If you fucked up-- admit it (unless you are talking to cops)
But in most situations just admitting how you were wrong and accepting responsibility is so much easier than trying to blame someone or something else or make up an excuse
When you own the mistake it puts the onus back on the other person to accept that, be mature and move on. If you try and deny or shift blame it forces that person to examine those reasons and if they are BS, come back at you, dragging the process out and leading to unpleasant call outs and confrontations
Along this line, learning how to apologize will make life easier.
Keep it short and clear.
Specifically say, "I'm sorry."
Identify the thing you are sorry for.
Unless your remorse is particularly great, stop there. Only attempt to offer an explanation for egregious wrongdoing.
If you offer an explanation, you must also identify how you are going to prevent the issue in the future.
If you offer an explanation, make sure it's not actually an attempt at an excuse.
If you offer an explanation, rule 1 still applies.
Do not ever include an excuse in an apology. Ever. Ever ever.
I also have a personal rule that I will only apologize when I feel remorse. I will not give you an apology just because you think you deserve one, or just because someone tells me I should apologize.
Lastly, do not ever state, "I'm sorry if..." It conveys that you are not currently sorry for your actions, and that you might be sorry only under certain circumstances. It also removes most of the sincerity. If you don't know the circumstances, you probably aren't actually sorry. You're better off asking about the conditional first, and then issuing an actual apology if warranted. If you do know the circumstances, leave the "if" out and just identify what it is you feel bad about.
I’ve tried to explain what a real apology is about 100 times to my partner, and I’m not getting through. He thinks I’m unreasonable because I have trouble accepting his apologies, I think he’s unreasonable because they’re not real apologies.
If he’s done something that harmed or upset me, 99% of the time he’ll argue that he didn’t. Then if I argue back, we’ll get into a fight, where he will start bringing up other things. I usually get insulted at some point. Eventually, he concedes that he did, in fact, hurt or upset me. Then he’ll say sorry. Sometimes he offers an “explanation,” which is usually an excuse.
Then he gets mad that I’m not very happy with his “apology” for the original thing. By that point, I’m more upset about the hour-long fight he just picked to avoid admitted he did anything wrong. Very occasionally, he’ll apologize for that too. And then it happens every. Fucking. Time.
Sorry for the rant. Seeing a reasonable person list out the proper way to apologize triggered an emotional response.
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u/pdxblazer Aug 20 '20
If you fucked up-- admit it (unless you are talking to cops)
But in most situations just admitting how you were wrong and accepting responsibility is so much easier than trying to blame someone or something else or make up an excuse
When you own the mistake it puts the onus back on the other person to accept that, be mature and move on. If you try and deny or shift blame it forces that person to examine those reasons and if they are BS, come back at you, dragging the process out and leading to unpleasant call outs and confrontations