Sometimes Your Gut Is Wrong

They say you should always trust your gut. But sometimes, your gut is wrong. At least, mine was. My gut was telling me that Jake* wasn’t a f*ckboy, that he wouldn’t hurt me, that he was different.

He said the right things and liked to cuddle. He genuinely seemed to be interested in me and not just my body. But Jake was also charming. He was an insecure boy hidden beneath a hot body and confident swagger. He was good at making me think I was the only girl on his radar and I was naive enough to believe him.

My gut was telling me he could be the first guy that I’d fall in love with; the first guy to sweep me off my feet; the first guy to meet my parents. I had visions of getaways and adventures but also of simple nights on the couch and in bed. My gut was telling me all of this was right and that it was okay to believe these things because they were going to come true.

My gut was telling me that everything I felt about Jake was right. But it was wrong.

Sometimes we believe that our gut is steering us in the right direction but what we fail to remember is that our gut is part of our bodies, guided by our hearts and our brains. Is it possible that we can want something so deeply, so badly, that we can trick our gut into telling us what we want to feel?

Is it possible to hijack your gut so you can find any sort of shred of happiness, even if you know, somewhere in your subconscious, it might not be right?
I wanted to believe my gut so badly that I ignored the warning signs. I ignored the playboys tactics and games that so clearly sent a message: Jake didn’t care about me the way I cared about him. I was convenient and fun and nothing more. He enjoyed spending time with me but not enough to fully be with me. I was disposable to him but my gut told me that I wasn’t.

My gut was telling me to hold on and not give up on him, on us. It was saying that summer is a busy time and if you just wait a little longer, he’ll finally pick you. I didn’t have that sense of dread and that pit in my gut that I normally get when I think something with a guy is wrong and ending. I’d never felt about a guy the way I felt about Jake and I let myself believe that those feelings were true and would be reciprocated.

It’s hard, balancing between the logical and the emotional. And it’s even harder to know where our gut fits — is our gut logical? Or is it emotional? Is it it’s own entity, guided by its own set of rules or is our gut an internal compass guided by our heads and our hearts?

It’d be easy for me to blame my gut for my current heartbreak. For my current emotional unavailability. But I can’t blame my gut — because at the time it’s what I wanted and what I needed. But now? Now, my gut is telling me that I deserve to be the person that someone thinks about not just at 2am, but at 1pm. I deserve to be taken on dates and texted, not just sent snapchats. I deserve to be that for somebody. I deserve to be able to trust my gut and I’m mad that Jake made me question my trust in myself.

Nothing in life is perfect, including your gut. Sometimes, your gut gets it wrong. But we can’t let one bad experience make us question ourselves or our guts. We should listen to our guts but more than anything, we should never, ever lose faith in ourselves. Sometimes we’ll make wrong decisions but our heads and our hearts and our guts will eventually steer us in the right direction. At least, I believe so.