You know how the saying goes — “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Well, fool me three times… I guess I’m an idiot. The thing is, I’m a sucker for love, relationships, and making sacrifices for my partner. I’m a sucker for even giving up parts of myself for the person I love, and I know that’s not the way things should be, just as I know I’m not alone. In fact, that’s exactly how you should not act when you’re with the right person. So I ask myself this question: Why do we keep making the same mistakes in love?
I often leave it to Einstein, who said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results.” If this is the case, then I admit it. I’m nuts. Women are nuts. Men are nuts. Anyone who’s in love is nuts. And anyone who keeps repeatedly going back to their ex-boyfriend or girlfriend, even after knowing that it ended in flames the last time is, by definition, nuts. That still doesn’t explain why we do it.
We do it because love is amazing when it is alive and thriving. It’s an amazing feeling to know that even during your worst of days, there’s someone to pick up the pieces and tell you that it’s all going to be OK.
When we make the same mistakes in love, we don’t do it because we’re in a logical or rational state of mind where our head tells our heart, “Hey moron, remember how much pain this relationship caused you?” No, we don’t stop to think about the bad days. Instead, we think about all the good days; the wonderful memories, the feeling that other person gave us, the comfort of always having someone around.
We make the same mistakes in love because we want to believe that it will eventually work out one day and so that we can look back and tell ourselves that it was all worth it. But in all honesty, waiting for that day is like jumping off of a cliff, then changing your mind, then slipping off the ledge to find yourself hanging on by your fingertips. Eventually, you’re going to get tired of hanging on and you’re going to have to let go. And when that realization hits, you’re going to wish you had never jumped in the first place.
I’m not exactly sure how many mistakes one can make before they realize that if it was meant to be then, it would have been. Instead of proactively making these mistakes, we should just let it be and let fate work things out. In the end, if the other person loves you too, they’ll still be there.