Ask Yourself This Before You Offer Them Another Chance

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me so many times I stop counting? Then you’re one of the people I’m writing about here.

I’d venture to guess we all have those individuals in our lives: the friends, family members, or romantic partners who intentionally or unintentionally let us down time after time, and somehow we just keep allowing it to happen and hoping against the odds that things will turn around. Maybe it’s because of the time we’ve invested in them already, or a sense of obligation, or a fear of being alone, or how great they are when they’re not terrible — for whatever reason, we extend these select few people so many more chances than we do to others in our lives.

We likely know deep down that we’re engaging in very definition of insanity (doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result), but we also know that sometimes it really is possible for people to change for the better, and we so desperately want be part of a redemption story like that. So we offer “one more chance” again and again and again.

But what if the next time we’re thinking of offering that umpteenth chance, we ask ourselves this question first: When this person treats us well, does it outweigh how much it hurts when they treat us poorly? More simply, does the good override the bad?

In my own experience, second or even third chances are often worth it. I see the value in forgiveness, and I’m a believer that sometimes it takes a while for the people I care about to understand me and how to speak my love language. I’ve also benefitted from second chances in romance and friendship, so I try to pay it forward.

When someone starts to require more than a few do-overs, however, it’s usually a sign of some serious and potentially irreparable dysfunction in the relationship. In those cases, hurtful comments or behaviors are happening so frequently that I haven’t even had time to heal from the previous slight; the wounds are just layering on top of one another.

That’s when offering another chance at redemption starts to do a disservice to both people. The person getting hurt is repeatedly accepting less than they deserve, and the person doing the hurting isn’t learning how to contribute to a relationship in a healthy way.

When two people are locked in this kind of pattern, the good parts eventually start to lose their shine. Like a drug, the highs get less potent as time goes on, but the lows only get lower. If and when we’re really ready to break the cycle, we need to take an honest look at what we’re gaining versus what we’re losing when we keep reopening the door to the person who has caused us pain.

Denying someone we love another chance is harder than giving one, especially if giving them chances has become almost a habit. It can feel like we’re initiating a “breakup” that we don’t want to happen — after all, we keep giving chances because we really care for this person.

But there has to be a limit. At some point, enough is enough, and instead of continuing to gamble on a relationship that keeps hurting us, we need to direct that love and energy toward the people who keep our heart safe. And, if we can, toward ourselves as well.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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