To the person who gives too many chances to those who don’t deserve them:
I get it. You just can’t help it. Maybe they were just having a bad day. Maybe it’s just one of his/her flaws. Maybe you’ll just need time to get over it. I’m here to tell you that some people don’t really deserve second or third chances, but you don’t really learn that lesson until it’s too late. You can’t predict the future and if you’re anything like me, you want to tolerate everyone, be everyone’s friend. It’s practically in your nature.
In terms of friendship, you want everyone to like you so you show that through forgiveness. Life isn’t that simple. In a perfect world, everyone would like you, but this isn’t a perfect world and there will always be someone who doesn’t like you for whatever reason. It’s okay. You can give them as many chances to like you as you want, but it’ll only hurt you more. Sometimes it’s just not meant to be.
As for relationships, it can be a little bit worse especially if you’ve been single for most of your life. You find someone and it seems great. However, when something happens, you carefully give away one of your precious chances because you can’t afford to just discard a relationship that easily. You shrug it off. Then the person does the same thing again and you can’t bring yourself to throw everything away just yet so you give away one last chance.
But in life, just like in baseball, it’s usually three strikes and you’re out. Except instead of a giving up a play, you give up the chance to ever be with someone like that.
It’s happened to me and it’s probably happened to many others, which brings me to my less somber message: it will get better, but only if you work towards it.
When something is in your nature, it’s difficult to work against it, but in this case, you are saving yourself from future heartache and/or betrayal. Learn to see warning signs early. Trust your gut. It may sound silly (I thought it was too) and yet, that inner feeling has helped me through many situations with people that just weren’t worth my energy. If someone doesn’t seem like a friend or you aren’t getting good vibes from somebody that you like, then don’t invest so much precious attention on them.
People like you, like us, need to focus on those who matter and not those who’ll potentially hurt you. Like I said, this world is far from perfect so you are bound to meet people that don’t like you or crushes who end up deflating your expectations. Whether you know the reason or not, you cannot control it. But with the right help and the healing power of time, you can learn to give your chances to those who truly deserve them and not to those who probably won’t matter in the future.
