A second chance at love lost is a favored theme of Hollywood and it so happens that this month on cable, the remakes of “The Great Gatsby” and “Great Expectations” are playing. I can’t find the new version of “Gatsby” to be as good as the Redford one, but I do enjoy the Ethan Hawkes “Expectations”. Each movies deals with the question of, “If you are rejected by the one you love, is there the chance that it can work out in the future, and do you cling to that hope or walk away? I can’t imagine that readers of this blog don’t know the ending of these two movies, but just in case someone doesn’t, I won’t do a spoiler here. I will, instead, take this into the real world because I know of situations where both end results apply. In one case, it was a remarriage after a divorce and in another, it was a fairly lengthy separation (at least I consider three years to be lengthy) that resulted in reconciliation. Since the remarriage is the one that didn’t work out and the reconciliation did, perhaps the couple that separated knew on some level that there was hope, whereas the divorce and remarriage was a matter of wishful thinking.

As I have said on more than one occasion, falling in love and staying in love are often not the same thing. There are a lot of reasons for this, and I have also found that friendship can grow into love over time. People can overlook someone and later realize their mistake. In this day and age, re-connecting is more possible than in the past, but should one? And if in recognizing that you “let the right one go”, how do you approach it? Gently, as in reconnecting for friendship sake and gauging the situation? Forthright to fully admit the error and apologize as much as ask for a second chance? What say you, readers?