Most of us on the receiving end make little distinction between “He wanted to hurt me” and “He didn’t want to hurt me, but he didn’t make me a priority.” Either way, it hurts. If the father responds to his son’s complaint by saying “I didn’t intend to hurt you,” he’s not addressing his son’s real concern: “You may not have intended to hurt me, but you knew you were hurting me, and you did it anyway.”
