Sometimes you don't need to apologize.
Everything Is True
Ada Hoffmann's author newsletter
Here’s a quick social skills lesson for folks who might not know it yet, or who might need the refresher.
Sometimes people make mistakes and need to apologize. You’ll probably need to apologize to someone at some point in your life. There are some good writings out there about how to make a good apology. For instance, you may hear that there are three parts to a good apology – a description of what you did wrong, an expression of remorse, and a plan for how you’ll make sure to do better in the future. Or you may hear about fake apologies – like the dreaded “I’m sorry you were offended” – and how to avoid them.
This advice isn’t wrong. If you find yourself in a situation where you need to apologize, you could do a lot worse than to follow it.
But it tends to leave out a key point:
You don’t always have to apologize when people say you do.
Here are a few examples of times when you don’t have to apologize:
1. When you know you didn’t do anything wrong.
There’s a truism that was going around a few years ago: “When people tell me I am hurting them, I stop.”
This is great advice for many situations. For instance, it’s great for if you’re white and you didn’t realize you were doing something racist. There are a lot of situations where you should stop and listen to people who object to what you’re doing, especially if you didn’t consider what they were saying before, or if you’re not sure you fully understand the objection. That might be a sign that you need to look into it more to understand why it was hurftul, and in the meantime, stop.
But there are also a lot of situations where you manifestly shouldn’t stop.
For example: TERFs will loudly claim that trans people are hurting cis women, or even hurting children, just by existing and living their lives. But they are wrong, and you do not need to apologize to a TERF for being trans.
A lot of malicious people will claim that you are hurting them when you aren’t. They might have a lot of different motives for wanting to do this. If someone is lying about being hurt in this way, there is no need to apologize to them.
Abusive people – either in an intimate relationship, or in the broader context of social bigotry - often claim that their victims are the ones hurting them. The word for this is DARVO and it is quite common.
But it’s also possible for things like this to happen with no malice. Sometimes people can have an honest difference of opinion, with no ill intent on either side.
For instance, let’s say Alice and Bob are both autistic. Alice writes an #ownvoices story that draws from her own experience. However, Bob feels that Alice hasn’t worked through her internalized ableism very much and that the way she writes about autism is hurtful.
Alice doesn’t need to apologize to Bob. If she didn’t consider it before, then she should think about what he’s saying. But if she’s thought about it carefully and still feels that it wasn’t wrong for her to write the way she did, then she can take responsibility for that decision without apologizing. Bob doesn’t have to like it, or to aree with her, but they both get to own their opinions and beliefs and to express them in their own separate spaces – or to exit the discussion if they need to.
In general, you don’t have to apologize every time someone is angry with you. You only have to apologize when you really think you did something wrong. (If you don’t really think that you did something wrong, and apologize anyway, then it’s a fake apology - and nobody likes those!)
2. When it’s better not to make a big deal out of it.
If you bump into someone by accident in a store, the best response is not a formal three-part apology complete with a plan for how you’ll do better in the future. The best response is to say a quick “whoops, sorry!” or “excuse me!” and move on.
If you accidentally use the wrong pronoun for your trans friend, the best response is not a formal three-part apology – it’s to say “oops!”, correct yourself, and move on as gracefully as possible. Almost every trans person I’ve ever heard speak about this says that they prefer this approach; a longer apology only makes it more uncomfortable.
In general, if the thing you did wrong was small and ordinary, it’s better to say a quick “oops, sorry!” and move on than to make a big remorseful scene and embarrass everyone.
3. When the apology will not be accepted.
Some people, especially in dogpiles on the Internet, do not actually want you to say you are sorry. They might say they want an apology, but what they actually want is for you to be humiliated and go away. If you do make an apology, no matter how flawlessly it adheres to the three-part structure and how sincere you feel about it, they’ll find some reason why it wasn’t good enough. Maybe you apologized too fast, too slow, too flawlessly to be believed or with some flaw in your wording that throws the whole thing into doubt. They’ll think of something.
If you screwed up really, really badly, some people might not want to hear from you again. For instance, if someone has already gone no-contact with you, then you should not track them down to apologize. The relationship you had with them is already not a thing, and instead of trying to repair it, you should respect their wish for space.
In general – regardless of whether you did do something that bad, or whether you’re simply the target of someone’s moral discharge – there are situations where apologizing won’t help. If someone can’t be placated, it’s okay not to try to placate them.
4. When you are tempted to self-flagellate.
If you have certain kinds of trauma, then the idea that you’ve done something wrong, or that someone is angry with you, can make you panic. Your first urge might be to throw yourself on their mercy and apologize as hard as possible – oh my god, you’re right, I’m a terrible person, I’m terrible, that was terrible of me!!!
Do not do this.
Even when people really want an apology for good reasons, panicking and calling yourself names will not help resolve the problem. (If someone does want you to panic and call yourself names, they are probably not a safe person.) For most of us, seeing a person break down like this is really uncomfortable; it’s alarming and it makes us feel a need to reassure them. There are times and places where it’s ok to break down in front of a friend and to seek reassurance. But if someone is feeling hurt about something you did, being put in this position is the last thing they want.
If you know you sometimes beat yourself up like this, and you feel the urge rising, then it’s best to step back and get some space so you can calm yourself down before responding further – even if that means you can’t give a “real apology” right away.
5. When trust has not been broken.
In some of my best and closest relationships, I’ve had times where one of us made a mistake – a pretty big mistake, unintentional but very hurtful in the moment. And we resolved it without the words “I’m sorry” crossing anybody’s lips.
I’m thinking of a particular incident in which something a partner did, consensually and with good intentions, hurt me. It was very clear to me, at that particular time, that I didn’t need to hear the words “I’m sorry.” I could see my partner patiently staying with me when I was hurt, without any defensiveness or pre-emptive deflecting of blame. I could see they were interested in understanding what happened and willing to fix the sudden problem, whatever it took. That was what I wanted. I didn’t care if they said the right words to prove that they felt remorse; I cared that they were there for me and willing to make it right.
You might be different from me; you might want and need to hear “I’m sorry,” regardless of other factors. And certainly there have been other times, with me and that same partner, where one of us did say sorry and mean it and it was helpful to hear.
Ultimately the purpose of an apology – from the mumbled “excuse me” in a store to the most flowery, formal, public statement – is to restore trust.
If someone starts out determined not to trust you – for good reasons, or bad ones – no apology will change that.
But if someone already did trust you very much, and is willing to trust you like that again, you might find that putting the pieces back together is easier than you think. And that it’s the way you show up for each other in practice that will usually make the difference – not whether you’ve remembered the three essential parts of the apology and said the right words for them all.