Making Up Is Hard to Do — Especially When You’re Wrong

How to keep your pride and protect your relationship

In my early years as a clinical child psychologist, I was especially interested in the ways kids resolved the conflicts that arose when they hurt each other.

A social disaster

Two four-year-olds play at opposite ends of a sandbox. Their mothers look on. One kid is highly invested in making a tower of sand.

The other kid just moves some sand back and forth, not making much of anything. He marches over to the other kid’s tower and kicks it in. The victim looks totally surprised and bursts into loud wailing.

While the mother of the crying child runs to comfort him, the other mother goes into action.

She gets up in her kid’s face. “LOOK WHAT YOU DID?” she cries. Motivated by anxiety that she has a little sociopath in the making, she commands, “SAY YOU’RE SORRY!”

He looks at her like she’s speaking Mandarin. “Say you’re sorry!” she repeats several times. Finally, the kid figures out what will get her off his case. “Sorry,” he mutters to the air.” The 1st percentile of sincerity.

Then the other mother, who wants her kid to pull himself together and not be a wimp, instructs him, “TELL THE BOY THAT IT’S OK!” Now, it is she who is speaking Mandarin. He looks at her like, “How is a half-assed “sorry” supposed to make me feel better?

The interaction ends to the satisfaction of no one.

As we grow up, we may not play in the sandbox anymore

But the ways we hurt each other and then respond with remorse, contrition, denial, or additional cruelty often resemble those four-year-olds.

Young kids are basically running on empty when it comes to empathy. Unless they travel down the road of character pathology, they tend to grow up into empathy and apologies.

But it’s not easy.

Even the most caring and sensitive among us struggle with admitting our culpability, addressing it maturely, and learning from our lapses.

Confronting our wrongdoing and sincerely expressing our contrition are two of the hardest things that go on between people, even those who care very much about each other.

Different kinds of hurts

Sometimes, the hurt we inflict on others is due to a “mistake” (“My bad,” “Whoops,” “No harm, no foul”), but what feels like an error or a harmless joke from the giver may not be received the same way.

It may be no big deal to me that I made a joke about your weight. But to you, it is a dagger that lands in a sensitive place that will not be instantly healed. I might try to tease you out of it, “Hey, I was only kidding. Don’t be so sensitive!”

Then there are the whoppers.

You were deliberately hurtful, and I was heartbroken. You lied, betrayed, broke a promise. And the reaction is powerful. You may feel like the devastated person is overreacting, that you did nothing that she is accusing you of. You are at an impasse. Your relationship is back in the sandbox.

Why is it so hard to apologize?

To say “I'm sorry” means we admit our fault. We say we are wrong. We have to feel the harm we have caused.

Some of us can’t tolerate the shame or guilt of admitting a transgression. We may feel like we’ve lost our power in the relationship.

To say “I’m sorry” means more than saying the words. It implies that we will change — that our words will need to be followed by action.

Learning “I feel” and “I’m sorry” is a result of good parenting

If you were not raised in situations where a parent or teacher never apologized to you, you would lack the models of admitting you are wrong.

You are robbed of an empathic understanding of the people you have hurt. You don’t know that the world doesn’t end just because you screw up. There are second chances.

I remember the first time my mother apologized to me. She was overwhelmed with a bunch of my siblings and snapped, “Did it occur to you that you could help me? Sometimes you can be so selfish.”

I was stunned and hurt. Five minutes later, I felt a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry. I had no business yelling at you like that. I was overwhelmed with the little kids. You are one of the least selfish people I know.”

There was something so freeing in that validation. I can feel it even now. Was my mother’s pronouncement true? I was just a kid.

But I learned that parents can always be wrong. They can say so. It makes a difference. I was right, and my mother was wrong. I felt stronger at her admission.

Teaching parents

So much of my work as a clinical psychologist was to help parents understand that their apologies to their children could come from a position of strength.

If kids don’t receive apologies, especially in cruel and abusive situations, in which they always have to apologize, their development is blocked. They are left with a shakier self and are going to have a tougher time in adulthood. They will have trouble knowing how they feel and find it impossible to know how others feel.

What to do, what to watch for

Restoring the balance of a relationship isn’t just the sprinkling of a couple of magic words that make things all better. “I’m sorry” is just the start.

The role of empathy is critical. Sometimes, we need to pick up on the cues that another person is unhappy with us before they say it. They don’t come right out and tell us.

Open-ended statements like, “You seem pissed off at me…” or “I can tell you’re sad, but I don’t know why…” can begin a conversation. If the person is really upset, prepare for a tsunami of feelings.

They may seem overwhelming, especially if “reading” people is not your strong suit. Maybe you can’t understand their pain. But maybe you can recall a time when someone made you feel a similar way, even if the situation was vastly different.

Your first response might be defensive, which gets you nowhere. Denial can be sincere or a lie, but the message is, “You don't know what you’re talking about, so this issue is not worth pursuing. You have no value.”

Or you may project the problem on the wounded one.

My sister despised the strict Catholic school we attended. By junior year, she had skipped 60 days of school. In her absentee notes, everyone in my family had been horribly sick and/or died. My mother was in a sanatorium, my father was in jail, our house burned down, and three more babies were added to the family.

Getting caught was just a matter of time, and when she was summoned to my mother’s room, we clustered around the closed door, eager to hear her apologize, cry, and grovel.

It was my mother who was crying. She asked my sister to explain herself. The moment of truth. Priscilla raised her voice and yelled, “I told you I didn’t like school. You and Dad should have saved your money!

It was too quiet to hear the rest, but Priscilla’s punishment was a session with the school psychologist. While it works in some situations, projection takes a certain amount of guts, which many of us lack. Being blamed when you’ve been wounded is not a way to foster trust.

The long haul

Apologizing is a process, not a moment. Our capacity for hurt is deep and long. My husband was unfaithful to me five years ago. I’ve come to a place of sincere forgiveness. However, there are still quick moments when I consider strangling him in his sleep. It often takes going around and around the hurt to find a resolution that can actually be sustained.

The most important aspect of an apology is the commitment to change. When we apologize, we say we won't repeat ourselves. Of course, we will because we are woefully slow to learn.

We inflict a great deal of hurt on each other. But the frequency of guilt, responsibility, and work to smooth our relationships often falls short.

Making a genuine apology can be complicated. It's still hard, even when you sincerely wish to sort things out. That’s because it also requires SKILL.

This framework may help you to begin the process:

1 — Perception

People give off many cues of their distress. Without saying, “You hurt me,” or “I’m mad at you,” you can read the stormy weather on their faces. The tension in their bodies and the failure to make eye contact are clues that something is wrong before anything is even said.

You may have to ask. You may get slammed. That’s OK, you’ve opened the door.

2 — Listen Before You Speak

Try to be open to the complaint. Often, the person who feels it is just as confused as you. When I saw couples in therapy, I was amazed at how two upset people would lose their focus as they spoke to each other. I used to ask myself, “What the hell are you two talking about?”

The key is focus, focus, focus. At intervals, the person who has apologized can make himself the one who sincerely wants to resolve the impasse. "What are we talking about?” She can politely ask the other person where they are in the discussion. It’s like juggling Jello. It can fall into pieces so easily. The pieces are often from other points in the past that make you lose perspective and take you on a wild ride that ends up in the opposite direction you intended.

Try to avoid “kitchen sinking it.” Once you two get going, it is easy to throw out everything but the kitchen sink. Keep the energy focused on the original complaint that began the interaction. “Wait, we were talking about x. Maybe we should get back. What we’re talking about now is important, but we may lose the thread of our original conversation.”

There are many possible responses— “I’m sorry I did____,” “I feel so bad that I did____.” “What was it that I did that made you most upset?” “What do you wish I would do to make it better?” “I’ll try not to do it again.”

Name the behavior that the other person has complained about. But include only what you are contrite about. “I’m sorry that I didn’t do the front lawn when I said I would.” Not “I’m sorry I didn’t mow the backyard, use the Weed Wacker, and fertilize the flower beds.” Be specific, and don’t take on the burden of promises you never made.

Avoid a sure apology killer — the word, “BUT…..” “I’m sorry, I didn’t eat the meatloaf, BUT you know I don’t like it well done.” You have just obliterated the apology and, in the process, added material for future conflict.

3 — Time

Few hurts can be articulated in only a sentence. Hurt and anger are messy. There is nothing wrong with taking a quick “time-out.” You might clarify the issue with a pencil and paper. You might write a letter. With some distance from strong emotion, you may feel more competent, even though it’s so confusing and difficult.

Conclusions

In 1970, Erich Segal wrote a whoppingly successful book and movie titled Love Story. It had an iconic line that still makes people swoon today. It is the story of two Ivy Leaguers who are so in love that they marry in their senior year of college.

On the occasion of their first big-time fight, he finally realizes he owes her an apology and finds her shivering and sobbing outside their apartment. He tearfully takes her in his arms and cries out, “I'm sorry.” She waves him off, and through her tears, she declares,

“Love means NEVER having to say you’re sorry!”

I confess I had not seen too much action in the romance department yet. But that line, that incredibly popular line, struck me as complete and total nonsense. As a psychologist, I know that:

“Love always means ALWAYS having to say you’re sorry.”

Being sorry for causing pain is the other side of giving pleasure. Seeing the darkness in ourselves is the other side of sharing the light with the people we care about. Restoring that balance is integral to a sturdy, satisfying relationship.

Nothing should hold us back from repairing the rips and tears in the fabric of our relationships. Our connections will be stronger for it, and we will grow in the knowledge and appreciation of our strength, honesty, vulnerability, and trustworthiness.

Thank you for reading my story.