Mobile nodes of various routing protocols in Mobile Ad hoc Networks follow different strategies in transmission and receiving of data. Security, packet delivery and routing overhead are important concerns for any protocol during designing them. The presence and absence of malicious nodes in the network affect a lot on the performance of the protocol. This research is mainly focused on the study of the threats, attacks and reasons for malicious behavior of nodes in the network for reactive routing protocols in MANETS. DSR and AODV are the two reactive routing protocols that were considered for the study to propose a second chance strategy to be given to the nodes considering the reason for malicious behavior to improve the packet delivery ratio and reduce the routing overhead in the network. A simulative study has been conducted using Ad hoc Simulator (ASIM) considering the DSR and AODV routing protocols in the presence of malicious nodes and in the absence of malicious nodes which showed that the packet delivery ratio is low and routing overhead is high in the absence of malicious nodes. The second chance strategy proposed considers the reasons for malicious behavior and helps the node to get reintegrated in the network to improve the packet delivery ratio and reduce the routing overhead.