"I sort of hope it's as bad as I think. I sort of hope she really is fucking with me"
I heard that thought come out of a friends mouth and immediately thought "oh no you don't"

but then I reconsidered
I mean, really, who am I to tell him what he thinks?

But more to the point, it makes sense.

Have you ever been in one of those situations, be it friendly, romantic or job related, where you become convinced of a worst case scenario, that something really unpleasant is going on, and you prepare yourself for every contingency to the point where hearing the worst thing possible is almost welcome?
This seems to happen most in relationships. or rather RELATIONSHIPS. specifically, endings or during periods of infidelity. You become convinced of the betrayal, or the imminent end, get involved in all the details and all of the ways you should be angry or hurt, prepare speech after speech in your head, straighten your back and wait for the fall.
And during these situations, the most off putting thing can be when you are...WRONG. Just plain off.
Your lover is totally happy. She really was with her mom all those nights. He's never thought of another girl since he saw you.
Everyone has been completely honorable and honest.

Well, shit...what now?
How do you prepare for that? What do you do now? How do you face the fact that you have assumed the worst of someone who you dig the mostest?
I think the point is you sometimes don't and can't, and thats the problem.

It has been my experience that generally sane people, those not prone to insane fits of jealousy or who aren't out to sabotage their happiness, aren't apt to perceive distance, betrayal, or create conflict when everything is going swimmingly.
And while instincts are seldom infallible, they are also uncommonly completely useless when it comes to sussing out how the emotional components of your life are progressing.
Does this mean that if you think someone is cheating, or lying to you, or fucking with you, that it is definitely so?
No. Hell no.
But I do believe it's a higher likeliness that something is very very off if your gut is telling you so. We are better at picking up on those subtle signals then we think, and sometimes our body is recognizing a dangerous pattern before our brain can truly decipher why.
And our danger signal goes off for a reason.
How do you turn it off when the only thing telling you to is someone else's words?
"no, that's not smoke you smell, that's just a scented candle"

Which leads to the even bigger issue. When you decide to dismiss your own instincts in the name of trust, you are treading on some very unsteady ground.
Ground we certainly have to test, every once in a while, if we wish to having truly trusting relationships.
But if you make a habit of dismissing your gut, I think you are opening yourself up for more than your share of self doubt. And that's a pretty hard cycle to pull yourself out of.

So I wonder if perhaps that welcoming of doom, that sense of "bring it on, bring on the worst, I'm ready" is not so much an apocalyptic love of demise, as the realization that it might have come down to either trusting someone else, or yourself. And the hardest person to have betray you...is you.