How to Accept an Apology
Photo by Haley Lawrence on Unsplash
I finally decided to take the leap.
Sell off all my things, end my lease, and become a digital nomad.
I applied for a Visa, found an apartment in Bali, and starting making plans to spend the next 9 months abroad.
One small problem: my beloved dog. Bali does not allow foreign dogs in.
Thankfully, I have wonderful friends who agreed to watch her while I got settled in my new country.
They were coming to bring her back to New Jersey and I needed to get her licensing paperwork squared away before handing her off.
In a rush, I ran downstairs to my Mom’s office asking if she could print out a form I needed. She was housing my dog and I in between my lease ending and my flight.
I urgently instructed her to Google the name of the form I needed but she started on the city homepage and clicked through until she found the department and the consequencing form.
This infuriated me. Simply Googling the name of the form would have taken us to the page in an instant. She insisted on finding it the old-fashioned way, the way she knew how.
After we exchanged a few heated, angry words the form got printed and I ran out the door to the clerk’s office before they took their lunch break.
Reflecting on my drive back and our argument yes, I had selfishly interrupted her and expected her to drop everything for my own need. A need that I had put off until the very last minute requiring her to get swept up in my urgency and poor planning. She, however, didn’t have to be quite so nasty but I also understood. I knew our fight wasn’t the end of the world but it was still disappointing, my Mom and I have done a lot of work on our relationship over the past two years.
I got a text from her as I was getting close to home that said “I’m sorry for being such a jerk earlier. I love you.”
I was taken aback. I felt I had been in the wrong, barging into her office like that. I was shouldering most of the responsibility in my head.
I replied back “I’m sorry for interrupting you and asking you to drop everything for something I needed. I love you too.”
Struggling to sit with the sensation of someone rightly apologizing to me after causing harm, I started to draft another text “I’m grabbing some lunch, do you want me to pick you up something?”
But I paused for a moment.
What was the intent in asking if she needed anything?
I realized at that moment the desire to bring her lunch was motivated from a place of feeling like I had to do something back for her.
To rescue her from her own apology and feelings of personal responsibility. To save her from the experience of sitting in the impact of causing harm to someone.
Receiving her apology was a lot. It was a lot to hold and feel.
After ending an emotionally abusive relationship and leaving a toxic personal development community that gaslit any of their students who spoke up, it was truly a new experience.
I deleted the text and just sat instead in the sensation of being apologized to by someone that even if in a heated split-second argument, caused me some pain.
We don’t like people not feeling ok.
The truth is, it can be uncomfortable to watch others sit in the impact of their bad or destructive decisions. It’s uncomfortable to watch people in pain or suffering. If you’re any sort of feeling being it’s completely natural to want to help them or pull them out of the experience.
While it can feel easier to “rescue” them and save them from their own decisions it’s best instead to trust that they have what they need to learn the lesson.
“Rescuing” anyone doesn’t allow them to develop the strength and resiliency they need and it doesn’t give them the experience and understanding that something about what they’ve done needs to be changed or altered in the future.
When someone apologizes to you for something they’ve wrongfully done notice where you feel uncomfortable in their experience of taking responsibility and growing in their humility.
Learn how to hold sensation in your body.
Being able to sit in discomfort without losing your cool, I believe, is one of the greatest and most important skills you can develop that will serve all of your relationships. For most of my life, I only wanted to feel good things. If I didn’t like a feeling I was having I would find some way to escape it. Drinking, impulsive decisions, binge-watching TV, endless scrolling. You name it. It meant all my relationships were pretty void of depth. I’d run anytime a relationship of mine required me to have to speak up or get vulnerable.
Mindfulness practices truly saved my life and transformed all my relationships. Meditating, daily rituals, EFT tapping, finding people I could speak honestly and openly with all helped me learn how to sit with a whole range of emotions.
So often we can’t receive because we can’t feel. We quite literally don’t allow ourselves any space or pause and so taking anything in is nearly impossible.
Learn how to be with yourself and stay with yourself. When someone admits something vulnerable to you, you’ll be able to pause and really hold space for them. You’ll be able to accept an apology without needing to do something in return or minimize its impact on you.
Notice where you engage in commerce-based relationships.
How many relationships in your life do feel comfortable purely “receiving” in. A relationship where you allow others to do for you without you necessarily having to do anything in return?
Take a look around you, we live in a tit-for-tat society.
“I’ll do you this favor because I know you’ll feel like you owe me something and I’ll eventually get something in return”.
In a lot of ways, it’s human nature. The concept of reciprocity. Some companies explicitly exploit this in how they do business. It’s not always unethical but when it comes to our intimate relationships there’s nothing that feels better than be given to without the expectation of having to do something in return.
It can be hard wiring to uncross but notice when someone pays you a compliment or apologizes for something they’ve done that warrants an apology. You don’t need to pay them back. Practice taking in what’s said to you fully and letting someone else sit in the experience of being well received and the intimacy that gets exchanged in the process.
Stop overlooking your own needs.
I grew up with a busy, hard-working Mom and an extremely talkative older sister. My sister was 100x more comfortable taking up space and expressing herself than I was. I lived in her shadow and throughout most of my life sought out friends and partners similar to her. Partners that were comfortable doing the majority of the talking and decision making. I wasn’t comfortable speaking up for myself, making my needs known, or asking for an adjustment to my partner’s behavior if anything ever felt off. As a result, I never really felt fully seen in my relationships. A teacher of mine used to joke that I was “hiding in plain sight.”
It wasn’t until I was on a cross-country road trip, in a car for 10+ hours every day, nonstop, with a boyfriend I was supposed to move across the country with that I realized “Oh my gosh, I can’t listen to him tell this story anymore. How did I get into this same relationship dynamic yet again.”
Maybe you’ve reached that point in some of your relationships too where the bell goes off, the shoe drops, you realize you’ve been silent and overlooking your needs for far too long.
You deserve to be given space to express yourself, you deserve to be asked what you need, what you desire, and you deserve to be shown up for. You also deserve to be apologized to when someone screws up without having to make it right for them and unburden them of their responsibility.
Accepting an apology is an art.
It’s a mix of learning to hold sensation and discomfort in your body, allowing someone to feel the full impact of their behavior without feeling the need to rescue them, and knowing it’s ok to have needs and to want them to be fulfilled. Working on all of the above will allow you to take up more space in your relationships, experience more depth with someone, and really have the experience of being seen and understood.
Finding a patient, willing partner is key, someone who is willing to be adjusted and someone who is willing to move slow with you as you grow into all these skills.
Want to know what’s really keeping you from finding love? In my 60 min masterclass How to Find Your Partner in Crime, I’ll walk you through the pitfalls that keep women just like you from experiencing lasting love. AND I’ll show you how to shift your perspective so you can stop repeating sabotaging patterns. Claim your spot HERE to join me live.