Most of us know that not all apologies are created equal. Have you ever had the experience of someone telling you they’re sorry, but you couldn’t feel their remorse? Without it, the words are empty and meaningless. In contrast, when someone has sincerely expressed their regret for hurting you it offered validation and a chance for you to begin healing. A genuine apology can be one of the hardest things to do. But, in the aftermath of a substantial hurt, it has more power to heal than anything else. So how do you do it?
Errors and missteps are inevitable in significant relationships. When we get close to another person, there are bound to be times that they will hurt us and we will hurt them. Obviously, some of these injuries are easier to heal than others. Coming home from work three hours late while your partner watches the meal they lovingly prepared get cold is definitely going to sting. But bigger hurts, like infidelity, are more complicated. These types of injuries will take longer to heal and are likely to change some aspects of the relationship permanently. It’s not always clear if a relationship will survive a major transgression or the cumulative damage of many smaller hurts. Regardless of where the relationship ends up, a good place to start – if you genuinely regret an action you have or have not taken – is with an apology.
Where to start? It’s clear that the words “I’m sorry” are not adequate in most situations. Sometimes those words can even be used in a manner that definitely does not communicate regret such as, “I’m sorry if your feelings are hurt”. The first step to a quality apology involves recognition of a specific regret like, “I’m sorry I took your car without asking”, rather than, “I’m sorry that you’re mad”. After you’ve identified a specific action you wish you had done differently, you should acknowledge the impact that your behavior might have had on the other party. For example, “I bet you were frustrated when you were ready to leave for work and your car was gone”. After you’ve acknowledged your error, expressed sincere regret, and validated the emotional response of the injured party, you can move on to your commitment to avoiding doing the same thing again. Finally, you can put your apology into action by honoring your commitment to avoiding the hurtful behavior in the future.
In a perfect world, you would follow these steps and the recipient of your apology would be ready to hear and accept it. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. It’s possible you may not have access to the injured party. They may not even want to have contact with you. Just because you’re ready to make peace and move forward doesn’t mean they are. The reality is that you may do everything I’ve suggested and your apology may not be accepted. Others have their own thoughts, feelings, reactions, and personal histories that impact how they process what transpired.
The biggest transgressions may never be forgiven. But the intention of a genuine apology should never be to elicit forgiveness from the recipient. It is very important for you to understand this. The purpose of an apology is to make your own peace with a situation and process your own regret. The biggest work of an apology takes place internally. In order to offer a real apology, you must be willing to experience the uncomfortable feelings the injured party has about the situation. It takes courage to acknowledge frustration, disappointment, fear, guilt, and shame about your own behavior. But it’s also a way to learn from your mistakes. When you take the step of making an apology to someone else, you open yourself up to the other person’s reactions to your behavior. This includes their judgments, loss of trust, and feelings of hurt, anger, and betrayal. When an apology is done properly, it demonstrates a willingness to feel everything that you’re feeling and be vulnerable with someone else.
There’s no expiration date on a genuine apology. In addition, an apology does not mean that an issue is resolved forever. To be truly sorry means that you are wiling to revisit the issue as needed in the future. You may offer an apology, the other individual may accept it and later return to you with more upset feelings. Depending on the type of transgression, forgiveness may take a considerable amount of time and more than one apology.
So why apologize? Apologizing allows you to move towards accepting your own actions and the consequences of your choices. It can help you learn from your mistakes and make different choices in the future. In the best of circumstances, it can help to heal the injured and assist a relationship in moving forward. Sometimes the other party may even acknowledge their own regrets.
The bottom line is that it’s good for us to be honest with ourselves. A real apology doesn’t require anything from the other party – it’s yours and yours alone.