Why Won't You Apologize?: Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts

by Harriet Lerner

In many situations, saying “I’m sorry” requires relatively little effort—but the failure to extend it is not a small omission. Life is hard, and even the briefest of interactions with strangers can brighten your day or haunt it.

you do not need to forgive the person who has hurt you in order to free yourself from obsessive anger and bitterness. Indeed, sometimes you have to be brave enough to resist pressure from the forgiveness cops.

We take turns at being the offender and the offended until our very last breath. It’s reassuring to know that we have the possibility to set things right, or at least to know that we have brought our best selves to the task at hand, however the other person responds.

The best apologies are short, and don’t go on to include explanations that run the risk of undoing them. An apology isn’t the only chance you ever get to address the underlying issue.

The purpose of an apology is to calm and soothe the hurt party, not to agitate or pursue her because you have the impulse to connect, explain yourself, lower your guilt quotient, or foster your recovery.

Watch out for meaningless over-apologizing. Save your apologies for things that matter.

What drives over-apologizing? We can never know for sure. It may be a reflection of low self-esteem, a diminished sense of entitlement, an unconscious wish to avoid any possibility of criticism or disapproval before it even occurs, an excessive wish to placate and please, some underlying river of shame, or a desire to show off what a well-mannered Brownie Scout one is.

You need to tell the critical person how you see things differently, rather than being an overly accommodating, peace-at-any-price type of person who apologizes to avoid conflict.

If we’ve been shamed as children, we may have an especially difficult time tolerating the adult experience of being wrong.

We continue to shame boys for half of their humanity, which we label “feminine.”

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.

We can apologize for what we do. We cannot apologize for who we are.

reflects a common confusion in family life. We target mothers-in-law, stepmoms, and daughters-in-law not only for their own difficult behaviors (for which they are accountable) but also for the passive or distant behavior of our husbands, fathers, and sons.

accepting an apology needn’t mean that all is resolved, or forgiven, or that there’s no room for further discussion.

Accepting an apology doesn’t always mean reconciliation. The best apology in the world can’t restore every connection.

We want change but we don’t want to change first—a great recipe for relationship failure.

Will Sam feel like doing these things? Of course not. But if the relationship matters to him, he can do them anyway.

there are many paths to healing that do not require forgiveness.