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A genuine apology can be deeply healing, while the failure to listen well and apologize can sometimes lead to the loss of a relationship.
If our intention is to have a better relationship, we need to be our best and most mature self, rather than reacting to the other person’s reactivity.
Also, some of the other person’s complaints will be true, since we can’t possibly get it right all of the time.
We need to be able to listen before we get our own message across—good advice for any relationship.
To listen with an open heart and ask questions to better help us understand the other person is a spiritual exercise, in the truest sense of the word.
The words “I want you to know that I’m going to keep thinking about what you’ve told me” are an often neglected and truly important part of a healing apology.
A sincere apology means we are fully accountable for the part we are responsible for, and for only that.
A commitment to listening doesn’t mean that we stay mute while the other person is rude and out of bounds. It’s important to have limits especially about tolerating unkindness.
There is no greater challenge than that of listening without defensiveness, especially when we don’t want to hear what the other person is telling us.
Words of apology, no matter how sincere, will not heal a broken connection if we haven’t listened well to the hurt party’s anger and pain.
It requires us to get past our defensiveness when the critical party is saying things that we don’t agree with and don’t want to hear, and instead let her voice and her pain affect and influence us. If only our passion to understand the other person were as great as our passion to be understood. Were this so, all of our apologies would be truly meaningful and healing.
To offer a serious apology, you need the inner strength to allow yourself to feel vulnerable. You need to be in touch with both your competence and your limitations.
People’s sense of self-worth is pivotal to their ability to look clearly at the hurt they’ve caused. The more solid one’s sense of self-regard, the more likely that that person can feel empathy and compassion for the hurt party, and apologize from an authentic center.
While guilt evokes true remorse and signals us to apologize, shame does the opposite.
The worse the offense and the greater the shame, the more difficult it is for the wrongdoer to empathize with the harmed party and feel remorse.
It is always easier to offer a sincere apology for small things than for serious transgressions. When our identity and sense of worth are at risk of being diminished or annihilated, we will not be able to offer a true apology and face all that the challenge of earning back trust entails. We are more likely to wrap ourselves in a blanket of rationalization, minimization, and denial in order to survive. Defensiveness is no longer merely a roadblock that we can observe and get past after we calm down and limber up the thinking part of our brain. When we have lost sight of our value and worth,
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Smacking labels and diagnoses on nonrepentant offenders only rigidifies their defenses rather than opening their hearts.
Once we label and shame people (“He is a sexual predator”), we narrow the possibility of redemption and positive change.
“HE HAD A TERRIBLE CHILDHOOD” AND OTHER POOR EXCUSES
While shaming isn’t useful, neither is it useful to allow the wrongdoer to rely on excuses and psychological rationalizations. If we view the offending party as one who has no agency, choice, or will, he loses the opportunity to be truly accountable for his behavior.
A New Yorker cartoon by Bob Mankoff shows a woman on the witness stand saying, “I know he cheated on me because of his childhood abuse, but I shot him because of mine.” The cartoon drives home the point that psychological explanations aren’t helpful when they invite people to avoid being responsible for the harmful consequences of their decisions and actions.
While we need to consider how the past and the present affect behavior, a difficult personal history or painful current circumstance doesn’t cause a person to behave badly. Most people who have suffered a traumatic past or horrific present do not go on to harm others. Instead, many such people become loving parents and good citizens—adults who develop gifts that benefit us all.
Most people who commit serious harm never get to the point where they can admit to their harmful actions, much less apologize and aim to repair them. Their shame leads to denial and self-deception that overrides their ability to orient toward reality. No person can be more honest with us than they can be with their own self.
Before you open up a conversation with a person who has harmed you, keep in mind that protecting yourself comes first. Reduce your expectations to zero for getting the response you want and deserve. Speak your truths because you need to speak for your own self—because this is the ground you want to stand on, irrespective of whatever response you receive. A heartfelt apology is unlikely to be forthcoming, now or ever.
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 s...
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Paradoxically, it’s in our most enduring and important relationships that we’re least likely to be our most mature and thoughtful selves.
But shame will not inspire reflection, self-observation, and personal growth. These are essentially self-loving tasks that do not flourish in an atmosphere of self-depreciation and self-blame.
The adults should model the behavior they want children to learn.
What motivates people to change is sometimes a mystery,
Intimacy in family and friendship requires that we can deepen and refine the truths we tell each other, and that we can bring our full selves into the relationship.
Yet we are capable of surprising changes when we can no longer live with the status quo.
The best apologies are offered by people who understand that it is important to be oneself, but equally as important to choose the self that we want to be.
Forgiveness, from this latter perspective, does not just involve letting go for the sake of the hurt party. It goes further, recognizing the pain of the wrongdoer and wishing that he or she be happy and well. Not everyone is capable of radical forgiveness, nor does everyone strive for it.
life experiences have taught me to hold a large picture of people who do bad things, and I do not reduce them to their worst deeds or most dramatic insensitivities.
Katrina said that these were not new insights for her, but often what we need most to learn is not new. Rather, we most need to learn what we already know and to know and live it at a deeper level.
Countless self-help books, blogs, and seminars promise relief from suffering, when pain and suffering are as much a part of life as happiness and joy. The only way to avoid being mistreated in this world is to fold up in a dark corner and stay mute.
Suzanne would ultimately feel better for having done the right thing, regardless of how Marietta responded.
A true apology focuses exclusively on the hurt feelings of the other person, and not on what we would like to get for ourselves,
People enter close relationships with a deep longing that the other person will tend to their wounds and not throw salt on them.
Lead with your heart and not your attack dog. It’s difficult and it’s worth it. The courage to apologize, and the wisdom and clarity to do so wisely and well, is at the heart of effective leadership, coupledom, parenting, friendship, personal integrity, and what we call love. It’s hard to imagine what matters more than that.
