My dad had this cringey phrase. You’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”
Cue making things worse. It’s the ultimate cop out, designed to make the one saying it feel better, and nothing else. A way to abdicate responsibility to the one who probably deserves it the least.
Apologizing is about one thing: trust. When you break the trust barrier, you open the gates to a boatload of unintentional ramifications. Why?
Trust isn’t about not making mistakes. But it most certainly is defined by how you behave after making one. My father making these statements didn’t break my innate trust in my father as a kind, loving man who cared for his family. But it did break my trust in his ability to be the person I needed, when I needed someone the most. And this dichotomy between my needs, and his ability to meet them, will never be fully understood in a relationship where both sides are playing a dance to save face. One of those sides is a son who desperately relies on trust - in his family, his friends, his evolving worldview - to find his place in life. The other is a dad who desperately seeks, perhaps demands, trust to be the kind of father he wants to be, but is slowly sabotaging in his approach.
I have inherited a lot from my dad, good and bad. And that’s not to say he was a bad father: he was, and is, a great one. But he, like myself, is flawed like any of us. However, this risk averse, face-saving strategy of never apologizing properly - the kind where oftentimes you just stop at “I’m sorry” - is a statement best left unsaid.
I won’t go into the details of why I think my dad adhered to the strategy of never fully apologizing, although I’ll admit some of it is generational. Really, it probably revealed something he was ultimately trying to disguise: vulnerability. In not taking credit for the lapse that led to the apology, he was protecting a much deeper fear - one potentially situational, but also personal - which I learned in later years. Growing old has a way of tempering things. It naturally creates union - both intra and interpersonally - in place of friction.
No, we shouldn’t just give apologies out like candy on Halloween: we should be deliberate to give them meaning. Yes, sometimes an apology is simply useful to dissolve tension - and that has its place - but to habitually apologize is to create a “Boy Cries Wolf” scenario where all meaning is lost. It becomes no more truthful than the non-apology apology.
A real sorry: the kind that takes guts to make, the kind that creates oxygen where it was lacking, is brave. It’s reparative. While sometimes it offers important context, it need not be explanatory. It should just be you. And while it may come easily or not, arrive quickly or later, the recipient will receive its meaning most effectively by its authenticity, as well as brevity. That’s often perfectly enough.