Updated! – When I'm Sorry Doesn't work
Made a mistake? Messed up again? Stepped your partner’s toes?
If you’re in a relationship, you know how important communication is, and you know apologies are an essential part of good relationship communication.
Every person makes mistakes, and it seems the closer people get, the easier collisions occur. As such, In every relationship, there are bound to be occasions for apologies.
For some the mere mention of a apology conjures up thoughts of begging and pleading, while others seem to believe that just uttering the words “I’m sorry” – or its contemporary evil twin version, “Oops! My bad!” – will magically right any wrong ever committed.
The truth is that the right approach is an apology that is neither too long nor too short.
Couples who learn quickly how to exchange apologies are able to spend more time working together to create solutions and strategies and discover how to do better next time.
You don’t want to make things worse by pouring on a long drawn out apology or begging endlessly for forgiveness. This generally seems to only make things worse! Don’t get lost in the million words, and your partner wants fewer words and more action.
If your partner is not ready to work on solutions and strategies right then, that’s O.K. too. Simply agree on another time to begin to work things through. Remember, sometimes the right action in an apology is to give your partner some space to process what happened.
Ultimately, the goal is that you as a couple learn to exchange apologies quickly, so that you can spend more time working together to talk it out, correct the mistake, and work out a strategy to do it better next time.