A few weeks ago in therapy I was recounting an argument I’d had with my husband. Spoiler alert: your therapist argues with their partner (kids, mom, coworkers). I was telling my therapist about the apology I’d delivered after the argument and she smirked. Is that the order you said it in, she asked? I’ve been seeing her for a LONG time. She gets to smirk and be direct. I’d thought my apology was top notch, so I was surprised by the question. Yes, in fact that was the order I’d said it in. I’d started with what I’d been needing from my husband when I’d lost my cool with him. This, apparently, was not recommended.
This is one of the things I love about therapy, couples therapy in particular (though the session was not a couples session). Even when you’ve done a lot of thinking about how to manage friction and do repair work in a relationship, it helps to have the attention of a neutral third party. It really is so hard to have perspective without another perspective.
Her objection to the order of my argument was that I’d led with an explanation, with WHY I’d lost my temper. The problem there, as she saw it, was that I was priming my husband to be defensive and making it less likely that he would be able to hear my attempt at repair. I was also using the apology (unintentionally) as a way to share how I saw the situation, which complicated my message.
Part of what I love about being a therapist is that the work is not separate from my life. My office is not a place I clock into and out of. The things that happen in my life, my own conflicts and my own therapy, all inform the work I do with clients. This session is a good case in point. It got me thinking more explicitly about what goes into a good apology, and about the role apologies play in repair when there’s been a rupture.
After that session with my therapist, I took a second look at what the major voices in couples therapy have to say about apologies. The Gottmans, who espouse their own method of couples therapy based on years of painstaking research, emphasize the collaborative nature apologies. The person doing the apologizing needs to own their misstep, ask for forgiveness, and vow to do better. The partner receiving the apology has a responsibility as well. And that is to acknowledge the apology, offer forgiveness, and reconnect with their partner. At this point both partners choose to “begin again”.
I should stop here and admit that the Gottman method is not one that I use and is not one that resonates with me. The videos I watched (links below) about effective apologies, used examples that I find typical of the Gottmans. They feel somewhat hokey and saccharine. A husband tells his wife that she doesn’t look good in a dress or a wife says sports are stupid and that she doesn’t want to join her husband at a game. My complaint about these examples is that many couples don’t see themselves in them. Often the transgressions and hurt are much deeper and more difficult to get out of.
My bigger disagreement, though, is with their emphasis on forgiveness. The Gottmans insist that repair cannot happen if an apology is refused. I’m not sure the issue is so straightforward. When I was talking to my therapist about my apology, I also complained that my husband often doesn’t accept my apologies, or that we don’t begin again after they’re delivered. He should say something he might have done better and then we should feel good again, I said. That’s a fantasy, my therapist replied. She loves to tell me this.
She has a point. Terry Real, who developed another prominent method called Relational Life Therapy, emphasizes that when we apologize, we have to be able to separate our effort for repair from its reception. Our partner might be in what he calls their “adaptive child” (as opposed to wise adult) at the moment we apologize, in which case they are unlikely to be able to take it in. That doesn’t mean we’ve failed, though. I tend to agree with him on this. A great apology generally has a positive effect on a relationship, even if its rewards are not immediate. And learning how to get yourself back into your wise adult so that you can apologize is a success on its own. If your partner NEVER comes around and accepts your attempts at repair, however, that’s a different story.
Another commonly used couples therapy model, Emotionally Focused Therapy, offers a powerful template for repairing rupture that falls on the opposite end of the spectrum from the Gottman Method (in my opinion). EFT believes that full repair is achieved when the couple reenters the emotional terrain of the argument, the offending partner fully experiences the other’s emotions, and then the hurt partner is able to ask for and receive the support that was withheld the first time around. There’s good research behind the EFT model, though I tend to think of this model of repair as better suited to the more profound ruptures in a relationship, not so much the everyday tensions and squabbles.
Imago therapy overlaps with EFT in its emphasis on profound empathy with the hurt partner. While it does not rely on enactments per se, it does emphasize the importance of being in your partner’s world when choosing to apologize. The fact is, all of these models overlap quite a bit when it comes to their formulation of a good apology. They all suggest some combination of declaring clearly that you did something hurtful, extending empathy for the feelings your partner had as a result, and offering a plan for how you might avoid a similar offense in the future.
I think all of these templates are good guides for apologizing and in general I think it helps to take a look at one of them when you’re ready to make an apology that feels hard to make. I’m not suggesting this because we need experts to tell us how to live our lives but rather because apologizing is a vulnerable act that we usually undertake when we are already quite off-center. Reading through a script or a step by step guide can help us bring awareness to the endeavor. It can help slow us down so that we can think about what our goals are in reaching out to our partner and what words would be best suited to those goals (Sue Johnson’s “Hold Me Tight” has a great exercise on pages 180-181 that I recommend).
This was the big takeaway for me from the conversation I had with my own therapist. Regardless of the script you use, awareness and intent are the most important. Take some time to figure out where you are. Are you really ready to apologize? Sometimes we want to apologize because we are just tired and ready for the friction to pass. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it might mean that a different path to repair is worth considering. If you are ready to apologize, ask yourself how you might put aside other (potentially disputed) elements of the conflict so that you can focus on your own responsibility. My husband loves to talk about scope creep in the construction business, when a simple repair turns into a renovation. Avoid scope creep at all costs when making apologies! Stick to taking responsibility and try not to confuse your message with explanations or interpretations that are likely to arouse your partner’s defenses.
Terry Real: https://youtu.be/dQcApmFIzYQ?si=VRBIsfTP1xTWjd_x
Real, T. (2007). The new rules of marriage: What you need to know to make love work. Ballantine Books.
Sue Johnson: https://youtu.be/TNpOQK4hqxs?si=NwTolY6Sy6EBOYYW
Johnson, S. M. (2008). Hold me tight : seven conversations for a lifetime of love(First edition). Little, Brown and Company.
The Gottmans: https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-art-of-the-mindful-apology-why-sorry-is-not-enough/
https://youtu.be/h9OnaUDV4oI?si=Dvv0Jt7s3K6yy8kI
Imago: https://blog.imagorelationshipswork.com/relationship-advice/how-to-apologize-healing-a-relationship
Magdalena Riley 
Leave a comment