How to Apologize to Your Partner
Knowing how to apologize to your partner is a rare and underrated relationship skill. Here’s what a bad apology sounds like, what a good one sounds like, and why the good one is so hard to do.
Here’s a pretty common situation, and you can switch out the genders here because we all do this kind of thing to each other sometimes.
A husband has an obligation to do the dishes every night after dinner, and for a few nights one week, he doesn’t do the dishes and instead goes and plays video games. His wife does the dishes because she doesn’t want to deal with them in the morning.
Resentment builds.
After a few days of this, the wife says, “Hey, you haven’t been doing the dishes lately. Can you please start doing them again?”
What Not to Say When You Apologize
The man gets defensive and says, “You’re always so critical of me! I had a really rough week and I could not deal with the dishes. It’s not that big of a deal!”
That, for the record, is not an apology.
She might say, “I’m just feeling pretty upset about this. I don’t want to have to do my chores and yours too. Please just do the dishes.”
And he might say, “I’m sorry you feel that way. It wasn’t my intention to make you feel upset. I was just tired.”
Still not an apology.
In fact, it tells her she shouldn’t feel what she feels because he didn’t mean for her to feel that way. It doesn’t matter because she feels it anyway.
A Good Apology
Here’s what he could have said instead.
“You’re right, I’m really sorry. That was probably pretty annoying for you to have to do them on top of everything else you have to do every day. I was really tired and just kind of shirked my responsibility without any communication. I’ll start doing the dishes again, even if I feel like I don’t have the energy. How does that sound?”
In just those 5 sentences he did so many things!
He expressed genuine remorse
He took full responsibility
He gave the reasons for his actions after taking full ownership
He validated the impact it had on his wife
He committed to doing better in the future
Here’s what he didn’t do:
Deny any wrongdoing
Make excuses for why he didn’t do the thing instead of taking responsibility
Shame his wife for having feelings about it
Say “I’m sorry you feel that way”
Say “It wasn’t my intention”
Those things do not lead to healing a rupture and providing closure. They lead to your partner losing trust in you and feeling resentful toward you for the next 40 years. They lead to your partner hating the sound of you chewing food and being intolerant of your shirt and pants not matching.
Why It’s So Hard to Apologize
Apologizing can feel like jumping off a cliff. It can be extremely difficult to do because we just don’t ever want to be wrong. We don’t want to feel like our actions hurt someone because we don’t want to tolerate that shame.
The fact is that an apology is not an admission that you are a bad person: it’s an acknowledgment that your actions had an impact on a person and you’re making a commitment to do better going forward.
Sometimes people have trauma around punishments they received as kids for not doing their chores, so their nervous system might be really activated by any insinuation that they’re not measuring up. So it’s understandable to feel defensive, and if that rings true for you, it might be worth exploring in therapy.
It’s much easier to tolerate your partner being right and you making amends than a lifetime of resentment and disconnection.
Can you think of a time when you’ve done the not-so-great apology? What would have been a better way to apologize?
If you want to work on this together, I see therapy clients in Texas as a counseling intern and you can set up a 15-minute intro call with me here.
