Don’t Offer Apologies With Attachments
Taking personal responsibility for your life is pretty epic.
It will mean apologizing when you know you’ve done wrong (and feeling the weightlessness of not carrying around the low-grade guilt of being out of integrity).
It will mean feeling a greater sense of connection to yourself and others (turns out, you’re human, they’re human, we’re all human—phew! The relief of not thinking we’re supposed to get it all perfect!).
But I have to say that there’s a piece of this taking responsibility stuff that can sometimes get tough: when we have an expectation that because we said sorry, because we took responsibility, someone else will follow suit.
You’ll always know that you held these expectations when you apologize for your behavior and a part of you is waiting for the other person to concede some point or another, as well.
This is super common in personal growth circles. Someone starts doing some work on themselves and as a result, they’re making amends and apologizing.
Without realizing it, they thought that if they started apologizing, it would be like the movies: everyone would hug and cry and the other party would say, “Oh, golly gee, you’re not the only one to blame for this conflict! I’m at fault, too! We both made mistakes.”
This post is about releasing yourself from the weight of that, and deciding to no longer offer apologies with attachments. When you’re apologizing and waiting for the other person to also apologize? You’re offering apologies with attachments.
Everyone has a part
In conflict, everyone has a part. Yes, that’s right–everyone. It wouldn’t be a conflict if both parties weren’t somehow pitted against one another in even some small way. Maybe you said the rude things, but they gave the rude attitude; maybe you were cold and distant and then they were cold and distant; maybe actual fisticuffs were involved (can I tell you how long I’ve waited to write a blog post with the word “fisticuffs” in it? Carry on).
When you start doing personal growth work and you see how everyone plays a part, that’s how you start to see that you, too, play a part. Usually there’s initially some resistance to owning our part. Later, we realize that it just feels better—and far more powerful—to take responsibility for our lives and owning our part in a conflict.
To me, offering an apology often feels like a sense of relief. When I’ve done wrong I hate carrying that knowledge around. I want to make things right. My heart is right there on my sleeve as I apologize, and I’m vulnerable.
I have had to learn—to really get honest with myself—about whether or not I’m offering an apology with attachments. If I am apologizing because it’s the right thing to do, then I have no attachment to how the other person receives the apology. If I am offering apologies with attachments, I’m waiting for the moment when they, too, will take responsibility for something they’ve done.
To be that vulnerable and hold attachments and expectations that the other person will meet you there, too? That’s a recipe for disaster.
Make it About Love, Not Attachments
If you recognize yourself in this—if you recognize yourself as someone who has started apologizing all over their life because they’ve realized the power of self-responsibility and making apologies and amends—I’d like to save you the time that I wasted.
I’d like to tell you now that the best thing you can do is accept that other people don’t see all situations in the same way that you do. I’d like to tell you now that for some people, when you apologize, they’re going to treat you like, “Yeah, you fuck up—it’s about time you apologized.”
I’d like to tell you that the hoped-for outcome of everyone realizing that they’ve played a part, might not come.
I’d like to tell you that this is okay.
Because if you’re really making a genuine apology, you are making it for yourself. You are making it because you want to look back on your life and know that you did the best you could. You are doing it from a place of love, not an attachment to changing the situation.
Apologizing with attachment is a recipe for disaster because things only hurt MORE when you are that vulnerable, and hoping that your apology will spark some miraculous wellspring of compassion or solution-seeking or forgiveness or connection with another human being.
When you apologize to others and they don’t own their part, there are so many fear-based reasons why they won’t meet you where you’re at and bring some humility and apologize, as well.
For instance, perhaps there’s a fear of a loss of power. (“It would mean I was a ‘weak person’ if I said I did things wrong, too”). Perhaps there’s a belief that if they own their part for what they did wrong, it’ll excuse your part (“If I also say where I was wrong, it’ll sound like I was excusing where she did me wrong.”).
These are all Stories—internalized voices, belief systems, assumptions about the way the world works—and you can’t change another person’s Stories. You can only notice and change your own.
So speaking of changing your own? Change what you think an apology means. Change the Story you carry from, “We should both apologize and own our part” to “I’m apologizing and owning my part.”
And then try this: imagine your “opponent” and how they feel on the inside. Imagine the heaviness, the darkness, the pain of carrying around grudges. If you’ve done any work on yourself to stop this cycle within you, then you know how it feels for someone else to walk around thinking you—or everyone else—is the one to blame while they are blameless.
You can’t control them. They control themselves. They will decide whether or not to own their part, too.
It’s a powerful choice to own your part, apologize and make amends, and then let go without attachments around whether or not they apologize, too.