the social apology...

Maybe some of you have noticed what I have noticed, namely, some people find it very difficult or practically even impossible to apologize even if they think they are wrong, others think they are wrong so rarely that they never apologize anyway, and then there is another group, namely, those who apologize too much.

I'll start with the latter group because someone in that group played a featured role in my life recently, and it really gets old. This is the person who apologizes so readily and so frequently that it has come to have no meaning whatsoever. This is the type of person who

a) does whatever he wants, knowing all along it is the wrong or hurtful thing to do under the circumstances, then apologizes later with the idea of making it all OK for himself

b) continues to apologize instead of explaining when asked for the truth

c) possibly (for example) a person with addictions, the results of which cause consequences hurtful to others; who always 'slips' or 'falls off the wagon' then does something hurtful, then says "I'm sorry, it will never happen again." And this happens time after time after time, pretty much the exact same thing over and over again

OH that gets so old, hearing that kind of apology. It loses all meaning, and to me it reminds me of someone who says 'I love you' so many times (and mostly when they've screwed up in a major way) that the 'I love yous' just become completely meaningless.

As to the category of the person who is never wrong or doesn't feel that they are ever wrong, that's a different story because, of course everybody is wrong sometimes. Important however:

Just because someone has never apologized to you doesn't mean that is a person who thinks they are never wrong. Perhaps it is only someone you don't know that well, or don't have all that much interaction with, or perhaps there is a situation where there is no real right and wrong and it's all just a matter of opinion.

There may be a time when you believe a person should have apologized to you and they don't. That doesn't mean they were wrong, necessarily.

Then you have the personality which doesn't enjoy apologizing and so they rarely do. I think this category has a lot of people in it, but personally I'd rather be around this kind of personality instead of the chronic apologizer. At least with this kind of personality, you know that when they apologize, the apology is extremely sincere.

I am in this last category as I suspect so many of us are, and not so long ago I apologized to a GUY (and I didn't it even though I did not think my 'crime' was all that great, nonetheless I still did it, and it was entirely sincere). Now it wasn't easy to do, and so far as I ever heard I was most definitely not 'forgiven,' but I do not regret having apologized because the truly sincere apology is not something you'd ever want to take back no matter how poorly it is received.