One More Chance to Love You

The saying, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” has always stood true in my mind, especially when it comes to relationships. When you’re dealing with love, it’s easy to let things slide and quickly forgive and forget. But how do you know when you should give your partner a second chance, or when it’s time to officially call it quits? The tricky part is that it all depends. It depends on your situation, relationship dynamics, and a million other factors that are unique to only you.

When people take advantage of us in any way—whether it's our love, our giving hearts, or by having us do endless favors for them—it's important to pick and choose who we do all of the above for. Everyone doesn't deserve your love, and everyone definitely doesn't deserve second chances after he or she has hurt you.

You need to decide who's worth fighting for, and who's worth giving a second chance to. Either way, you should protect yourself by going into these situations with caution.

The beauty of life is that it always gives a second chance. At any given moment, life can surprise us with another chance, giving us the possibility to try something one more time, to recreate ourselves anew, and to start again. The problem is that either we miss that chance by remaining attached to a past failure, to a story without a happy ending, or because we consciously deny accepting that chance, condemning ourselves to a life of failure. As always, life is made up of choices, and our success depends on seizing the chances that life gives us.

The little moments of forgiveness are ones we barely notice, like when we cut someone off in traffic. Sometimes we don't even realize we did this, and that person forgives you within about 45 seconds, no longer thinking about it after maybe a few minutes of it happening. Sometimes our friends cancel plans that maybe you were really looking forward to, but we forgive them within a day or two, or until we find some other plans for that night.

But can you imagine if we didn't give people second chances? Can you think of how many good things have come to us in the form of second chances that would never have happened if not for those second chances?

Fall in love with the one who gives you a second chance—because they aren't going to give you a third. If you hurt them again, they are going to walk away without an ounce of guilt, because they've already tried. Most have given you another shot when most people would have said screw you.

It’s not their fault if you mess it up again. So do not mess it up again. Not if you see his or her worth. Not if you realize that they're the greatest thing that is ever going to happen to you.

Don’t be mistaken—her giving you a second chance doesn’t mean she’s allowing history to repeat itself. It doesn’t mean you can go right back to ‘loving’ her the way you did before. It means she’s giving you a chance to do things differently this time. To treat her with the respect she should have gotten from you at the start.