Repairs
Its good to accept that we are slaves to our memories, to how we remember things, not to what actually occurred. I say these distinctly because we assume they’re the same, and they aren’t. The reality we live in is not as clear or objective as we think it is.
Apology, when it works, is the moment one person agrees to hold the other’s version as real; even when their own memory differs. That’s the cost of repair.
We are social beings. We like to live around people, hang out, talk, play, do everything else. And often we get hurt, not just physically, but emotionally too. Then we apologise, we forgive, we forget, and move on with our lives. Or we think we do.
Today, a friend posed an interesting question that made me come back to this draft of an essay. Which I started after profusely apologising to an old friend, but without any visible long term change in my attitude.
I was apologising from a place of anxiety. Trying to hold on too hard, without understanding the situation, or what I was apologising for. I never held their version as real, and I was trying to make my own discomfort go away. The change never came, because there was nothing real underneath the sorry.
And I want to look at apology, again, from a distance this time.
Apology, plainly, is to reconcile and repair the shared reality in a relationship.
It is done as an act of repair, an act of service, to help the one hurt, and reach to the same shared reality.
A breach of trust, afterall, can be repaired. And a meaningful, strong relationship, is not the one without any conflict, but one, with high repairability.
There, however, lies some merit in understanding it better.
Because like all things human, in the attempts to keep yourself safe, under familiarity, you often misuse the phrase for meeting your other needs.
An apology, with no behavior change will not hold its value. Which means not every apology is doing the same thing. Some repair. Some only look like repair.
There are credible apologies and diffusive ones.
The difference in them is the difference of reality of the person they’re touching.
Apology is about the repair of a rupture. And a good, credible one, acknowledges the feelings. Feelings are not objective. What matters is whose they are and how they’re expressed. It also takes responsibility, and recognises the impact. The final act in an apology is the willingness to repair, and future intent.
Diffusive apologies tend to center not the person hurt, but the one apologising. And often though not always come from a place of guilt or evading.
Seeking forgiveness, is the go-to tool in the community of people pleasers.
Underneath chronic over-apologising is an old lesson, that other people’s discomfort is dangerous, and your job is to absorb it before it becomes anger. Sorry becomes a small ritual offering: please don’t escalate, I am already taking responsibility, there’s nothing left to punish.
Notice what people-pleasers apologise for, existing, having a need, asking a question, taking up time, differing in opinion. None of these are wrongs. The apology isn’t tracking harm done, it’s tracking the risk of someone being upset. It’s threat-management, wearing the costume of conscientiousness.
One need not be sorry for existing, asking questions, needing time, having boundaries. Or saying “no” reasonably, and other people having feelings you didn’t cause (you can still acknowledge them).
People-pleaser apology fails by absorbing too much. There is a failure in the other direction too, where apology becomes a way of putting weight back on the person you hurt.
Sometimes apology itself becomes the harm.
In a healthy one, the apologizer takes on weight. In a weaponized one, the apologizer offloads weight onto the person they hurt. If you walk away feeling heavier, i.e. guilty for having brought it up, responsible for their distress, obligated to reassure them, that’s worth noticing.
Real apologies leave the wronged person lighter. Even when they don’t fully resolve things. They don’t have to. Resolution comes after.
That is the outward-facing half, what apology does to the person receiving it. There is an inward-facing half too, what it does to the person giving it.
Being sorry, is a mix of many things. It is expression of empathy, show of regret, alignment of values, and responsibility.
Anytime you find yourself, or someone else, being sorry, it’s probably one of these.
However, being sorry and saying sorry are different.
Being sorry, changes you, and Saying sorry, changes the shared reality between you.
Neither, by itself, is enough.
Apology by itself will not instill change. It is a signal of change, not the change itself.
Without apology, the hurt person often has to choose between:
- swallowing it (self-betrayal), or
- escalating it (conflict)
You apologize for what you did (or didn’t do) and for the impact it had, not for the mere fact that they have feelings.
And what if you didn’t do anything wrong? Then you don’t apologize for wrongdoing. You can still show empathy. The world can do wonders, with some more kindness, and an attempt at empathy by all of us.
So far, all of this has been about the one apologising. There is a whole other side too.
Learning about apology is important, but equally important is to learn forgiveness.
Truly forgiving someone means to stop paying the tax of attention. To learn that the threat you perceived no longer needs continuous attention.
Human attention afterall is a very limited and finite resource. Forgiveness, allows you to free up some of it. To feel less threatened.
Delightfully, forgiveness and reconciliation are independent. And the former is totally in your control, while the latter influences your shared reality.
And how do you accept an apology?
You can receive one without forgiving yet. You can receive it and name what you’d need to actually move forward. You can receive it and decline forgiveness. All of these are legitimate.
The pressure to produce instant absolution is real, because the other person has done the brave thing and is now uncomfortable waiting. Their courage doesn’t obligate you to perform closure on their timeline.
Receiving is its own skill. People-pleasers tend to fail at it in a mirror-image way, granting forgiveness too fast, for the same reason they apologise too fast.