As a woman surrounded by people in a variety of relationship dynamics, I can’t help but think I shut down the idea of a relationship before it even manifests. I’m torn between believing I have an avoidant attachment issue or merely a strong intuition. As someone with a great deal of self-pride, I’m choosing the latter. As such, in my journey to keep growing this self-pride, I need a full explanation of this female intuition: where does it come from? Why is mine always right? Is it the reason why so many women remain single? Have we become clearer in our thoughts, or are men growing more maniacal by the day?
To answer the latter, yes and yes. The idea of an evil man is no foreign idea to the women around me. We have spent years observing, analysing and more often than not, excusing the behaviour of men. The boy who pulls your hair, the man who makes a joke at your expense, the seemingly harmless comment that leaves you feeling inexplicably uncomfortable. All things we recognise long before we are old enough to even understand them. It’s often said that girls mature far faster than their sticky-fingered peers. If this is true, which I very much believe it is, when a woman claims she just has a feeling about someone, perhaps it is not a feeling at all. Perhaps it is her subconscious connecting the dots that her conscious mind is yet to catch up with.
And yet, against my better judgment, I can’t help but wonder whether my intuition is occasionally a little too intuitive. At what point does a perfectly reasonable instinct to protect yourself become yet another act of self-sabotage? After all, I have built an impressive repertoire of reasons to dismiss a man before he has even had the opportunity to disappoint me. Perhaps he is emotionally unavailable. Perhaps he’s nowhere near as funny as I am. Perhaps I simply don’t like the fact he runs to cross the road. At some point, one has to question whether the problem is the man himself, or my own sophisticated ability to avoid him.
Maybe our intuition has guided modern women to this crossroads. We have spent years being told to know our worth, to never settle, to know ourselves before we even think about inviting someone else in. Quite frankly, I think many of us have taken this as gospel rather than advice. The problem is that somewhere between learning to love ourselves and refusing to entertain men who will never meet our standards, we may have made the prospect of a relationship entirely redundant. After all, why would I risk emotional turmoil when a perfectly pleasant evening, with a cup of tea and the latest episode of Love Island to rot my brain, is readily available?
So, perhaps a woman’s intuition is neither entirely infallible nor entirely irrational. Perhaps it is a little bit of intelligence, a little bit of experience and a rather generous helping of self-preservation. I would like to believe that mine has saved me from a few unfortunate situations, but it is very much capable of making mistakes. Whilst I remain firmly committed to calling it off before they even have a chance to say hello, I suppose the real question is whether I am protecting my peace, or simply making an exceptionally convincing case to remain alone. If my intuition is, in fact, always right, then surely the right man will eventually give me a reason to send him packing.