A Guest Blog: When Your Apology Falls Flat
In our years of counseling couples and families, we have encountered this challenging scenario many times:
Wife: "I would forgive him if he would just apologize."
Husband: "I did apologize. I said I was sorry."
Wife: "That's not an apology."
In the husband's mind, he apologized; in the wife's mind, he did not. Does this sound familiar? Have your apologies to your spouse and children fallen flat? Do the apologies of the people in your family connect with your heart and motivate you to forgive? Or do they seem to seldom apologize? What are your children learning through your words and actions about what it means to apologize?
After two years of research, we have discovered that people have different apology languages. A person may apologize sincerely, and yet, the apology is not perceived as sincere because it's spoken in a different language. Consider these five distinct languages of apology:
Wife: "I would forgive him if he would just apologize."
Husband: "I did apologize. I said I was sorry."
Wife: "That's not an apology."
In the husband's mind, he apologized; in the wife's mind, he did not. Does this sound familiar? Have your apologies to your spouse and children fallen flat? Do the apologies of the people in your family connect with your heart and motivate you to forgive? Or do they seem to seldom apologize? What are your children learning through your words and actions about what it means to apologize?
After two years of research, we have discovered that people have different apology languages. A person may apologize sincerely, and yet, the apology is not perceived as sincere because it's spoken in a different language. Consider these five distinct languages of apology:
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