It seems to me that if we are an empath or an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) and/or a Fearful-Avoidant attached folk-- the first 2 being a personality label and the last an attachment style type-- our intuition about others is almost always correct for a very good reason:

In an attempt to cope with our unfriendly household and dysfunctional family system, we needed to become very attuned to others and experts in picking up on the most subtle cues and reading body language as a self-preservation coping mechanism.

So, why did we fall for narcissists and other antagonistic personalities, you may ask? This is from a personal experience and was confirmed by some honest folks I was privileged to know: the problem is our 'self-doubt'.

Why do we doubt ourselves? Sadly enough, according to many brilliant childhood traumas experts and psychotherapists, we are attracted to what we are familiar with.

That is, if we have an antagonistic life partner, business partner, friend--you name it, the chances are high that we knew that toxic bond in our childhood (one or both of our caregivers) and confused it with 'love'.

Interestingly, as a child who still sees the world with innocent lenses and craves attention, love, and belonging, it's much easier to doubt ourselves than to accept the reality of having a cruel parent... It's that specific bad pattern that interferes with our intuition until we start being aware of the trap.

Luckily, when it happens somehow (in many cases following some tragedy) and that we eventually break our denial, start becoming self-aware, educating ourselves, and commit very seriously to destroying the outcomes of our lifetime of conditioning, break free and get our power back, not only will we feel and wholly trust the feeling but our educated mind and developed critical thinking skills will slowly but surely instantly see the red flags for what they truly are!