Second Chances

October 13, 2022

If you’ve never been a single lady of a certain age, you may not be aware of one of life’s most basic principles. Most men in heterosexual relationships can’t be friends with women who are not their girlfriend. I know you’re all about to argue with me and say “Rebecca! My husband has 20 lady friends.” No Margaret, those are YOUR 20 lady friends that you let him talk to at social events or possibly the wives/girlfriends of his own buddies. I’m sure some of you are in sophisticated, cool relationships where your husbands/boyfriends have a ton of lady friends from all walks of life and it doesn’t bother you because “the trust is there.” I was in one of those relationships once, and my boyfriend at the time had such a great gal pal in his life that he told me “she’s a lot like you, but nice to me” and I think he might be married to her now. My point is – I’ve been on both sides of that mess: the girlfriend sitting at home feeling like garbage while her man drinks scotch on the roof with his best “buddy” with the double D’s, and the actual-real-life-no-shit lady friend who has known a man for years with no hanky panky involved and STILL gets blocked on all platforms when his girlfriend won’t stop screaming about that time the two of you spoke on Facebook messenger about an upcoming half marathon or some fish you fried together 8 years ago. The former has only happened to me once, but the latter has happened many times before. Something about this social media world and rampant infidelity has put people on edge, and trust is eroding. And I’ve seen some of the messages I receive from men who are married or in relationships – the online flirtation and boundary crossing is real – and real life platonic friendships are suffering because of it.

If you are a single woman, and as attractive as a mailbox, then you will not be allowed to keep some of your man friends who are in relationships with women. One of my best friends from high school found himself a girlfriend during sophomore year of college and told me she had banned him from talking to me and that was the end. We haven’t spoken since. I doubt this is much of a loss in my life, but still. That situation ended up being the first incident in a series of unfortunate identical incidents. It’s annoying. Anyway, I could rant about this forever and give you a ton of examples. But I brought it up to tell you a different story so I can bitch about something else. Here goes. Many weeks ago, a friend of mine told me that he was going through a break up. I tried to comfort him. I told him about mine from last year and told him everything was going to get better – the good is going to come back around, I said. One day I was in the city and I was about to text him to see if he wanted to get a drink after my volleyball game, and I noticed that my message wasn’t going through. I hopped on Snapchat and saw that he wasn’t my friend on there any more. I got on Instagram and saw that he unfollowed me. I messaged him on there and said “What’s going on? Why are you removing me from your life?” He replied with a few pseudo-code sentences: “Getting back together. Have to. Sorry.”

It took me a couple of minutes of staring at the non-sensical reply for me to realize he meant that he and his ex were getting back together and that I had to be the collateral damage to make that happen. Me and probably every other single woman of a certain age in his contacts. I got really angry. Like really angry. I said “HOW WONDERFUL FOR YOU, F**KING ASSHOLE. I’M SURE THIS WILL WORK OUT”. Guys, I was so mad and then I was also really baffled by my reaction. I usually don’t do the angry texting thing. My face got hot in the back of my Uber ride back to my car (because momma only drives in DC when she’s getting paid for it) and I thought about it for my entire drive back to my house. I’m smart enough to put the pieces together. This guy had been dumped as the result of some sort of infidelity or online flirtation and she had agreed to take him back with a couple of contingencies in place – one of them being that his single lady friends had to disappear. And once I pieced that together, I realized that my anger wasn’t driven by the fact that a friend was nuking me from his phone – it was driven by jealousy. I was jealous that he was getting a second chance and I didn’t.

A few weeks later, he unblocked me and reached out. It turns out that relationships that have to operate with one person in chains while the other is still carrying around resentment for crimes of the past aren’t long lived. Forgive me, I’m making a ton of assumptions about this scenario and I don’t actually have all the facts – this is just the way it went down in my imagination. Anyway, I forgave him with very few questions asked and we moved on with the surface level friendship we had before. He thanked me for being forgiving and my response to him was “I get it. If my ex would give me a second chance, I’d nuke just about every man I know out of my phone.”

I’ve been thinking about that statement a lot. It was a nonsensical hypothetical for a couple of reasons. For one thing, a second chance with him wouldn’t require any kind of non-cheating condition because I’m not a cheater and have never strayed outside of the boundaries of faithfulness. Also, and more importantly, he’s not coming back ever. I have to repeat that to myself about once a day to keep making it a truth that I understand. He is not coming back and no amount of wishing or crying or praying to a god I don’t even believe in will ever change that. This is not Pride and Prejudice and he won’t be walking through a field of fog on a crisp fall morning to tell me “You have bewitched me, body and soul and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on.” I’m of course talking about the 2005 Kiera Knightly movie version – he didn’t say that shit in the book. My point being, this is not Jane Austen’s universe, and he’s not coming back. That’s actually a huge theme in a lot of Jane Austen’s writing – men coming back for more- and I can’t relate at all.

I also get stuck on this idea of being given a second chance and the implications of it. It seems to mostly be used to describe situations where you screwed up and are undeserving of something – whether it be more time with a partner, or dessert after dinner or that big account at work – but someone is being charitable enough to offer it to you anyway in hopes that you’ll rise to the occasion. It’s an opportunity to try something again after failing. It’s like the time I got a C on my recitation of “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost in 11th grade English class, and the teacher let me go home and practice some more to try again. That’s the thing – in a lot of scenarios, you get second chances, but you also get a little bit of feedback to help you be more likely to succeed when you try again. My teacher gave me my C grade with some notes about how I needed to make more eye contact and be expressive. I knew what I needed to practice at home so I could come in the next day and get my A.

I guess that’s why a second chance in my situation never would have made sense – there was no actionable feedback or suggested improvement that came out of that relationship failure, because the things that were wrong had nothing to do with me. I didn’t fail at anything. I didn’t do anything to let anyone down. That’s another thing that I’ve been repeating to myself daily. I didn’t do anything wrong and “more” from me wouldn’t have changed the outcome because he didn’t need “more” – he needed “different”. Even if he showed up tomorrow and gave me a second chance, things would probably still end the same way they did before because I’m still me and he’s still him.

Personally, I have given out a lot of second chances in my life. I actually think our ability to forgive is one of the most beautiful parts of human relationships. It’s one of the things we have in common with dogs. No matter how often I screw up being Maudie’s mom, she still loves me more than anything and greets me the next morning like nothing happened. I think most people I know are very forgiving and that’s a lovely and vital part of the human condition – because a few of life’s certainties are death, taxes and people making mistakes. I’ve given some second chances to people who have burned me for doing so, but I’ve also had some people really surprise me. I’ve also been given some second chances from friends that I’m really grateful for and know I didn’t deserve them. I’m really forgiving because I honestly know what a little shit I can be and I want to extend the same grace I hope people will give me.

I wish I hadn’t gotten so angry with my friend. I wish I had been able to recognize in that moment that he was trying to rise to the occasion. This girl was kind enough and loved him enough to let him try to be the man she needed, and it seems like he was willing to do just about anything to try. Some people don’t forgive and some people don’t try, and I wish I had been able to appreciate being collateral damage in the middle of two people forgiving and trying at that time. She gave him a bad grade and some comments in red ink, and he went home to try to fix them. In the end it might not have been enough, but it’s actually still a lovely story if you zoom out and ignore some of the nonsense.