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Anyone have troubles with doing apologies

Kit

Well-Known Member
Every parent is going to screw their kid up in some ways. Well I think mine screwed me up with apologies so to this day I still have issues with if mine are genuine or not.

I remember as a child, I was always being told adults "say your sorry" and lot of the times I didn't even understand why I was apologizing. It was just a word to me. It had no meaning. This was a word people always tell you to say. Then eventually I figured out this is something you say to get out of trouble because I saw it at my school so I started doing it every time I was in trouble only to learn there is a time limit to saying your sorry because my mom would say "it's too late."

Then when I was 9, I figured out, you say it whenever you do a boo boo so I was always apologizing for every mistake I would make, every accident prone I did. Then in 4th grade I figured out this is something you say whenever people get mad at you or upset so I was always saying it. Then I started hearing in high school "No you're not" so I learned to say it less.

Then I learned about fake apologies and I thought "how do you fake apologize, you just say it, there is no faking it."

So yeah I have no idea if my own apologies are fake or genuine so I almost never say them anymore and I have difficulties saying them now. I think the adults just failed on teaching me apologies as a kid and I learned them all wrong and now I have no idea if I am sorry or not so I never issue them anymore.


Also I learned as a kid if someone apologizes to you, get over it and move on, they said their sorry. So I always said my sorry whenever someone was mad at me so they would feel better and move on. Even my dad told me "sometimes we all offend someone so we explain our intentions and say our sorry and if they do not accept it, that is their own problem and you just move on." My mom however disagreed with that and said "sometimes apologies are not good enough" so I asked her as an adult "what is even the point in apologizing then if people are not going to accept your apology, what a joke and lies I have learned about apologies growing up." I think the case might have been they just didn't teach them right to me because they assumed I processed empathy and feelings the same way as a NT kid so maybe they taught me apologies in a NT way and I took it all literal because I didn't process empathy and didn't know how others really felt when they were mad or upset. My mom will tell me I just didn't care when I was a kid. I have even thought I had some form of psychopathy even though I don't torture or take advantage of others or go out of my way to intentionally hurt people.

So here I am effed up and have difficulty with saying my sorrys now.

One thing I know as a parent, never force your kid to apologize, this is why so many people in the world are so bad at apologizing. How many of us have actually learned as children "sorry is a word you say to people when they are offended, mad at you, etc." At least talk to your child about their behavior and how it made others feel about it and if they are feeling bad about it, then you can suggest to them they can go and apologize to that person so they feel better. I have never forced mine to say their sorrys and demanded them to say it because I don't want to make the same mistake the adults made with me growing up.

My mom is also a pro at fake apologies because she will say things like "sorry you feel that way" "Sorry you don't remember" "Sorry you were upset" so no wonder I apologized that way too. I was trying to be empathetic and caring and sensitive.
 
My parents weren't really sensitive people at all when I was a child and wouldn't apologize to me for mistakes they made, and still don't, unless it's the same "I'm sorry you got upset", "I'm sorry you got offended" type stuff.

My parents would also get screaming levels of angry over little things and insult me, and I noticed that if I apologized a lot that they wouldn't do that, so whenever I did something I thought was wrong I apologized profusely. That made adults at school concerned, so I got screamed at over that and told I was guilt tripping people by my parents, so I stopped doing that in school.

I didn't learn how to properly apologize until a few years ago and I'm still bad at it since I don't know how to put my feelings into words, and I still apologize a lot since I think people will stay angry at me if I don't.
 
If you apologize just to end the conflict, you are smoothing things over, peacemaking but not really resolving the conflict.

I think a real apology involves something you actually regret doing and states or implies the intention of not repeating it.
 
My problem is getting others to accept them. They don't believe it was unintentional (nobody could be that dense) or that the apology is sincere.

Yes. Sometimes I do completely misinterpret what is going on around me. And what seemed perfectly appropriate to me seems inappropriate to you. A lot of NTs simply cannot believe that ND is real. Or they do but not that you're an ND person.

An honest apology is based on empathy for the person who was hurt. You really feel bad that the other person feels bad. It takes either social skill or high status to make a fake apology stick in an NT crowd. NDs get taken in by fake apologies all the time.
 
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I have had experiences kind of like @Au Naturel . It makes things weird. If it's close family I have no trouble at all. But I have had times when I was sharp with someone and went to say I was sorry and they looked at me all puzzled. It was inappropriate because it changed the dynamics.

I can't figure it out, so I would love feedback. Is it that people want to take side? Want to hate? The way it happened was so weird. I maybe got sharp but then to say sorry was like then they were obligated to forgive me which means they had to respect me and they did not want to.

I don't know why it happened that way. Has anyone had this happen?

If someone were to apologize to me (it rarely happens) but if it did, I think I can understand. A person is "bad" or "good" in our heads and so if they say sorry we have to think, "They did not mean it!" or "U-h oh, now I have to be nice and fake smile when I dn't want to..........."

I guess I am confused as to why apologies go over so badly in real life!! In real life they rarely happen and never go over like on tv.
 
Guess it depends on you and said person. Like how much an apology rates with them. My ex never gave any about anything. But l find lately l may be held accountable for them. I feel if l give you my heart, then isn't much more for me to give.
 
My faith has helped me so much in this regard. Taught me to look within myself and recognise what I ought to apologise for.

Like, oh so many, I had bad experiences as a child. One parent would demand I apologise and would not bother listening when I tried to explain or in fact, he should have been the one to apologise to me, but instead, he used mental abuse on me. He would pretend he could not hear me and ask me to say sorry louder, to the point, that he would bellow his voice and say: can't hear you! Are you trying to get away with not apologising and walk away, whilst yelling at me and then, finally, he would say: get out of my sight, before I smash your face! I was around 8 or 9.

He often misheard me, and one time, he insisted I had sworn. She was sitting next to me and even whispered that she knew I had not sworn, but to apologise anyway and he never accepted an apology, so it was an excuse to mentally abuse me.

As an adult, it was like I had a stopper in my mouth, I could not utter those words, but as I said before, my faith has helped to balance things out and I am very quick to apologise, when I know I have done wrong in word.

My husband, however, rarely apologises. He insists his actions are an apology and sometimes, he is accurate, like recently. A situation occured and instead of calmly asking me, he yelled at me, as though I had committed murder! All it was, was me putting a very tatty old wooden table outside amonst trees and swapping for a plastic table, that I could use my round table cloths on. But he went berserk and brought the table back in and shouted: you broke it, so fix it!

It took a huge amount of praying to my Heavenly Father, to carry on with cooking and in truth, I hated my husband so much.

The next day, he just says casually: don't worry about fixing that table. I will do it and after a bit of tidy up in his area, he was able to place the table.

He could have said he was wrong to shout and that would have calmed me down, as he knows well he was wrong.

I can now say: why are you screaming at me? And stand my ground a little bit, but my heart is hurting so much

So, really, the conclusion is, that an apology that is sincere, coupled with action, will prove the apology was sincere.
 
I never say I'm sorry, because I never say something I don't mean.

Only apologies given are formalities. Like if I bump into someone, etc.
 
I agree with your point about not forcing children to say things. If my parents tried to do that as a small child, I would just clamp up and not speak. Also, telling a child to do something without giving a reason is just not good enough, and I wouldn't accept such a thing.

I don't do fake apologies, either, but often in life mistakes and misunderstandings will inevitably occur, and if I believe that I am the cause of someone's problem, then I will be genuinely sorry and apologise. However, I won't apologise for my opinion or my taste. If people don't like it or don't agree with me, then that's their problem.

While I recognise that my actions might trigger a person't emotion - I might make them angry, for example - the emotion is theirs and they are the one that is going to have to deal with it. Apologising is good as a recognition of a mistake having been made on their part, but it ultimately won't solve anything - it can't magically undo the wrongdoing and the emotion it caused. If a person makes a mistake, I don't need an apology from that person because it doesn't help - what does help is for them to learn from their mistake and try to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

It bugs me when people start their sentence with "I'm sorry, but..." because you know that as soon as they say this, they aren't sorry. It's fake.
 
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Discussion about apologies have come up recently with me and one of my sons. It's frustrating because he says I never apologize and I do. Actually when he said that, I told him to go back so far and he'd see my most recent apology written to him. He was saying that he had a hard time apologizing because it was something he did not learn from his parents. When I've apologized I do usually offer an explanation along with it because I want the other person to know I would not have deliberately hurt them, but if I have done something wrong I do apologize. I've even owned up to mistakes I've made that the other person wasn't even aware of and probably would never have known if I hadn't told them. Maybe he just feels like I should have apologized for things I did not feel I was wrong about? Like I would always tell my kids if they do such and such, I would give them detailed information about the punishment they would receive. If you defy me on this I will change the internet password - one example. Did I owe an apology for following through? I don't think so. I've apologized to all my kids for not having taught them how to have a relationship (something I never figured out for myself). I've apologized for things I was not able to do for them. So I don't understand how he can blame me for him not being able to apologize. Maybe it's because I didn't make them say "I'm sorry" - but if he made one of his sisters cry I would tell him he had to fix it, and an apology usually was part of his fixing it. I don't believe in "I'm sorry" just for the words, there has to be something more.
 

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