Trust your gut on the safest and most toxic relationships

Our gut or our instinct is incredibly intuitive.  It’s not just animals and children who are built to sense what the mind knows second.  The gut or our senses alert us to patterns and those patterns we ought to trust.  If someone’s responded the same way with us time and again, they will generally almost always continue in the pattern.

Whenever we disappoint someone and they forgive us easily, especially when there is absolutely no retribution about them and their response, we can trust that.  That’s a safe person, and someone to be cherished.  We ought not to disappoint them again where we can because of all people we should want to reciprocate the grace they exhibit.

Whenever we disappoint someone and we know instinctively that that was a wrong move, where we need to now watch our back, we can trust that feeling we’re getting.  A spirit of vengeance is something we ought to become highly aware of.  I often say that it’s only the narcissist who must win at all costs.

Beat them, betray them, disappoint them, and payback is sure to occur.  And another sure sign is their entitlement to disappoint and betray us at will — often accompanied by a lack of apology or a fake repentance.  Those who think little of exploiting others are inherently unsafe people.  They have no empathy.

But good and safe relationships offer us all the capacity to be wrong.  They’re safe by the very fact that perfection isn’t expected or required of us; just as we don’t require or expect that of others.  Good and safe relationships feature high occurrences of patience, kindness, gentleness, compassion, self-control, etc, and where we do falter there is grace for that faltering where it’s not a pattern and when the apologies are genuine.

Bad and unsafe relationships can appear good and safe much of the time.  Until the unanticipated moment when all hell breaks loose.  When anger boils over into aggression and breaches into violence.  When that occurs, a suitable apology requires the breaking of that toxic cycle.  If ever we’re in a place where we feel ‘it’s only a matter of time’ we need to be really honouring that gut instinct.

Even though we’ve all probably tolerated unsafe relationships to a point, it begs our attention that if we have the capacity to be safe people, we ought to ensure we configure our lives and our loved ones’ lives around safe people.  I know that that isn’t always an instant fix.  It can take years to develop a plan and implement it, especially where those closest to us are unsafe, toxic people.

Relationships with safe people mean we have less trauma to bear in our lives and we therefore have more capacity to love.  It’s honestly a great tragedy that it’s often the gentlest, most compassionate and sensitive people who end up attached to unsafe people.

Photo by Kevin Delvecchio on Unsplash