Should I give my ex another chance?

I spent much of my life studying the passions as calmly as a geometer studies lines and planes, and one thing I learned is that hope never travels alone. Hope is a joy that wavers because we doubt how something will turn out. Fear is its twin, a sadness that wavers for the same reason. Where you find one, the other is close behind. So when your ex asks for another chance and you feel hope rising, know that you have also invited fear into the house, and that the two of them together will make you restless, credulous and easily moved.nnThat is not a reason to say no. It is a reason to wait until you can think. A passion stops being a passion, and becomes something you can use, the moment you form a clear idea of it. So form one. What exactly do you love in this person? Is it them as they are now, or the joy you once felt, which you have attached to their image as if they were its cause? What ended it before, and what has actually changed in the causes, not only in the promises?nnIf, when you look clearly, you find real reasons for joy in this person, then go forward, but go as a free person, not as someone pushed about by hope. If you find only the old longing, recognise it for what it is. Understanding it will loosen its grip far more surely than fighting it.

I will not pretend that you can settle this by reasoning. Reason, in my experience, is the servant of the passions, not their master. It can tell you what is true and what follows from what, but it cannot make you want anything. Whether you go back will be decided by what you feel. My advice is only that you make sure your feelings are working from the facts.nnThe fact I would put first is this. We judge the future by the past, from custom, and there is no better guide in human life. If the relationship ended because of something that happened once, in unusual circumstances, the past may not predict much. If it ended because of something that happened again and again, the same coldness, the same quarrels, the same broken word, then custom tells you plainly what to expect, whatever is being promised now. People do change, but slowly, and usually because their circumstances changed, not because they decided to.nnThe second fact is about you. Part of the pull you feel may simply be habit, the comfort of a familiar face after the strangeness of being alone. That is a real pleasure and no shame, but it is not the same as wanting this person.nnSo look at the record, consult your friends, who see you more clearly than you see yourself, and then let your feelings decide. They will anyway. They may as well be well informed.

My colleagues will tell you to wait for the evidence. In most matters I agree with them. If you are wondering whether a bridge will hold, test it before you cross. But there is a class of questions where the evidence does not exist until you act, and where your own belief is one of the causes of the outcome. Whether two people can make a life together is one of them.nnThink of a simpler case. Whether someone comes to like you often depends on whether you meet them halfway, trusting that they might. If you hold back until they prove it, you may make sure they never do. A relationship works the same way. A second chance offered grudgingly, with one foot out of the door and every word on trial, is not really a chance at all. It is an experiment designed to fail.nnSo the honest question is not whether you can be certain it will work. You cannot. The question is whether you are willing to believe in it enough to give it a fair trial, and whether there is enough reason to make that belief a live option for you rather than a leap into nothing. If there is, then believing is not foolish. It is part of how the good result comes about.nnIf there is not, if you would only be going back to watch for the next failure, then say no now and spare you both.