I heard her say his name in her sleep. We had been married three months. She was dreaming, and the name that escaped her lips was not mine. I lay there in the dark, understanding something I had always suspected but never confirmed: I was not her first choice.
She had loved someone before me. Everyone knew this. He had left her for someone else, and six months later, she agreed to marry me. I told myself it didn’t matter. I told myself that being chosen second was still being chosen. I told myself that love could grow, that I could become her first choice eventually.
That night, listening to her breathe another man’s name, I understood that some positions cannot be changed. You can be promoted in a job. You cannot be promoted in a heart.
I have been second choice many times in my life. Not just in love. In friendship, in work, in the small daily selections that reveal where you stand.
My friend Imran calls me when Sohel is busy. I know this because he once called me by accident and I heard him say, “Sohel isn’t picking up, let me try Rahim.” I am Rahim. I am the one you try when the first option fails.
At my last job, they promoted Farhan. I had worked there longer. My performance reviews were good. But Farhan was their first choice, and I was kept as backup in case he declined. He didn’t decline. I stayed in my position another two years before leaving.
Being second choice is a specific kind of knowledge. You are good enough to be kept around, but not good enough to be wanted first. You are the safe option, not the exciting one. You are insurance against loneliness, not the cure for it.
The strange thing is, people rarely admit this to you. They pretend you are equal. They say the right things. But you can feel it—in the slight hesitation before they choose you, in the way their eyes look for someone else first, in the enthusiasm that appears only after their preferred option has fallen through.
I used to be angry about this. Why was I never anyone’s first choice? What was wrong with me? I would examine myself obsessively, searching for the flaw that relegated me to backup status. Was I not handsome enough? Not successful enough? Not interesting enough?
Eventually I realized the flaw might not be in me at all. First choices are often irrational. People fall in love with the wrong person. They promote the charismatic employee over the competent one. They choose friends who excite them over friends who would actually be there. Being second choice says nothing about your worth. It says only that someone else’s preferences did not align with your qualities.
This understanding helped, but it did not remove the sting.
There is something exhausting about always having to prove your value. First choices are assumed to be worthy. Second choices must demonstrate it constantly. You work harder, love more visibly, show up more reliably—all to compensate for not being wanted initially. The effort is endless because the deficit can never be fully erased.
I know second choices who became first choices eventually. My wife—yes, the one who said his name in her sleep—tells me now that she cannot imagine life without me. Perhaps she means it. Perhaps years of my steady presence have rewritten her preferences. Perhaps I have been promoted after all.
But I still remember that night. I still know that I was not the original dream. And some part of me wonders if I am loved for who I am, or simply for being present after someone else left.
This is the curse of the second choice: you never fully trust your position. You always suspect that if the first choice returned, you would be discarded. You hold on tighter than you should because you know how easily you could be let go.
Yet there is something else I have noticed. Second choices are often the most loyal. We know what it cost to be accepted. We remember being unchosen. We do not take our place for granted the way first choices sometimes do. The person who was wanted from the beginning can afford to be careless. The person who was wanted only after can never afford that luxury.
My wife may have dreamed of someone else that night. But I am the one who stayed. I am the one who held her when she was sick, who supported her when her business failed, who showed up every single day for years. The one she dreamed of gave her excitement and then abandonment. I gave her less excitement and permanent presence.
Maybe that is worth something. Maybe first choices are overrated. They are chosen for qualities that do not last—beauty fades, novelty wears off, excitement becomes ordinary. Second choices are chosen for what remains after the initial fire dies. Reliability. Kindness. The willingness to stay.
I try to believe this on difficult days.
The question I ask myself now is different from the one I used to ask. I used to ask: why am I not someone’s first choice? Now I ask: why do I need to be?
What if I stopped waiting for external validation? What if I became my own first choice? What if I treated myself as irreplaceable instead of waiting for someone else to see me that way?
This is harder than it sounds. We are built to seek our worth in others’ eyes. Being chosen feels like proof of value. Being unchosen feels like evidence of inadequacy. To escape this equation requires a rewiring of the self.
But I am trying.
I am trying to find places where I am not backup but essential. Work that needs specifically what I offer. Friendships where I am sought first. A relationship with myself where I am not competing with anyone’s memory or preference.
My wife still says his name sometimes, in dreams. Less often than before. Maybe never, eventually. It matters less to me now than it once did. Because I have started to understand that her dreams are not my measure. I am not required to be her first choice to be a good husband. I am only required to be a good husband.
And I am. I know I am. Regardless of the order in which I was chosen.
Perhaps that is the answer for all of us who have been backups and alternatives and second options. Stop trying to become someone’s first choice. Start being your own. The rest is just other people’s preferences, and other people’s preferences are not facts about your worth.
You are not a ranking. You are a person.
And you were always enough.
Whether or not anyone chose you first.