My instincts were right, but I didn't want to listen.
All hell broke loose when I didn't pay attention to that little voice within me.
True story. When I was married to my first husband, there was something fishy going on.
I became niggled and restlessly aware that something wasn't right... but ignored it. After all, we were happy, right?
It wasn't the obvious things that made me uneasy. Like his staying out late at night. After all, we had a business to run and his job was to make sure that the guests were happy.
Or the way the servers in our restaurant seemed overly friendly with him, drinking our wine, laughing at his antics, and freezing when I walked in.
I didn't like it, but I was aware of his charm and fun side, that's why I married him.
It wasn't even the long awkward moments when I would ask him if he was cheating on me, and he would look me in the eye and tell me I was imagining things... that he was"100% monogamous". How could I be so crazy, to think he would do that to me!?
But he did. All the time. Without any apology for what may come. He cheated the entire 8 years of our marriage.
I felt so powerless. Was it true? Even if I instinctively knew there was something wrong, I was so lost when it came to relationships, my only strategy was kindness.
I chose to radiate love to my cheating husband and hidden enemies. I would close my eyes and send loving, positive energy to the people who were trashing my reputation, destroying my family and stealing from the future of our business.
I believed that the way to heal the situation was to send love to them.
But my self-sacrifice was keeping me karmically bound to the situation. I was so willing to endure the confusion in my life, that my boundaries became non-existent. And my intuition was squashed and silent. I was lost.
I knew my intuition was trying to tell me something was very very wrong-- but I didn't know how to listen to it. I was too busy to pay attention, my newborn baby, my restaurant, my failing marriage... I barely had time to do anything but keep going!
How could I hope to hear my intuitive guidance, when I was trying so hard to keep other people happy? "My responsibilities" were related to my whole world. Their wants and needs were more important to me than my own feelings of suspicion, right?
Putting my own intuition on a back burner kept me tied to the very people I needed to get away from!
Feelings of suspicion, grief and a growing lack of confidence kept pulling me back to an endless cycle of trying to make it all right for everybody else, except me. Trying to appease the fiery gods of betrayal, my life burned to ashes around me.
Without owning my inner voice, I would continue to attract people into my life who were astonishingly willing to take advantage me
- and of my willingness to believe their lies, and feed their need for power, by surrendering my own.
I was so very vulnerable. Trying to be safe, and being kind to others, while my life went quickly to hell.