How to Apologize
Why do some apologies feel so hollow? Sometimes looking at the extreme end of issues helps make sense of why there is confusion in the middle. There is a moving scene in the 2018 Australian TV series, Mr Inbetween, where a man whose daughter was murdered many years ago confronts the man who murdered her. He simply says "do you know the pain that you've caused?" and begins to walk away. The murderer struggles as he watches him walk away, and then blurts out, "I'm sorry".
It rings hollow exactly because, as sincere as it may be in the moment, there is no way for him to really experience the question - the pain is so enormous and personal that, even if he tried, there would be no way for him to really carry it. The apology is empty because it is empty of any real experience or understanding.
Of course, when we have caused major or extended harm to another person, it's almost impossible to get to the point where we can fully understand their experience. Even if we have been through something similar ourselves, each of our individual experiences are different so we can only ever understand, through our own experience, a part of what it might feel like for the other person.
However, the good news is that we don't need to have lived the exact same experience, or get to the point where we completely understand the other person's experience, to repair the relationship. Ultimately what we most want when we are seriously injured by another person who we care about is not punishment or complete understanding (though we may feel like we want those things at times), but rather their effort to express enough sincere understanding to assure us that they are not likely to repeat the same harm in the future, and, importantly, the ability to accept make space for the way that the serious harm will have an ongoing (maybe permanent) impact on our life and relationship with the person who hurt us.
Too often, when we have been the one to seriously harm another people, we get to a point where we think "I've already apologized, why do they keep bringing it back up, and why are they not over it already?" What we are doing in that moment is failing to recognize that we have have hurt the person we care about to the extent that they will have to carry the effects of the injury in the long-term, and despite being responsible for that harm, it's hard to be willing to also carry that. It's like if we cut off someone's arm then that would have a permanent impact on their life - many things will not look the same after that moment. Apologizing does not do anything to change that permanent effect. To really "apologize" in these instances is therefore not so much about saying sorry or conveying remorse for our behavior as it is about acknowledging the extent of the injury that we caused to the point that we understand we will also have to carry our share of the impact of our behavior alongside the person we hurt in our journey together.
This is not about guilt or self-recrimination (expressing guilt or saying sorry over and over focuses more on our feelings rather than the experience of the person we hurt). Instead, the repair is about acceptance, ownership, and making space. Resisting the effects of the harm we caused may feel like self-protection or "helping" the other person get past it, but instead it actually gets in the way of repair as we set up an impossible task to delude ourselves it believing that it really wasn't as bad as all that, and an impossible task for the person we love to pretend like it the injury is no longer there. Acceptance and integration instead allow both people to adjust to the impact and find closeness, vulnerability and intimacy once again. Paradoxically, admitting to the reality of the injury we caused is the path to freedom from the prison of denial and self-recrimination.
