No individual will feel accountable and genuinely remorseful—no matter how well you communicate—if doing so threatens to define him or her in an intolerable way. The other person’s willingness to own up to harmful deeds has nothing to do with how much she or he does or doesn’t love you. Rather, the capacity to take responsibility, feel empathy and remorse, and offer a meaningful apology rests on how much self-love and self-respect that person has available. We don’t have the power to bestow these traits on anyone but ourselves.
