In golf, they call it a Mulligan.

Your original shot didn’t work out, and you get the consent of your golfing buddies to try again, from the same spot. A do-over, if you will.

In relationships, it doesn’t feel quite the same. It’s like a rebound relationship, but with the same person. Sometimes, over and over.

That’s what boyscout’s song “done” is about.

Minor confession – I never really liked Chicago’s song “Hard Habit To Break.” Who wants to be compared to a nicotine addiction? It seems really impersonal and self-centered. Yeah, buddy, that will bring me back to you, sure – tell me that my presence is comforting, like a worn-out shoe, or a compulsion. I feel seen. Not.

But I digress.

The point, I guess, is that we do get into relationships for reasons. They do… something… for us. Nostalgic harkening back to relationships in the past, which didn’t last, can provide a kind of comfort and security, in hindsight. You remember the good things, the excitement, the kinds of connection. It’s a retreat from the messy complications of present realities.

Some of those memories, some of those relationships, hang around in the back of a person’s mind more than others. That’s where you get the do-overs, the multiple rebound relationships with the same person that you rebounded from before. They’re kind of like ping pong, really. (I know it’s called table tennis, but ping pong works better for the analogy).

I tell myself that I’m in the clear

Emotions can be so irritating. They keep bringing things back that you thought you had put away, like a dog digging up the bone you thought was buried. (That sounds dark. Honest – no bones in my backyard.) As Leonard Cohen wrote in “That Don’t Make It Junk,” “I don’t trust my inner feelings – inner feelings come and go.” Yet, our emotions do take hold of us, they do bring us back, wanting to recapture what we feel as lost.

It’s a struggle, for sure.

Been looking for a place where I can focus on myself a little more

And I can’t get away from the day you find what you’ve been looking for

Past relationships can also feel like a kind of failure. We feel like we could have done better. Maybe, given another chance, things could work out… this time….

If both parties from a past relationship feel the same way, there’s the window for those rebounds to happen.

I thought I told you we were done…

Everybody knows we had some fun

But I think that I’ve found out you’re not the one

The song doesn’t just have to be about a relationship. It can, by extension, be about any do-over temptation. Maybe there’s a past affiliation with a group, a past way of thinking, a past habit (ugh, there’s that hard habit to break reference again), that seemed to fill a role, or a hole. You get drawn back to it, to see if it works – this time. It doesn’t.

It’s hard to move on. It’s never about forgetting the past. There comes a time, though, to leave the past where it is. Done.