Apologies that work
by Mira and Charles on May 13th, 2010Solving the male apology deficit: How to say you’re sorry
We’ve recently talked about why guys don’t apologize and what you can do to get them to apologize. But now let’s fill in the one big piece missing. How to save time and heartache by apologizing right in the first place.
Here’s what too many people, and too many guys, think an apology is all about. There are these magic words—“I’m sorry”—that mean that everything is your fault and you’re a terrible person, but if you say them it’s like swiping your credit card at the store: you’ve paid, you’re done.
So people resist and resist and then finally, as if it had been pulled out of them like a fishhook, they issue forth with a sullen, reluctant “I’m sorry.” Which mysteriously fails to make everything immediately all better.
Another common scenario, not much better is this. To avoid this all-too-predictable drama, they immediately pop out with an “I’m sorry,” as if the words were a kind of magic pre-empting any further complaint. And that doesn’t help much either.
We know people think this way because, if the drama continues, they will say in a grievance-filled tone, “I said I was sorry,” as if once the magic words are uttered, it’s no longer their fault if the magic doesn’t work, like a parking meter that’s clearly broken once it’s clear that it won’t accept your quarter. Not your problem any more.
Oh, man, this is all so screwed up, I don’t know where to begin…
Actually I do know where to begin. Let’s begin with why you need to apologize in the first place. It’s not to shut the other person up. It’s not so they can see how distraught you are (because it’s not about you). It’s not to own your guilt. It’s not any of those things.
It about the fact that if I’ve been hurt I feel humiliated and I feel afraid and I need something to happen between us about that. Let’s take these one at a time.
Let’s look at the humiliation piece first. When you hurt someone, it makes them feel they are nothing. They don’t matter. If the waiter spills the soup he was serving all over your head, it says, “You weren’t important enough to me for me to be so careful that this couldn’t possibly happen.” After all, does anyone think that that same waiter still would’ve spilled the soup if you’d been the Queen of England? Don’t think so.
So if you’re late, then no matter how bad the traffic was, no matter how many things came up that made it hard for you to get there on time, you’re still conveying the message that the other person wasn’t important enough for you to take extraordinary measures to be on time.
Now take something big, like cheating on them. That really says, “You’re nothing. You don’t matter. Your feelings, our special bond mean nothing to me.”
Of course cheaters always say, “I never meant to hurt you.” And most of them really mean that. But the person who was betrayed hears this as, “I never meant for you find out.” Meaning: “when you’re out of sight, you mean nothing to me.”
Now for the fear piece. What happened once can happen again. In fact, if something happened once, it is more likely to happen again. That’s how we think, anyway. So if I forget your birthday, not only is that humiliating but it raises the horrible thought of a lifetime of forgotten birthday. And if I’m insensitive when you come home complaining about a terrible day at work, that makes the fear leap up that I will never be interested in your problems.
So when you hurt someone, she feels she means nothing to you and that this bad thing will just keep happening over and over.
An apology is a way to say, “You matter to me. Your pain matters to me; in fact it is horrifying to me.” It’s a way to say, “I want you to know that I know what a big deal this is to you, and because you matter to me, this is a big deal to me too. And I will do everything it takes to heal this.”
If you understand this, you see that saying “I’m sorry” is almost irrelevant. Sobbing while you say it doesn’t help much either.
A real apology begins with and builds on seeing the other person, showing them that you really get why what you did was a big deal.
It builds on taking the time to listen and to show you’ve heard, because that shows the other person that she really matters.
It builds on talking about how to prevent this from happening again.
It builds on doing things to earn back trust.
It builds on healing the hurts.
It may include saying you’re sorry, but it has meaning because you show you’re sorry because, in fact, you really are sorry.
Now this doesn’t mean it was all your fault. In the course of all your conversations about what happened there may well be time to talk about apportioning responsibility as you both try to understand how this happened. But apportioning responsibility can only happen if you first show you’re willing to take responsibility.
That’s how it works. It’s doesn’t have to take a lot of time, but the bigger the hurt the more time it will take. In any case, it will take the time it takes. Do not try to short circuit this. A lot of apologies are stillborn because after hanging in there for some time people lose patience and start asking, “When are you going to get over this?” Which makes it seem as though the problem was theirs all along.
The correct question to ask, if it seems to be going on and on, is, “It seems to be taking us a long time to heal this. What can we do, what can I do, to help with this?”
All this is what apologies are really all about. And it begins with your listening, and showing you’ve heard, how the other person was hurt. And if in the course of that you are genuinely moved, you genuinely feel sorry, it’s fine to show that. Then keep listening.
Then keep asking, “What can I do to help with the healing?”
Just remember: however long it takes to do it right, it takes a lot more time to do it wrong.
These thoughts are mine, but if you want more on apologies, there’s a great book by my good friend Aaron Lazare called On Apology which has lots of interesting and important things to say about saying you’re sorry.
For help healing the hurts in your relationship, you’ll find all kinds of great ideas in Our Love Is Too Good to Feel So Bad. If you just can’t get past the damage you’ve done to each other, you may be surprised at how much better things can be with the right kind of professional intervention. It’s something we specialize in here at The Chestnut Hill Institute.
