When They Say They’ve Changed: 14 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Give Them A Second Chance

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1. Revisiting someone that took your happiness isn’t a safe bet. There are people who leave making you feel empty inside — almost as if they fed off your happiness and took a small portion of it with them. Chancing going back to them just to give up the happiness you finally took back is asking to get hurt all over again.

2. “Winning” isn’t worth it. It’s gratifying to have someone who walked away from you come back and admit they’re wrong. It validates the time you spent being upset over them, because you can point to it as proof that those feelings were completely founded and the other person was suffering equally. When they come back to you, it will give you a little buzz of a superiority — but that can’t be what you build a fresh start off of.

3. You’ve already learned to live without them. There’s something to be said for that. Even when you become dependent on a person, it’s important to know that you could live your life without them. When you lose them, you come to realize that, and it’s not a realization that’s worth giving up.

4. They could still be leading you on. When you’re with someone who’s hesitant to commit, there’s always the promise that things will get better. That’s what makes staying with them worthwhile — for the day they might commit. When they come back promising a little more, remember that it’s still not enough.

5. If you gave more the first time around, you’ll end up giving more the second time around. Perhaps it will be reciprocated more, but you will still be left feeling like they aren’t giving as much as they can, or that they aren’t appreciating your efforts the way they should be.

6. Endings are something to be grateful for. Love that ends isn’t discounted and you certainly don’t have to reignite the flame just to reassure yourself that there was, in fact, a flame to begin with. Trust that your relationship meant something to both of you at the time, but doesn’t need to be pried back open.

7. If you feel the need to rationalize your choice to yourself, or your closest friends, it’s probably not worth it. The fact is, we are all bound to make the wrong choice sometimes and if we’re actually sold on it, we will run straight in the wrong direction without letting anyone even try to dissuade us. If you’re trying to explain yourself, and listening to counter arguments, you’re not sold on going back to them.

8. You’ll still be searching for apologies you deserved long ago because you’ll want to hold them accountable for the past. That’s a shaky foundation if you really want to start something new. You’ll think it will be easy to let go of the times they hurt you in the past, but end up still trying to get your partner to make it up to you with the future.

9. Often times people are just developing new excuses. When people say they’ve changed, they’re usually covering up something else.

10. The appeal of a backslide is to go back to the honeymoon phase when the sex is constant, and mind-blowing, but it’s not a lasting phase. Going back for the physical draw puts you in a shaky situation three months down the road.

11. People sometimes come back to you because they know you’ll take them back, and the satisfaction of taking them back will never be as good as the satisfaction of not taking them back.

12. Rationalizing the past away is risky. When you write off your past emotions as unnecessary, you’re not being fair to yourself. Anyone who is willing to walk back into your life and pretend that your hurt was just a misunderstanding isn’t worth keeping around.

13. If you gave them a second chance, you would end up rushing into decisions. When you get back together, the lines are muddled. Are you starting over again, or right from where you left off? You’ll assume you’re ready for things that you’d typically hold off on.

14. You still want different things. If you stopped seeing each other because your life paths wouldn’t sync up down the road, then those facts likely haven’t changed. Going back to each other might seem comfortable, but it puts you in the exact same place with the exact same problems.