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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To ask when your instinct was correct

39 replies

HeidiHaughton · 09/02/2021 14:39

Read the Gift Of Fear a few years ago. Confirmed a lot of what I thought anyway. A friend was dating a man everyone thought was fantastic. The minute I met him I didn't like him and saw right through him. I got the impression he knew I saw through him too. He ended up putting her through an awful time and she eventually moved across the country to get away from him. Reading the thread on the creep putting cards in the door and staring in the window reminded me of how we're conditioned to always think the best of people.

OP posts:

ASnowman · 09/02/2021 14:49

I hated a new boss we had in work from first sight. He told my other boss who questioned my about my wariness/ coldness. He turned out to ruin the company and told so many lies to everyone. I had left by the time it went into liquidation.

Sparklesocks · 09/02/2021 14:57

There have been times where I’ve had a bad feeling about someone and have turned out to be proved right.

However, not always. Sometimes they’ve been a very lovely person, but haven’t made a great first impression or I hadn’t clicked with them initially. I wonder if there are biases and judgements we sometimes have/make which aren’t always correct. So I think it’s a good thing to trust your gut, but equally but prepared to learn that your gut might be wrong sometimes and don’t write people off until you know them well enough.

user2021 · 09/02/2021 14:59

I just knew my then-boyfriend (now ex) had cheated on me on a lads holiday. I just had this sinking feeling on a Tuesday and Thursday night when he was away.

It eventually came out a few days later when he got back. And he was fooling around on those exact days I had the sinking feelings!

thepeopleversuswork · 09/02/2021 15:01

I think there's a lot of confirmation bias at work here tbh: people tend to remember the times they've called it right and put it down to "instincts" or "gut" or whatever and forget the umpteen times they got it completely wrong or just didn't know either way.

user1493413286 · 09/02/2021 15:05

I work in children’s services and my instincts at work are often correct; I also reflect on where these gut instincts are coming from so I can work out if there’s anything in it

ShowOfHands · 09/02/2021 15:12

I think sometimes instincts serve us v well. I've had the odd instance where it's proved vital. But I also know from my work and dh's work that sometimes your instincts do not give you any indication of truth whatsoever. With devastating consequences.

Meredithgrey1 · 09/02/2021 15:14

Similar to yours, OP. It was a guy a friend was dating, I was not pleased at all to be right. He was an abusive rapist.

AStudyinPink · 09/02/2021 15:17

I’ve met people and not liked them. Usually I can say why.

Snowpaw · 09/02/2021 15:18

I had immediate instinct about a person (spouse of a colleague) on first meeting - thought they seemed kind of...hardman, bit of a thug, “wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him” kind of vibe. However I completely changed my view over a few years as I got to know him, I felt bad for passing judgements initially. Then he was sent to prison for over 20 years and had essentially a double life no one knew about.

CatRamsey · 09/02/2021 15:23

My ex was talking to another woman when we were together, he insisted they were just friends but I just had a feeling there was more going on. I thought I was paranoid and wanted to see the best in him. OW had a baby by herself and a part of me wondered if ex had cheated on me and fathered the child, but I wouldn't let myself believe it. I broke up with him for other reasons, but he is now in a relationship with OW and she's had another baby, the first child looks so much like him. I also found comments online from her family saying how much the older child looks like both of them and found old bank statements where he'd regularly sent her loads of money around the time they were born. I so wish I'd listened to my gut. I knew I was right, I just didn't want to believe it.

Wyntersdiary · 09/02/2021 15:24

The man who owned the dinosaur place in torquay, everyone really liked him and he had such a lovely inviting smile. Was done for being a pedophile and had some images/videos of the worse cases out there, class A.. No one would have known but I did get a sinking feeling when I saw him and then read the story a while later

tellmewhentheLangshiplandscoz · 09/02/2021 15:36

This is a really interesting discussion as I think I the pp who mentioned confirmation bias is right. And there will be so many times we will have been wrong about someone. There's another thread running right now about the Sh&t women have to put up with because of their sex and it's depressingly yet predictably full of so many things I can relate to so I think we do need to be extremely vigilant and listen to our spidey sense when it tingles. It may be something it may be nothing but absolutely we should listen to it.

It is an excellent book OP though especially when it talks of how an abuser will choose and groom his victim.

wowier · 09/02/2021 15:38

I've not knowingly avoided a murderer or something but have known people & partners who have been exposed as liars & cheats & it was not a surprise. If I think something is off with someone then I trust my instinct.

heartcurrent1 · 09/02/2021 15:47

I grew up on the same street as someone I'll just call evil. Very chummy and pleasant to everyone but every now and again I'd see him looking through my window or through the back gardens & it was just this look in his eye that frightened me so much along with a smirk, throughout my childhood I told many friends to avoid him he creeped me out etc they thought it was me being paranoid or something because so many people just thought he was great, but when I was 18 he committed a terrible murder and many people said to me afterwards how they'd always remembered how I said he gave me feeling he was dangerous. He petrified me and since then I've never not listened to my intuition.

TrufflyPig · 09/02/2021 15:49

I really didn't trust my boss, thought there was something off about him, all the other girls my age loved him even flirted with him. He gave me a lift home once and touched my inner thigh whilst driving, then said I'd be out of a job if told anyone.

He's currently in jail for murdering his wife.

Everyone but me was shocked.

wowier · 09/02/2021 15:49

As a teen I often moved bus seats on the night bus or ran home if I didn't like the footstep sounds behind me. I was most likely over imaginative in most of those situations but never cared about feeling embarrassed.

Biscoffaddict · 09/02/2021 16:22

I remember going to get my nails done with my Mum once and the woman who did them sort of befriended us, well more my Mum really. My gut screamed at me almost immediately that she was a wrong un.
She claimed she’d worked with my Mum years before in a supermarket and though it’s true my Mum did work there it felt like she was making it up. She kept saying ‘oh I remember you now, you were always so nice to me’ and my Mum even admitted afterwards that she didn’t remember her, and she’d only said this after my Mum said she’d worked there herself.

She left the salon and then Mum carried on getting her nails done at her house for a while. A couple of times I went with her, she seemed like one of those needy victim types who were always falling out with people. She had financial problems, didn’t speak to any of her family, had fallen out with all her friends, didn’t speak to her neighbours, all her bosses had treated her badly etc etc. She’d recently had work done in her house and the builders had messed it up ripped her off. She even slagged off her teenager daughters to us!

Eventually my mum got fed up with her as well and distanced herself and she turned up at our house! I don’t really know what happened after that but we never saw her again. There was just something really off about her and I got this feeling that she could have caused a lot of problems for us. It was a really intense, deep feeling I’ve never had before or since. A while later I saw her in the gym changing rooms and hid from her!

Puzzledandpissedoff · 09/02/2021 16:24

The man who owned the dinosaur place in Torquay, everyone really liked him and he had such a lovely inviting smile. Was done for being a pedophile

I remember David Hill very well, but honestly didn't realise he owned the place - I thought he just worked there

My own "hmm" moment was over my ex neighbour's priest. This was before the child abuse scandal became a huge thing, but though I always felt bad about it with a "man of God" there was something about his gimlet stare and overall demeanour I just couldn't tolerate

Needless to say he went the way of all the others, but the church couldn't even be honest about that; it was given out that he had cancer and had gone home to Ireland to die, but what he'd actually done was to skip there ahead of the police
Depressingly he's still alive and is now invited back in an "honorary" capacity when they hold major events ...

lazylinguist · 09/02/2021 16:27

^This. I suspect people retrospectively big-up in their minds what was probably only a normal feeling of not hitting it off with someone, when they subsequently find out there's something dodgy about them. There will have been umpteen people you've not taken a liking to, but the vast majority will not turn out to be actuallly dodgy people.

TaraR2020 · 09/02/2021 16:33

I think my gut instinct warning me about someone is and has always been correct.

That's not to say that I always pick up on things though! There are occasions when I don't get the warning feeling and ended up burned.

Once knew someone I didnt warm to at first because of this gut instinct. Sometime later we met again and ended up friends, good ones I thought, until it became clear my initial impression was correct.

Whatisthisfuckery · 09/02/2021 16:34

Of course there is confirmation bias here, we were asked for occasions where our instincts were proved right. I’m sure there are times when our gut feelings have been wrong but that is not what was asked about in the thread. Conversely there will be a lot of times when our instincts were bang on, but because we got the hell out of there we didn’t wait around for confirmation.

ReggieKrait · 09/02/2021 16:49

@heartcurrent1 that is bone-chilling. How awful. Lucky you have good instincts, trust them.

PicsInRed · 09/02/2021 16:51

A molester. He had an unsuccessful go at grooming me, but my instinct screamed and I kept a good distance.

He was subsequently confirmed and publicly outed as a molester.

PicsInRed · 09/02/2021 16:58

I will also say, whenever I've been good and fucked over it's been due to ignoring an impression that the person's a total arsehole, whether that be instant, or a "mask slip" moment. I've learned to heed it now and to hell with being lovely - polite but distant does the trick.

There is too much emphasis taught to girls on "being kind" and by far not enough emphasis on protecting themselves.

CheltenhamLady · 09/02/2021 17:13

I had a colleague who became a very good friend I invited her and her husband to Dinner. After they had left my husband and I both turned to each other and said that there was something about him that we didn't like. He struck us both as somehow untrustworthy. Fast forward 3 years and out of the blue, he left her after 35 years of marriage for a woman he had been having an affair with for years.

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