My mother taught me a lot of things besides how to tie my shoes and match Gar-animal clothing. One of the wisest things she ever said to me was, “Sometimes there are things more important than pride.” I was 9. My friend and I had just gotten into an argument and I felt very hurt. Out of that hurt I acted inappropriately and then lamented when my friend wouldn’t return my calls or my knocks on her door. I was gutted. I was humiliated. And yes, I was proud.

If she didn’t want to be my friend, so be it, but I would be damned before I went groveling back to her and admit to anything when she should be doing the same to me… or so I thought. I also thought long and hard about what my mother said. In this case, my pride kept me from continuing a relationship that was important to me. I can’t remember what the argument was about now, but we were 9, so it was probably pretty silly.

I sucked it up and apologized. Not for everything, but I apologized for my part of the bad behavior and told her how much her friendship meant to me. She broke down in tears, hugged me and apologized for her part too. We figured out together, at the age of nine, how to avoid this in the future.

I’ve written before about the anatomy of an apology, but I have been thinking about the little A-Word a lot lately. A proper apology has a beginning, a middle and an end. You state what you are apologizing for, explain it, make some sort of restitution (even if it’s “I will try to be more aware in the future”), and hopefully you gain forgiveness. As anyone who has every apologized knows, some of these are simple, and the really serious ones are much more complex. The later requires a certain element of the Humbling Gene.

It might sound canned, and maybe a bit over-simplified. In a way it is. In this ‘anatomy’ of apology, something is missing. Why are apologies so difficult to make and why are they so important?

I think that for some people, admitting to what they have done can be daunting. You know they have done something and they know they have. You both know it has caused hurt and pain, be it intentional or unintentional. I think some people have a hard time accepting they hurt someone they care about because it means that they have to take off their angry/indignant/entitled blinders and face themselves. They have to be able to have empathy and put themselves in someone else’s shoes.

An apology isn’t supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to be a little slice of soul baring. It’s supposed to make you feel  vulnerable. This is especially true of situations where people have done wrong and then lied about it. Lies are things that usually will come back to bite you in the ass in some way later, and if you are prone to lying, then you know this instinctually. You start to layer lies to cover your lies. You’ve gotten away with it enough to feel fairly confident that you can continue not to admit anything.

A Liar’s apologies are the most difficult I think. Why? Because by the very nature of lying, you are taking the easy way out of situations. It means not only admitting you did wrong, but also admitting you spun a web of lies around the incident. Usually habitual liars won’t admit their lies because it makes them out to be… Well… Liars! Couple that with this thought: How much can you really trust the sincerity of a chronic liar?

Apologies are so important to us and having healthy relationships because we all have a need to feel safe with those we entrust our friendship or heart to. We allow a handful of people into our “inner circle” and they wield a lot of power in our lives. Our inner circle hears our worries, our difficulties, our deepest emotions and much other information that we don’t post out to the world at large. We rely on them for a shoulder to cry on and to give sound advice. Basically, we want to know those closest to us have our backs and our best interest at heart.

When we discover they don’t, and their actions are repeated, they are ‘ousted’ from our inner circle of trust. How many times have you had a friendship fall by the wayside that so easily could have been saved by the simple, yet powerful, act of a true apology? Take your ego out of it, and pretend you are nine years old again. It’s easier that way…

Other Posts from SD to Enjoy:

• The Magical Circle
• The Ghost of Dating Past
• Dating Nightmares through Personal Ads
• Personal Responsibility
• Do You Speak Romance?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 7:58 am and is filed under Gathering Basket. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.