Experience, logic, and intuition

The older I get the more I distrust intuition and instinct. 

I have seen people follow their gut, follow their feelings and sometimes it leads to good experiences. On the other side, I've also seen people "follow their instinct" and it leads to disaster.  Following your heart on relationship drama is one of the biggest mistakes I've seen. I've mentioned it before, but you can save yourself a world of pain and difficulty if you judge your potential relationships with your head as well as your heart.  

Passion and chemistry are wonderful things and you certainly need them in a releationship. You also need to judge relationships with your head. You might think that the stripper you met and proposed to at your friends bachelor party has "long term potential" but it probably doesn't. Neither does asking your prom date to marry you after you graduate. Women, you might think the married man at your office will be faithful to you but he probably won't either. If the guy followed his heart, he'd marry the stripper and develop a nasty cocaine habit. The girl at the office would find herself on the bad end of two nasty divorces-the first being her boyfriends and probably within a few years, her own. 

Your instinct might lead you to believe that homosexuality doesn't occur in nature and isn't biological-even though it does occur in nature and is clearly something you are born as. Your instinct might also make you think GMO foods are "dangerous". After doing five minutes of objective science research-you would find out you are wrong and GMO foods are not only healthy, but could cure world famine. Yes, look it up. 

I don't think instinct is bad-Immanuel Kant did teach me that A Priori knowledge is important and an effective source of well, knowledge. But experience, thought and logic are also important. More people need to follow those than their feelings.