280 - Receiving and Giving Apologies
In this episode we are combining insights from conflict resolution researcher Dr. Karina Schumann with frameworks from Psychology Today and Dr. Gary Chapman to bring formulate an overview of the essentials to apologies. How to give them AND how to receive them.
Receiving an apology
Generally, there are more tips and tricks for giving and formulating apologies than receiving them. But receiving apologies is still a useful skill that not everyone is good at.
To receive an apology well, remember these things:
Appreciate the fact that they did it at all. Apologizing can be difficult and embarrassing, and it’s worth appreciating if they take the effort to do it.
If you feel the urge to take advantage of their moment of weakness, call a HALT and ask for some time to process first. You may still be activated, or there may be something missing from their apology that makes you feel like this.
You don’t always have to forgive if something really egregious happened. Remember that sometimes not accepting the apology is a valid choice. Additionally, you may accept the apology but choose not to restore the relationship.
Establishing boundaries doesn’t have to mean a falling out; you can be civil to someone while still keeping distance.
Beware of repeat offenders. Not everyone will change, and it’s up to you to protect yourself.
Giving an apology
Dr. Gary Chapman, the author of the Five Love Languages, also has five apology languages:
Expressing Regret
Accept Responsibility
Making Restitution
Genuinely Repenting
Requesting Forgiveness
Additionally, Psychology Today uses the 3 R’s for forming an apology:
Regret: A statement of regret for having caused hurt.
Responsibility: An acceptance of responsibility for your actions.
Remedy: A statement of willingness to remedy the situation.
When giving an apology, it’s important to admit your fault by name, and not follow up with a justification. Understand that your apology might not be accepted, and that you can’t control where they are in the process. If your real motivation is self-improvement, accepting rejection is easier than if your only motivation is their approval.
Lastly, don’t keep going over the same apology again and again. Don’t use your apology to put the burden of guilt on the other person.
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're talking about apologizing. Specifically, we're going to be talking about both receiving apologies and giving apologies. Lately, we've noticed that tensions have been high, both in online communities and in people's personal lives. Sometimes being able to actually apologize like a good human being or accept an apology can really make a big difference in moving forward and reconnecting and maintaining our relationships.
We want to take an episode to talk about this specifically. Unfortunately, Emily won't be joining us for this episode because we're recording this during the week of 4th of July and she is taking a well-earned vacation. This is just Dedeker and me coming to you apologizing. We're apologizing for Emily not being here. How about that?
Dedeker: We're so sorry. I'm sure she's sorry also.
Jase: She probably is.
Dedeker: Everybody's sorry for any inconvenience or burden that we've put on you. What are the ways that you feel like you personally have learned to be better at apologizing over the years?
Jase: Boy, I'm not always great at it but I do feel like I've become more aware in recent years of what a good apology is versus the bad ones. Specifically about making excuses of like an apology that's like "Oh, I'm sorry but here's why" versus really apologizing. I feel like that's a big one that I've noticed. I find that I noticed that even more now if other people give that kind of like a qualified apology.
That's like I'm apologizing because I think that I need to but not really because I understand why or even really care that much. It's like the way that your parents make you apologize to your sibling as a kid where it's like they force you to apologize.
Dedeker: Oh yes, it was just like rote, you mumble it under your breath.
Jase: Exactly. You find maybe some way to word it so it's like not really an apology but it gets you off the hook. I feel like some of us maybe carry that into adulthood unfortunately.
Dedeker: That just reminded me of I had an ex once who apologized to me by saying "I'm sorry that I raised my voice. I did it because you made me really mad." That was the kind of apology where in the moment I was just like, "Yes, it makes sense. I'm glad they're apologizing" and then it took me like years. It was one of those like wake up in the middle of the night moments, be like, "Wait. That wasn't an apology, that was messed up."
Jase: I love that image of you bolting upright at two in the morning being like, "Wait a minute."
Dedeker: I think I've learned to do the apologizing more often. I don't know. I've really been on such a journey of thinking about my family of origin and what communication patterns I saw and things like that. Realizing that when I was growing up like the repair process or apologizing process I very so rarely witnessed it. The adults pretty much never modeled that. I think I grew up in a pretty authoritarian household and as happens with authoritarian power structures, apologies I think are often a sign of weakness and so they don't happen very often.
Jase: It's interesting in looking up this topic of apologizing and that you mentioned learning to do it. I do think that's something I've noticed with you but when you look up articles and things about apologizing, you'll get stuff about how to give better apologies but you'll also find stuff about learning not to apologize. Specifically talking to women about not needing to apologize for everything. That's interesting that that's also a dynamic worth considering.
Dedeker: I think that on the flip side of that, I've also had to learn not to apologize or to not have to explain myself in other situations that I think I've had to learn to fine-tune that instrument of figuring out when is it appropriate to apologize and when is it not?
Jase: That's not really what we're addressing in this episode. This is more assuming you have decided to apologize but maybe just real quick, have you found any ways to help tell those situations apart between what something that actually needs an apology versus what's apologizing just for doing something that's normal or do you know what I mean?
Dedeker: Oh gosh, yes, especially get into such a nuanced area because I think especially you talk about women being discouraged from apologizing in professional settings and things like that then you really start to have to go over things with a fine-tooth comb of thinking about when would it be just as impactful for me to just acknowledge that I know someone's busy or acknowledge that I understand this is going to have an impact on you.
Are there scenarios where acknowledgment and empathy could take the place of apology and saying I'm sorry. Again I'm not saying this is a hack to make sure that you never have to apologize to anyone but I'm thinking about more for the person whose kneejerk reaction is always be like, "Oh my gosh I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry to ask this of you. Oh, I'm so sorry to bother you right now." I think that's been part of my journey as well is can we replace it with still being polite and maybe acknowledging the fact that there's an impact here or acknowledging the fact the other person's a human being without needing to put yourself in that position of "Oh, it's me and I'm bad and I'm saying sorry" if that makes sense.
Jase: I think that's a great way to think about it. That's one example there. I guess that's maybe a good thing to clarify for this episode. This episode we're talking about apologies where you're apologizing or being apologized to for having done something wrong. Whether that's something very little or maybe a little bit bigger but not like apologizing for an inconvenience which is maybe a slightly different type of apology.
I think there can still be value socially in that type of like go into your boss. I'm so sorry to bother you. I think there's a place for that. I think that can be okay but this episode's more about someone did raise their voice or ate the last piece of pizza that you were saving or something more serious, potentially. Even something as big as maybe cheating on a partner or something like that.
To put some bounds on this episode, we're not talking about apologizing for murdering someone even though that is a whole field of study. No, I'm actually serious like apologizing to the family members of murder victims is like there is work and study in that. It's super fascinating but that's not in the scope of what we're talking about here. I would say even violence, that's not what we're talking about but see the range from something pretty serious like infidelity to something pretty minor like eating the last piece of pizza.
Dedeker: That makes sense. Let's dive in here and we're actually going to first look at this through the lens of receiving an apology from somebody.
Jase: With receiving apologies, let's start at the easy side. The first thing is to just realize that when someone apologizes to you, it might just feel great. It might be great. That might be all that was needed. Especially if it's the first time that they've done something like this. I find for me, especially if I see apologies that happen quickly, particularly, when they happen online.
For me, that's always like wow, I'm so shocked because I'm not used to people doing that. When someone just right away is like, "Yes, you're right. I was wrong. I'm sorry." I go like, okay, wow, I'm impressed because I know that that's not the culture that's encouraged online. For me, a lot of times it's like okay, I'm good now. That's all I needed.
Dedeker: It's important to remember that apologizing in general is hard. It's harder for some people more so than others so that's a scale situation depending on who it's coming from. For some people, it's also embarrassing. I would go so far as to say that apologies carry with them just at least the littlest bit of shame. Maybe a large amount of shame maybe a small amount. Somewhere in there, there's shame attached to it as there should be. That apologizing is part of taking ownership for the fact that you've done something wrong or you've done something that has caused harm. Bear in mind that if you're on the receiving end of an apology, I think it is important to at least know that the fact that this person has come to this point is worth appreciating.
Of course, if this is someone that you know well, you probably have an idea of how relatively easy or difficult it is for them as an individual to apologize and get to this point. You can take the weight of that accordingly.
Jase: I think that's great to take into consideration who it's coming from. I think again if it happens online I find it more surprising in a way and maybe more impactful because of that. I could also see that if like a parent apologizes to a kid or a boss apologizes to a subordinate or something like that, I actually find that again be like wow, that means a lot because you didn't need to because you're in that position of authority. You don't need to, you could have the power to just be like, "Nope, I'm right and you're not." I do think that adds some extra meaning to it, at least for me, in my experience with that.
Dedeker: Something else to bear in mind if you're being apologized to, it's very easy to feel the urge to-- This is maybe a bad way to say it but I don't know a better way to say it but to feel the urge to take advantage of that moment. I think especially if you're in that classic example where you and a partner are fighting and you've gotten pulled into this me versus you, maybe you have a demon dance battle, maybe you're doing the whole bad guy boogie thing.
If you don't know anything that I just said, go check a couple of episodes prior to figure that out but maybe you've been in this tussle, this me versus you, and then someone pauses and switches gears and takes ownership and apologizes. It can be so easy to just completely miss that or let that ball go flying by you so that you can kick them while they're down essentially.
It's very hard. If your partner is able to turn on a dime and suddenly apologize and try to repair things and try to get us back on the same page. Sometimes it's hard when you got that momentum. If you got the momentum and you're used to scanning your partner systematically for weaknesses in an argument so that you can make your point that often we see a partner apologizing, it's like haha. Now I can rub it in or I can be like, "Yes, you should be sorry. Also, this happened and yada, yada, yada. That could potentially be missing a really, really important opportunity.
Jase: It's interesting that you bring this up because I remember this being something you and I talked about years ago in our relationship where for you, you found that the fact that I would apologize after our arguments caught you by surprise. You did express to me that you had to resist that urge to be like, "Aha, he's lost. Now I can win." Do you remember talking about this years ago?
Dedeker: I don't remember talking about it but I believe you.
Jase: I guess for you like in your family growing up, not seeing that happen that it is this like no, no one does that unless they're admitting defeat and no one ever admits defeat. It was this weird jarring thing for you.
Dedeker: I think at that time I was also on the heels of that particular relationship with the ex where apologizing didn't really happen. Then when it did it was those weird ones like the example I gave.
Jase: Right, but it was actually your fault.
Dedeker: Anyway, it is totally possible that when your partner comes and apologizes to you that maybe you're just not ready or you weren't expecting it or you're not in a place. Maybe your nervous system is just too activated. You're too angry or too worked up that you can't turn to that apology with compassion or reception necessarily. It's totally okay to ask for a halt, take a pause, go into the other room, maybe thank them for apologizing but say I need to think about that a little bit or process that. I'm going to go take a 20-minute walk, something like that.
It doesn't mean that by the time you come back from your 20-minute walk everything's going to be sunshine and rainbows but it does give you a chance to let the apology sink in to let your body calm down and hopefully come back to the conversation better able to receive or continue talking about it in a more productive way.
Jase: In researching this and specifically in researching some of these more nuanced things about when you're not ready to let it go and how do you handle that? I found that there was a lot of research from the University of Pittsburgh. They have the conflict resolution center. They've got a lot of studies, they're all available for free on their site too. Like the actual PDFs of the studies or the papers on the studies which is great. In preparing for this, I actually had a short conversation with Professor Karina Schumann who is the one who leads the conflict resolution center.
Dr. Schumann: That the main focus of my research is on how do you get people to work out their problems, how to get people to step up and do what's good for the relationship and for the other person to reach out, make a bridge rather than let it fall apart and let their self-protective defensive motivations takeover in conflict situations where it can be really hard to make amend, to forgive, to repair the relationship.
Jase: I found her studies to be really influential in putting this together but I noticed in a lot of my research that there's not a lot out there about receiving apologies like I mentioned before. That was something specifically that I wanted to ask her about what she's observed from actually doing research on this.
Dr. Schumann: There does seem to be a social script around apology behavior both for transgressors and victims. The script's being that if you receive an apology, the right or kind or compassionate thing to do is to forgive. That might- those add insult to injury for victims. Sometimes they might feel pressure to forgive and accept the apology and that can be especially difficult if the apology doesn't feel genuine.
If it feels manipulative if it feels like it's coming from a place where the person's just trying to sweep it under the rug and move on without really addressing the behavior. From the perspective of the transgressor, it can be difficult to apologize and so to the extent that it's possible, if you're on the receiving end of the apology try to have some empathy towards the transgressor, try to see it from the perspective that this could be difficult for them, so what they say might not be perfect.
At the same time, don't feel the pressure to forgive right away just because someone has apologized to you and do take into account whether that apology feels real, assess its sincerity. You can still voice concern and have a constructive calm conversation with someone who's hurt you to say, "Look, I appreciate the apology. It felt real and I'm very grateful for the fact that you've taken that step but I also need to see behavioral change in order for there to be true forgiveness or for me to really be able to move on."
An apology is really a great start but I also want to see you put your money where your mouth is so to speak so that this doesn't happen again. I think victims should feel empowered to do that to still be vocal about what their needs are to be able to move on and resolve the conflict to the point where they feel comfortable moving forward with the person.
Dedeker: To back all that up, just remember that even though forgiveness is a really important quality to have in your personal relationships, we just talked about that a couple of episodes ago that that's actually a really important quality, a really important strength to have in your relationships. However, we also love boundaries on this show. That means that if something really egregious did happen you don't have to forgive, even if somebody apologizes, it is a choice.
I remember that this was something I really struggled with because I also was raised in a Christian church that puts such an emphasis on forgiveness as a value and the narrative around it was when someone apologizes or asked for forgiveness you got to give it to them. That's the Christian thing to do. That was the same metric applied both if someone spilled coffee on you and if someone was found out to be a pedophile, really really serious stuff which I think that's also a bigger thing that we carry. I think it's a culture around forgiveness and why that's so tricky is because we apply it like a blanket value I suppose of if someone apologizes, you just have to.
Something else to think about is that it's possible to accept somebody's apology but that doesn't mean that you have to restore or maintain a relationship with them. You can accept somebody's apology, you can express appreciation for it. You could acknowledge the weight and the difficulty that it took for them to do that while also still being clear of your boundaries, whether that's "I'm not going to be in a relationship with you," or "we're not going to talk about this," or "we're not going to stay in contact" or whatever it is. Just because someone apologizes to you it doesn't mean that you automatically have to be super cool with them still from then on out.
Jase: When I was working on putting this episode together and was talking to Dedeker about it, her counterpoint was, what about when it's too late to apologize, which of course, then got that song stuck in my head. Then in thinking about it, I thought it's interesting because the song's not really about it being too late to apologize, it's about it being too late to fix that relationship or maintain that relationship.
I think that's also something we're thinking about too is is the motivation of this apology just to get what you want? Just for that person to get what they want or to stay in this relationship with you, because if so then maybe it could be too late to apologize.
Dedeker: Sorry, that’s gonna make me giggle every time.
Jase: If it is really just like, "No, I need to apologize, just because that's the right thing to do and I do want to acknowledge this," then I think that's also worth taking into account. It still doesn't mean that they get to repair that relationship just because they apologized.
I think another good example of this happens in a friend group, or a peer group, or maybe with co-workers, is that you could still establish some boundaries for yourself that work within that social context so it's not like one or the other of us has to leave this friend group.
We could stay civil and stay friendly with each other but maybe I have a boundary around I'm not going to make any plans with you because I do appreciate your apology, but I can't trust do at least right now. That's also something to keep in mind is that maybe you just need time, even if that time is several years, it's still possible. It's like, "I just need time and once I see evidence, real proof that this behavior has changed, then maybe I'll feel safer. For now, I appreciate your apology and I hope you follow through on it. That doesn't mean we're going to go back to how things were before."
Dedeker: As always be aware of apologetic repeat offenders, I guess is what I'd want to call this. Ultimately, remember, you're the only person who can protect yourself at the end of the day. No matter how much you love someone, if there's a repeated pattern of them doing something really harmful to you and then apologizing, but then there's no change and it's just the same back and forth pattern, that's probably not going to change by itself.
It probably not going to just change with a simple apology, especially if that's what keeps happening over and over and over again. Often apologies are a fundamental part of the abuse cycle and so it's important for you to evaluate what are the things that I actually need to see from this person? Like Dr. Schumann talked about, what are the things I actually need to see from this person behaviorally? What change I need to see so that I can actually accept an apology and trust in it and offer forgiveness? If you're not seeing those things then maybe it's time to get on out of there, partner.
Jase: I think there can be a lot of power there too in I accept the apology and I appreciate it but it also doesn't fix it and that you can still have your boundary. You can still leave. You can still do things to protect yourself from someone that you don't trust, while still appreciating the apology if you do that is and maybe you don't. That's something we address too. Maybe you just don't. Maybe it doesn't feel real. Maybe it doesn't feel sincere.
Now before we wrap up this section on receiving apologies and move on to giving them, a couple of more considerations here that don't always apply, but a lot of times in relationships, whether that's romantic or with friends, there's often two sides to something. It's like maybe they did something that irritated you and then maybe your reaction was possibly an overreaction, or even if it wasn't an overreaction, it may be still was rude, or it was hurtful too and then it escalates, escalates, escalates.
For people who've been in relationships with each other for a while, we're real good at doing that. We're real good at subtly pushing the buttons and just "du-du-du-du-du", it escalates. When someone in that situation if your partner does take the initiative to be the one to apologize first, this can also be your chance to really think about, "Okay, yes. Let's bring this down now, let's de-escalate this. Let's talk about it." Maybe there's some apologizing that you could do as well.
Dedeker: Remember that the Gottmans have done research on this that even if you could only bring yourself to apologize for a small part of the situation, that's still better than nothing at all. Something that I do with the couples that I work with quite a lot is, as they reflect on the stuff they've heard from their partner and reflect on their partner's experience is just trying to find what's even a little part that makes the most sense to me, whether I feel like I can empathize with the most that I can be like, "Okay. Yes, I can understand how, when you heard me say that it would come across that way. I'm sorry that that's how I made it feel or I'm sorry that I can take responsibility for the fact that I said that in a way or said that in a tone that wasn't very friendly. It wasn't very kind."
I do think that this hack makes apologizing in general easier. It definitely has for me to make it a little bit more specific because again if you grew up in a culture or micro-culture where apologizing equals "I lost the game," or "I lost the argument" that it's sometimes a little bit easier to just make it a little bit more granular, a little bit more bite-sized to open that window to being able to apologize.
Jase: That's a great segue way into the second half of our episode, which is about how do we give these apologies? What makes a good apology? Before we get to that, we want to take a quick moment to talk about how you can support this show, keep this going, and allow us to keep finding research and offering that to people as a free podcast.
Dedeker: There are a number of resources out there about what techniques to use when it is time to be the one apologizing. We've compiled, shall we say, a little bit of a roundup of a couple of different systems that people have made for talking about how to craft apologies well. Let's also hear what Dr. Schumann had to say about what are the ingredients that make a good apology,
Dr. Schumann: If you don't feel that you know what you've done and that you are willing to accept responsibility for that, then it seems much less likely that you're going to not do that behavior again in the future. You have to be accountable for it so that you can change the behavior and prevent yourself from engaging in it again. That's really what people want. They want to know that they're not going to be hurt again by you in the future.
It's a mix. It's an emotional mix of acknowledging what you've been done, expressing remorse and regret for it. Then giving signals that you're going to change it, that you're not going to commit that offense again. That can be saying it explicitly about how you're going to change the behavior or make sure that you don't do it again or it could be more implicit in just showing how genuinely heartfelt, emotional you are about the offense and how it's really affecting you so that you know what has happened, and you're not going to do it again.
Really what it comes down to is sincerity, the person has to feel that it's real and that you care is really what it comes down to.
Jase: Gosh, this must have been maybe a year and a half ago. Maybe two years ago, longer ago, I don't know. Dedeker and I did an episode about God Dr. Gary Chapman's Five Apology Languages. He's the guy who wrote The Five Love Languages and was looking for the next book to write and did one on apology.
Dedeker: He's a one-trick pony. He's done great work.
Jase: Five fill in the blank languages.
Dedeker: It's kind of a five languages pony as it were.
Jase: Five language pony. That's good. I like that. It's like a one-trick pony but a five language pony. A lot of the ingredients that Dr. Schumann talked about are covered in God Dr. Gary Chapman's Five Apology Languages. I think that in the couple of years since we did that episode, I've come around more and more to actually don't think his whole languages thing applies as well to this. I think it's useful if it helps people remember it, or it gets people thinking about it. That's great. I think I would describe the more as five ingredients that should be mixed to taste in a dish of apology.
Dedeker: Mm, tasty.
Jase: I think that it is something where it's more about you should try to incorporate all of these things into it to have a really good apology and to spend the time working on yourself and thinking about it to where you can actually do these things and mean these things and not just be following a script. I think it's a little bit different from the Five Love Languages in that way. With that said, let's quickly go through what the five are and then we'll go onto another framework.
The first one is expressing regret. This is saying "I'm truly sorry," or "I wish I'd acted differently," or "I shouldn't have done XYZ" of expressing that it's not like, "Oh, I did this thing and I'm sorry, you were hurt by it." It's like, "No, I'm sorry that I did the thing."
Dedeker: The next one is to accept responsibility. Things like "I was wrong," or "I know that my actions were responsible for this happening" or straight up saying, "Yes, I made a mistake."
Jase: The third one is making restitution. That is what can I do to make it up to you? I'll compensate you if it's something monetary or something that can be replaced or I'm going to do this in order to make it right again. Offering those things I think there's maybe value in asking what can I do to make this right, but also coming in with an offer of, would it help if I did this? Could I do this? I know that won't totally make it up to you, but I would like to.
Dedeker: The next language is genuinely repenting. That's saying things like "I'm going to do things differently in the future" or "I know that I need to change this behavior and I want to," or "these are the steps I'm going to take in order to change myself." This one is interesting because the repenting seems to reflect back on the things that you recognize about yourself that you want to be different.
Jase: I think that, like in what Dr. Schumann said, where it's that we want to be sure that we show signs and make it believable that we're going to change and that they don't have to worry about us doing this thing again, that in the Five Apology Languages, that's framed as repenting, which I guess has an aspect of like then you're also not going to do the thing again. It does seem like from his examples, it's more focused on how do you ensure you're not going to do this thing again? How do you make that clear to the person? Then the last one, and this one's interesting because it's not really covered in any other frameworks.
It's not really talked about in other places about apologizing that I found at least. This one seems somewhat specific to his framework and that is requesting forgiveness. That's also including "Will you forgive me?" or "I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me" or "I value our relationship. I know I've hurt you and I hope you will forgive me." It's interesting because like we talked about before with receiving apologies that can be used to put pressure on someone to feel like they have to forgive you, especially because of all the weight that we put on that word, which is why I actually just don't like that word at all. I don't think it's a very useful word.
Dedeker: I know, I wish we had a better word now.
Jase: Well, I almost wonder if it's something like we've talked about before with jealousy where it's not like we need a better word, but it's more like we're using this one word that has too broad a meaning and maybe it'd be better if we just tried to be more specific. I don't know, something to think about with that. In God Dr. Gary Chapman's research that he found that for some people, having someone ask for forgiveness was really important to them in hearing an apology. I think that's interesting to at least consider that and realize that maybe for some people that is important to have asked of them.
Dedeker: Another framework that we can take a look at was one that we found on Psychology Today. They refer to this apology framework as the three Rs, it's super catchy. The three Rs are regret for having caused the hurt or damage, responsibility, so taking ownership or acceptance of what your actions were and remedy, which is the statement of willingness to remedy the situation. I like that. Again, it takes the same granular ingredients that God Dr. Gary Chapman has that Dr. Schumann talked about and compresses them into this little catchy triple R, triple R&R at the bar situation.
Jase: At Multiamory we're always fans of anything that can be more memorable by making it alliterative or rhyming or being somehow silly. I think that the three Rs is nice. They're regret, responsibility, and remedy. I think that really pretty much everything that is in the Five Apology Languages and everything that's in what Dr. Schumann said is here in these two. They're just different ways of teasing apart and labeling those components, but they all seem to have a similar thing of truly being sorry for the thing, not just saying that you're sorry. Being responsible for it. Not just, "Oh, well, I guess I'm sorry if it hurt your feelings," but actually being sorry and realizing you did something wrong. Then that very important step of making sure it's not going to happen again of remedy or repenting. Also an R, I guess you could swap out repenting for remedy if you really want to combine the two.
Dedeker: I don't think we need to sprinkle in more religious vocabulary.
Jase: You're right. That's true. In the section on responsibility, which both systems mentioned, something specific to this, so that came up in some of the articles I found was about actually naming the thing you did. Not just, "Hey, I'm sorry. I know your feelings were hurt." Again, putting them in this passive like this just happened. It's like, "Hey, I'm sorry that I called you this name that I know is really hurtful to you," or "I'm sorry that I did this thing without thinking and I know that was really hurtful to you and I shouldn't have done that thing," but it's like naming the specific thing. Then also taking that ownership of I did the thing that hurt you, instead of just the sorry if I hurt you. It reminds me of the example that I find comes up a lot with conversations about like sexism or racism or other isms or transphobia or things like that, where it's like someone says something that was hurtful.
Someone calls them out on that and then the apology is, "Oh, well, that's just the thing I said, I'm sorry if that's offensive to you," but it's not saying "I'm sorry I said it." It's just saying "I'm sorry for you having those feelings." It's like totally removing any responsibility. It's not taking any actual ownership for what happened. Then maybe the even worse version of that is the like, "Oh, I'm sorry I didn't realize you were so sensitive about it." That's even more so putting it on them. They're actually the one with a fault and you're sorry like I feel sorry for you rather than I'm sorry because I did something wrong.
I think for some people again, because maybe it's modeled for us a lot growing up depending on how our parents are or our friends were about this, that for some people, they just go to that pattern. I've noticed that like, apologies always for them tend to follow that pattern of I can't admit fault because somehow I was taught that's losing or that's bad or that's dangerous or something.
Dedeker: I can still drop the S word because that's a magical word somehow.
Jase: I think this is something to be aware of and try to catch if you might be someone who follows this pattern and to realize that's not helpful, you're not building and supporting your relationships by doing that. Actually might be doing a lot more damage to them than you realize.
Dedeker: It's also important to not follow up an apology with a but or with a justification necessarily. Now, I think people do need to be careful here because especially if this is in the context of your personal relationships, I do think it is important for both parties to have an opportunity to talk through what happened. If you're curious about that, go look for our episode about repair shop. Part of that process is we both get to talk about our version of events, recognizing that neither of us have 100% the truth of the objective reality of what happened. I do think it is important to hear explanations from both people of like, well, this was my perception of what happened and the other person, well, this is my perception of what happened just to help deepen mutual understanding.
I do think that's an important part of the process, but when it comes to actually apologizing, I think it is important to not shoot yourself in the foot as it were to say, "Yes, I'm really sorry that I did that. I understand how it could have come across this way, but you're being a total jerk but I still feel this way." Also just be careful with the difference between explaining yourself and justifying yourself, that can get really tricky. If you're questioning where you're falling on that spectrum, it's better to err on the side of just doing less of that in general.
Dr. Schumann: Want to feel like good people, moral people who don't hurt others. When we do something wrong it's easy to justify it. We also have access to all the reasons why we did it, why we're late, why we said that hurtful thing, what's going on internally in our lives, and the situational constraints on our behaviors. It's really easy to make excuses for ourselves and to want to make excuses for our behavior.
Whereas the person who's been hurt they don't really want that. They do want some explanation as long as it's not pushing away responsibility but they really just want to know that you're sorry for what you did and that it's real. They might see it as more severe than the person who's done the wrongful acts. That's because of the various motivations that we bring to the situation.
It's really difficult to get onto the same page sometimes and that's why things like empathy are so important because through empathy, through perspective-taking by listening to the person who's been hurt and trying to get a sense of why it was hurtful for them. That's where we can start to drop some of our desire to see things through our self-protective lens and really try to get onto the same page as they are to see it through their perspective of why it was hurtful and why we do need to make amends for it.
Jase: Along with that, there can be this problem where because I know all my justifications for why I did something or what was going on in my head or what it reminded me of or any number of things that I might think that what I did was fairly small but to the other person, based on whatever's going on in their life or how that felt to them, how that relates to other things they've experienced, what else was going on in their life at the time, they're similar just as valid but different from your experience of the world.
To them that might be a much more serious thing that happened. Actually, in the research, there is a term for that which is the magnitude gap, which is a term for when the person doing the apologizing feels like the harm was smaller than the person receiving it does, which can lead to an apology feeling unsatisfactory.
Dr. Schumann: Part of the reason why there is this magnitude gap is that there are very few situations where it's so clean-cut that one person is just the transgressor and the other person is just the victim. The transgressors often also feel a little victimized. They feel like the situation was provoked or that it was a reaction to something else or that there was some other basically instigating event that makes their actions more justifiable. Perhaps they were even victimized a little bit by the other person.
There's a lot of gray area in conflict and a lot of misinterpretation and a lot of just differences in perspective. I think it's just really important for people to remember that to the extent that we can really engage with each other and try to listen, try to understand, try to communicate your conflict. Do things like apologies and so on and that's really where we're going to make progress and be able to resolve them effectively.
Dedeker: I don't know why this is coming up now but Jase, I just remembered you telling me that in the process of interviewing Dr. Schumann you had to apologize to her because of some scheduling mishaps. How did that go down?
Jase: It was so weird. I had scheduled this call with her and she had a real short window of time. When her kids were going to be watching a show or something, she's like this is my time. I ended up on a work call that went long. When I got off of that, realized "Oh my gosh, I'm late for this thing" and I wrote her an email and found myself suddenly going "Oh God, I'm apologizing to an expert on apologies. She's going to see through everything I say." I don't know what to do. I just panicked and I did apologize and I tried not to go overboard in apologizing.
I tried not to do too elaborate of an apology but it was just weird. I suddenly got super in my head about how do you apologize to someone who researches this? However, I did later try to comfort myself. I still feel bad about it but I did try to comfort myself a little bit in realizing that she works at the conflict resolution lab. Maybe she was also working to resolve that conflict too. Maybe I shouldn't have thought it so much as like critiquing apology but more that she's an expert in resolving conflict.
Dedeker: She's uniquely suited to resolve that situation.
Jase: Right.
Dedeker: Just a last couple of things to bear in mind here is again if you're the person who's needing to give an apology, understand that it may not be accepted. It may not be accepted right away or it may not be accepted ever. Unfortunately, you can't really control where the other person is in their process or in their journey.
Something that's important to bear in mind is that if your motivation for apologizing is actual self-improvement is actual acknowledging what I've done wrong and I want to make restitution for that. Then also find ways to make it so that I don't make that same mistake again. It's going to be much easier to deal with someone rejecting your apology more so than if your only motivation for apology was getting their approval or getting their blessing in some way.
This makes me think of what we were just talking about in our criticism episode specifically with diversity training and racial awareness training that if particularly white participants have a person of color who's facilitating the training that they tend to get really caught up in getting approval from the facilitator who's acting like the symbol of people of color rather than putting in their energy towards actual self-motivation.
I think that when it comes to apologizing in relationships like Dr. Schumann said there's all these gray areas. It can get really messy. It can be very easy to have this weird mix of I both want to improve but I also want to repair the relationship. I also want approval from my partner. It can be all of these different things at once but I think it is important to check-in and just see like what's actually there underneath this. What's dominating this and that's probably going to influence how it does go for you when you apologize.
Jase: I think this especially applies for bigger transgressions. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this, something more serious like an affair or a big lie or something that was very hurtful that this is something that it's understandable that this might take that person some time and maybe they will never forgive you for this. If you're going in like really understanding that and grasping the gravity of the situation I guess, I think that can help to still say what you want to say and then not turn it into being shitty all over again and then getting mad at them for not accepting your apology or other sorts of bad behavior.
If you really have checked in to be clear on what your motivations are. What this made me think of was specifically alcoholics anonymous and 12 step programs that one of the steps, I believe it's the ninth one, is apologizing to people that you have hurt in the past. In looking into that, I know that that's something where they do talk a lot about, do that but only if you can do that, for example, in a way that isn't going to cause more harm to that person by trying to apologize which I think is something that's not so easy to just pin down exactly what counts as that or not.
It's important that they talk about that and that's worth thinking about. I think part of that too is just realizing that you might not get to and if your motivation for apologizing is just so you can feel better or just to get them to forgive you, you might have a harder time than if you're not receiving that thing.
Last thing that we want to cover here before we do a quick review is to just keep in mind that this magnitude gap can also go the other way where the one apologizing just keeps going on and on and on about "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. This is so terrible. This is really hard" and that the person being apologized to is like "Okay, I get it." Maybe they're still like, "Yes, I'm hurt about it" but when you just keep going on about the apology over and over and over again, you can sometimes end up in a situation where now it's almost like you're putting more burden on the person you're apologizing to, to try to assuage your guilt or to try to convince you to stop feeling bad. Maybe this sounds dark or heavy but I think there is some value in realizing especially if you've done something really shitty that that's not their job to get rid of that guilt for you or to convince you not to feel bad anymore that maybe you just are going to feel bad for a while. Maybe that's going to be several years but that it's important to remember it's not their job to be the one to convince you when it's okay to not feel bad anymore.
Dedeker: Let's do some final takeaways. If you're the one receiving an apology, it's important to connect to empathy, to thank them for apologizing, to evaluate their sincerity as well as your own boundaries. Don't feel like you're obligated to forgive or to forgive right away. If you are also involved in this fight or contributed in some way, this is your chance to apologize as well.
Jase: If you're on the side of giving apologies is to be clear about what you did wrong, don't make excuses. A little bit of explanation can be okay, but be careful not to go too far. Be genuine and apologize because you mean it and not just because you want to get something from them or you want approval from them. Offer to make it up to them and or I guess maybe both, and show them how you're going to commit to changing that behavior instead of just saying I'm sorry and trusting that it will change and then to understand that they don't have to accept your apology, at least not right now. Maybe they need some time, maybe that time is an hour or maybe it's 10 years, whatever that is. Just realize that they don't have to accept your apology and you shouldn't force them to do that.
All right, I hope this was helpful. I know that right now, I think that apologies could go a long way, really in all of our lives, but being able to do that, being able to own up to our parts in conflicts and arguments and things like that can be really powerful.