Do they deserve a second chance?
An extremely, very serious meditation on trust & fidelity
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He stood on the other side of my door, begging. It was late. Probably around midnight. We’d broken up three days ago. Now here he was, telling me what a huge mistake he’d made.
I’d won. That was my first thought. I’d beat the competition. Now I had a tough decision to make.
Take him back? Or dump his ass.
Instinct took over, and I opened the door. Kept the chain on. I said, “We’re done. Get the fuck out.”
Of course, it wasn’t my building. I was 25 and still lived with a roommate. A poet. She smoked a lot of pot. In fact, here she comes now to ask me what’s going on. So I tell her it’s Conrad.
My roommate tells me congratulations, and goes to sit on the toilet. Meanwhile, Conrad wails please over and over, with increasing amounts of desperation and longing.
I broke the fourth wall for a minute. Sorry.
Here’s the thing. Conrad humiliated me. Made me feel like garbage. Like I wasn’t good enough. Now, he’d done a total 180.
Could I trust him again?
At the time, it didn’t matter. So I gave into the wailing. Opened the door. His hug felt so damn good. My decision took three seconds. After I’d already taken him back in my head, I only agreed to a cup of coffee to talk everything over. At least I made one smart move.
Three months later, we broke up again. Got back together. And then broke up one final time.
Almost everyone will face this question at some point. Can you trust your spouse again, after they’ve done something terrible? Sure, we weren’t married. It wasn’t exactly high stakes. On the other hand, he’d meant everything to me at one point. When we broke up for good, a year later, part of my heart froze over. Still hasn’t thawed.
I’m a little more cynical and suspicious of everyone now. Because of him. When you love someone openly, with everything you’ve got, and they crush you, that pain never goes away. Not entirely.
You just find ways around it.
