Four Wrong Things You Can Do With Your Intuition

Let's establish when not to pay attention to what our inner voice is telling us.

The Four Wrong Things You Can Do With Your Intuition

Non-newbies know several things about intuition - but only because they messed up and figured it out later. There are four main dangers about intuition:

1. He is Undiscovered Treasure. You cannot rely on your intuition that although he seems to be a bad guy, although everybody you know who's not in love with him thinks that his character is completely awful and that he's a danger to you, you can trust what your heart is saying - that he's actually a wonderful guy who, with your love and help, will make all your own dreams come true. It never happens except in the movies.

2. Your love is so great, though instantaneous, that you are reading all his thoughts, and he is reading all yours. This also never happens except in the movies. A great example of this is in the classic Letter from An Unknown Woman, where Joan Fontaine throws her life away because what she thought was magic was actually a skillfully constructed seduction con.

3. Pretend it’s intuition when it’s actually desperation. So here's where I reveal a secret about us girls: sometimes we pretend to ourselves that passion just flat out overcame us, just like Jennifer Jones saying no and no and actually slashing Gregory Peck's cheeks with our fingernails in our earnest desire to keep ahold of our virtue except that passion overrules us and it's not our fault. (Duel in the Sun -- one of the worst movies of all time; one of the most watchable worst movies of all time.)

But we aren't really giving in to a wave of passion, we're making a conscious choice to cast ourselves into the abyss because we're bored or we're troubled, we’re afraid we’ll be alone forever, and we hope that maybe something wonderful might come out of abyss-casting through sheer dumb luck. But we say it was just one of those excitement of the moment things; we say we're trusting our intuition.

4. "She sounds like that voice inside your head that tells you you can't do anything." (Fom Postcards from the Edge' -- she's referring to her grandmother) Everybody hears this voice occasionally, even Meryl Streep, who says it in the movie and Carrie Fisher, who wrote it. It's nothing to worry about; it's something that will pass if you’re calm. [Can't wait? Get Postcards from the Edge now at iTunes: ]







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Intuition -- The Fun Love Factor

Intuition - You Just Know

The Second Variable in Finding True Love

[Need to catch up on the first love variable?]

2. Time -

We all remember Sleeping Beauty, singing in the forest:

Though I know it’s true
That visions are seldom all they seem,
But if I know you, I know what you’ll do,
You’ll Love Me At Once

We tend to focus more on the “love me at once” part than the “visions are seldom all they seem” part. And why not, it’s fun.





But let’s back up to the fab Pillow Talk movie, where Rock is pretending to be a nice guy to get Doris into bed – here’s a critical exchange:

"So nice to meet a man you feel you can trust," says Doris,
and "I'd say, five or ... six dates ought to do it." says Rock.

Remember, the three variables to working out whether it’s true love or something less are: character, time, and intuition. And it’s so tempting to skip the first two and dive right into the fun one, but that’s the way girls get their hearts broken – actually, if you only get your heart broken, you’ve been lucky. (See also Kate Winslet's Marianne in Sense and Sensibility).

Guys like the Rock Hudson character play on our fantasy that everything will happen in a rush – they can play you and leave without having to put in much of their time.

If this relationship lasts, this will have been the most romantic moment of my life. If it doesn't, I'm a complete slut." Kathleen Turner, in War of the Roses

It’s a gamble. Don’t worry, though; follow this blog and learn everything there is to know about seduction techniques, and you’ll increase your odds considerably.

If you're the kind of gal who likes to be ahead of the class, go ahead and watch Meryl Streep's unfortunate adventures in ignoring time in relationships in Postcards From the Edge now from iTunes:

Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe

Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe.

No, not the actors, God bless them and grant them a measure of privacy, the characters they played in Cruel Intentions. Reese played a sweet virgin, and Ryan played the bad guy who pretended to be a good guy to get her into bed but accidentally fell in love with her, and suffice it to say, it does not end well.

We talked before that the three variables to work out in finding whether it’s true love start with Character – yours and his – and now we’re at:

(b) His character.

I know you don't believe me -- yet -- but whether your lover has a fine, upstanding character will not only provide gargantuan clues as to the authenticity of his love, but it will eventually determine if he completes your life or wrecks it beyond repair.



In Cruel Intentions, Ryan plans to pretend to love her just long enough – all the pretty things he says are lies. This is a common pattern in movies: (and in life, dear)

In Pillow Talk, a movie where Doris Day is exactly like you even though she’s a fictional ‘60’s character, Rock Hudson poses as Rex Stetson, tourist from Texas, polite, chivalrous and true. He says in a voiceover, “I’d say, five, or six dates ought to do it.” He has to pretend, because he knows she already knows he's an unapologetic jerk who wouldn’t get past an opening line if she knew his real name.



These guys can’t keep up the charade forever, though, which will take us to our second variable, Time.


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3 Variables of True Love

Discerning the difference between love and lust involves paying close attention to three principal variables: character, time, and intuition.

1. Character - Yours and His

The Keira Knightly Pride and Prejudice version got a lot of things right, but they left out this very important line from the book:

Elizabeth: To be sure, you knew no actual good of me, but nobody thinks of that when they fall in love.

Basic Rule: if either yours or his is seriously flawed or completely absent, the relationship will not ultimately work, even (and this is the hard part) even if there is actually real love. There are no known exceptions to this rule.

(a) Your character. Do you have any?

There's a reason we’re starting with How To Tell if It’s True Love and not "What are the better entrapment techniques?" It's because I presume that you're interested in a relationship that lasts a lifetime, a happy and integral complement to your already rich and interesting life.



In another Jane Austen-based film, Sense and Sensibility, Kate Winslet falls for a man no character, and he breaks her heart, luckily before she marries him and he destroys her life and reputation as well. Marianne threw caution to the winds when falling in love with Willoughby, disregarding then-existing rules of social conduct. Unquestionably, Willoughby loved her, but his nefarious deeds and general selfishness of character made lasting love impossible.

There's a period of time in the storyline of the sisters where both feel they've been dumped, but Emma Thompson at least has the comfort that she didn't fall in love with a jerk.

Ironically, while Marianne thought she was finding wild romance with Willoughby and that Colonel Brandon was boring, she eventually found that Colonel Brandon was a wildly romantic creature with a tragic love in his past.

Meanwhile, watch the storyline of Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant -- Hugh Grant makes the difficult decisions to honor his commitments and do the right thing, and everything works out for them.

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Aunt Lee Says: Everybody will be on Netflix eventually -- why not start today?

Is It True Love?

In When Harry Met Sally, Joe says it and does't really mean it, although he thinks he does. In About Last Night, Rob Lowe says it and means it, although he doesn't realize he does. In Rio Bravo, John Wayne doesn't say it, he says "You go out like that and I'll arrest you", but he means, I Love You, and Angie Dickinson knows it.

In Where The Boys Are, Dolores Hart says, "Unless you love me the way I love you..." and George Hamilton says, "I love you!" which you can see for yourself in the trailer for the movie:



They think that "I love you" is their trump card, the phrase that will invariably grant them entrance into our souls and bodies. And it sort of is. But how can you tell if the love they're offering is real, or if you are merely a conquest to them? Is it possible at all?

In 1959, Doris Day was able to make this distinction when rogue Rock Hudson actually proposed marriage, but those were more hopeful times. By the sixties, in Where the Boys Are, Yvette Mimieux seems to believe in a convoluted scheme in which the fact that a real Ivy League Boy actually shows up in her life and wants to sleep with her indicates true love. In the late seventies, I thought you could tell it was true love if his eyes actually, literally sparkled.

Since this is the basic question in all romantic relationships,I can't answer it completely here. Okay, I can't answer it completely anywhere, ever, and I don't have easy answers, either, like the sparkly eyes thing I personally had such high hopes for. Mostly, all I can do is to help point out the questions you should be asking yourself.

Keep reading and find out how to find your true love.


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Dating Violence Movies

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