could protect me no more.

It has taken me a long time to see and accept what was really going on. It is only now that my eyes can see how it really played out.

The day I was physically served the divorce papers is one I will never forget. It happened to be a beautiful July morning. I sat quietly on the patio when I heard a knock at my door. As I opened the door, I was faced with a stranger. He handed me a stack of papers and walked away. As he walked away, I wanted to shout, “You have the wrong house; these papers aren’t for me!”

An overwhelming feeling swept over my body and soul as I looked over the documents. Memories of every moment during our three-month union went spinning through my mind. For hours, my mind raced. I was hyper-focused on the moments I could see I blatantly ignored the signs. And there were signs—a stockpile of them I could now see.

After we had both signed the marriage away, I loaded a final box onto a moving truck. My life was changing. I accepted defeat. Over the next few months, I would grieve the loss of someone I loved, and face an anger I now felt toward myself.

Listening to my intuition would not have saved my marriage, but it would have prevented the emotional trauma I suffered. Had I just listened to the whispers, perhaps we never would have married or I would have been emotionally prepared for our collapse. Our inner voice speaks to us, and when listened to it in the quiet moments, it can provide us invaluable information regarding potential outcomes.

My commitment to my intuition is now stronger than ever. I listen carefully to her.

She is my best friend.

She is all-knowing.

She is looking out for my best interest when my eyes refuse to see.

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