Rebuilding Self Trust After You Ignored Your Own Gut

About four years ago, someone I used to know came back into my life.

I had known him more than ten years before that, and I will be honest, our interactions back then were not the best.

But he had been chasing me for a while.

This time he was stranded at the airport, so I helped him.

I got him an Uber from there to my home.

He asked me to dinner.

Then he kept asking me to give him a chance.

And I thought, hey, people change, right? He came presenting himself as a wounded man.

And my savior hat came right on.

I did not see a man.

I saw a project.

You know what we say.

Ohhh, they did him dirty.

I will love him properly.

I will nurse his wounds.

Lordt, mercy.

The thing that did not sit well in my spirit There were things early on that did not sit right with me.

The biggest one was the way he spoke about the mother of his child.

The hate in his voice.

I am telling you, it was so bad that one time I hung up the phone on him.

I seriously asked myself, if you can talk about her that way to anyone who cares to listen, what makes me think you will not do the same to me? So I asked him.

And his answer was, you are different.

Oh boy.

And we like to think we are different, don't we? That one sentence quieted a question my spirit was right to ask.

I took the compliment and dropped the warning.

When he tells you how he treats the people he once loved, he is not telling you about them.

He is telling you about himself.

When helping became serving The other red flag was harder to see because it looked like love.

I let him use me like a servant, and it was masked in the name of helping.

I know medications.

That is my world.

So I was familiar with his conditions and what he was taking, and before long I became his health coach.

He even said it out loud.

I can work, you just take care of my health.

His housegirl would ask me what to cook for him.

Listen.

When you have the savior complex, if I can put it that way, these are the things that make you feel like, awwnnn, there is a true connection here.

He needs me.

He trusts me with his health.

Look how close we are.

But being needed is not the same as being valued.

I wrote about that quiet trade in self abandonment, the quiet habit , and I was living it without a name for it.

Three months later In about three months, this man came back and I saw a different person.

His business started doing better, and he started talking to me any kind of way.

The insults were plenty.

One time I asked him if he thought marrying me would be doing me a favor.

He said yes.

Because which successful man craves marriage? It is you women who want marriage.

I said, you say what? I carried myself and went to my place.

I was deeply hurt.

But it is not like I did not see it coming.

At that point, red flags were too small to describe what I was seeing.

These were red rivers.

And guess what.

I still did not leave.

What God showed me about why I stayed I always ask God what I am supposed to learn.

With this one, He showed me something I did not want to see.

I was believing God for marriage at that time.

So when this man showed up talking about marriage, my whole mind went to bed.

I stopped evaluating.

I stopped asking questions.

I was not just hoping for marriage.

I was idolizing it.

And when you idolize the thing, you will accept almost anyone who seems to be carrying it.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

My own understanding said, this is it, God is answering.

My spirit was saying something else the whole time.

That is the part that is hard to forgive.

Not that I missed the signs, but that I saw them and leaned on my own understanding anyway.

The hardest person to forgive When you ignore your gut, the betrayal does not only come from him.

It comes from you.

You knew.

You heard it.

You hung up the phone, for goodness sake.

And you stayed.

So you start doubting yourself on everything.

If I could not trust myself then, how do I trust myself now? That is what makes the next relationship scary, and sometimes it is why women stay stuck in the old one.

If this is where your heart is, read trusting your discernment again alongside this one.

But I want you to notice something.

Your gut did not fail you.

It worked.

It spoke early and it spoke clearly.

What failed was your willingness to listen, and that is something you can rebuild.

The bathroom floor He went back to his country, and after that he started ignoring me.

If a message came from him, it was an insult.

I remember crying my eyes out to God in my bathroom.

And that was the beginning of my return.

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

I knew only God could take me out of that mess, because I had been on that road with him before.

And here is the thing I believe saved me.

Even when this man showed up, I never stopped talking to God.

Not when it felt good, not when it got ugly.

I think that is what made the agony shorter.

Some women never get out.

Some get out late.

I got out because I kept a line open to the One who could see what I refused to see.

Once he realized I no longer cared, the comments got worse.

You know you are getting old.

Women's value declines with age.

Everything a man like him could say to damage someone's spirit.

So slowly, I started blocking him.

And I mean on everything.

Release and reflect Blocking him was not the healing.

It took God, reflecting, and releasing it.

It took forgiving myself and forgiving him so I could actually move on.

This is why the first step in my R.E.S.T.O.R.E.D. framework is release and reflect.

We need to release the hurt.

But before we can release it, we have to acknowledge that it happened.

You cannot heal what you keep pretending you did not see.

So if you are where I was, start there.

Say what happened, plainly.

He spoke with hate about someone he once loved.

I heard it.

I stayed.

I served him and called it love.

I wanted marriage so badly I stopped asking questions.

Then give it to God.

Not the polished version.

The bathroom floor version.

He is close to that version of you.

Self trust does not come back all at once.

It comes back the first time you hear that small warning again and, this time, you listen.