Bad apologies
A bad apology has the opposite effect.
She said humans are wired for defensiveness, and while being defensive is normal, it is also the arch enemy of the apology and the arch enemy of intimacy. Defensiveness results in apologies that somehow blame the other person, are obtuse, full of excuses or bring up the other person’s so-called “crime sheet.”
Lerner said the most common way people make a bad apology is by using the word “but”: “I’m sorry about eating the ice cream, but you were getting the last dip and I wanted it.” She said the word “but” in an apology is always an indicator of a rationalization, and it doesn’t mater if what you say after the “but” is true, the “but” makes the apology false.
Another form of a bad apology is focusing on the other person’s reactions and feelings rather than one’s own behavior: “I’m sorry the joke I told at the meeting made you feel bad.”
“There’s no accountability,” Lerner said.
A better way to give such an apology would be to focus on the behavior that was wrong: “The joke I told at the meeting was insensitive and out of line.”
Another bad apology that happens too often is one that is said
just as quick way out of a conversation: “I’ve told you 10 times that I’m sorry for the affair. Why do you keep bringing it up?”
“No apology will have meaning if we haven’t listened carefully to the anger of the person we hurt,” Lerner said.
She said there are some people who don’t apologize, and she knows this causes deep pain to the people they hurt who long for an apology.
Lerner said not receiving an apology often says more about the person who won’t apologize than the individual they hurt.
She said she found in her research that the greater the harm, the less likely an apology will come. She said typically, this is because the “entrenched non-apologizer walks a tight rope over a huge chasm of low
self-esteem.”
“In order to give a heartfelt apology for something really nefarious,
a person needs to have a solid platform of self worth to stand on,” Lerner said.