CONNECTIONS
back and growled even louder and brattier than ever.
Our back-and-forth banter carried on for about 30
minutes and consisted mostly of Spencer apologizing for
not cleaning but explaining I
had no right to treat him like
a two year old and me resisting any logical argument he made.
When I finally did
apologize—with
integrity and not
just saying it to
say it—I felt so
embarrassed. I
wondered why I
didn’t apologize
sooner, and more
frustrating, why I
freaked out in the
first place.
gizing and saying sorry. An
apology is said after making
an error that you would do
differently, given a second
chance; it’s something you
do. Being sorry, on the other hand, is apologizing with
deep regret and empathy
for the other side; it’s some-
I
t turns out
there’s a lot
of psychology behind the
seemingly simple
word ‘sorry’—
much more than
I had anticipated
before writing this
piece and certainly more than
I realized when I
tortured myself
in the car for being so childish
and out of control
that morning. Guy
Winch, a psychologist and contributor for Psychology Today,
wrote in a 2013 article that
difficulty in saying sorry can
stem from feelings of inadequacy or insecurity, mistaking slip-ups as reflections of
character, and fear that an
apology will absolve the other side of their wrongdoing.
Check and mate.
M
y seventh grade life
skills teacher once
told me there was a
difference between apolo-
thing you feel. For example,
you might apologize for a
typo in an email or spilling
tea on a friend—these mistakes are relatively harmless—whereas you would
say sorry for cheating on
someone or breaking a family heirloom.
My situation required a
“sorry,” and that was difficult. It felt like a verbal
declaration of my inadequacies as a girlfriend: I’m
not even-tempered, I’m too
much of a neatfreak, the list
goes on… Saying sorry was
shameful. Was this an exaggeration? Yes; I know I make
a good girlfriend, but the
point is, these insecurities
were the root of my unwillingness to say sorry. Now
that I’m aware of these insecurities, I feel
confident that I’ll
circumnavigate
those fears in the
future, and say
sorry or apologize—whichever the situation
calls for—much
quicker.
The second
fault was mistaking my flip-out
moment as a
comprehensive
reflection of my
character. We as
humans are not
defined by the
mistakes we’ve
made. Instead,
we should define
ourselves by how
we grow and improve ourselves
after the fact.
Thus, I had a
flip out moment,
I have flip out
moments, and I
will continue to
have flip out moments; but, I will
work on it, make
improvements, and cease
torturing myself for these
lapses in judgement.
The other half of me that
didn’t feel bad about yelling—let’s be honest—was
still mad at Spencer for
his thoughtlessness. My
screaming tirades were uncalled for and made things
worse, but they shouldn’t
wholly negate my frustrations. His lack of cleanliness
is a recurring issue in our relationship, and a part of me