To apologize or not...

[creakins]

A year ago I met a lovely girl. Like me, she had made a lot of mistakes in her life, but her path to self knowledge and healing had done a great deal for her. She has a little girl, with a man who left her so that he could pursue a life that allowed him to have many sexual partners. When I had met her, she had gone through some of the worst depressions she had ever gone through, and when she sought out therapy, she really came through the other side with new insights about what led her down the path she went on, choosing the man that would eventually leave her... She is what I would call a super single mom. Never once has she relied on social support. She moved back home with her very supportive parents and went back to school to become a nurse. I'm actually pretty proud to say that she isn't an estrogen based parasite. 

 

Me on the other hand, had just started my path to self knowledge and had not yet sought out a therapist to help me understand and heal from past abuses. We had started writing letters to each other, and then one day we agreed to hang out. I went over to her place and we had a great time riding our bikes together, and man did we connect. She is a beautiful human, but I wasn't able to see past her past, and the fact that she was a single mom. She made her intentions clear, I got scared and I just stopped returning her phone calls and emails. 

 

After really digging into some issues I have been dealing with, and my inability to communicate intimately with women (I've really had a lot of work in this area) I feel like an apology, and an explanation is due. She still reaches out to me via facebook, but not with the intentions she had in the past. Just a friendly hi every now and then. In the past few months I have responded, and even had a skype chat with her. What I'm hoping for is some advice on whether an apology has ever helped you heal from something you have done that you know was hurtful and wrong. Instead of actually communicating my concerns, I felt it safer to just not talk. I don't ever want to do that again. This community is one of the best resources on the net, and I can't thank you all enough for taking the time to consider my question.

 

C

[Prairie]

What do you hope to get out of the apology? Feel better personally about how you interacted before? Mend what you imagine to be some hurt she has from it? Turn the clock back and pick up your advancing relationship?

[creakins]

Prairie,

 

You've asked a tough question, but I'm going to answer it honestly. I still feel attracted to this girl. I miss our conversations, and I regret the way that I acted. I also feel that an apology will make me feel better, because I am constantly thinking about the number of times I have done this in my life. She was not the only woman who I just stopped communicating with because a fear crept into me. After dealing with the root of this fear, I want to confront it, and this girl is the only one who kept trying to communicate with me after I dropped off the face of the planet. I feel like a jerk even writing this. Maybe having a real conversation about my feelings and the feelings of another human, especially the effect my jerk reactions caused, might make me feel less like a jerk. It may also be a good step to being a better communicator. 

 

Does this answer your question?

[Prairie]

Yeah, the questions weren't to offer evaluation, just to get out in the open why you want to do it, so that what approach you take won't be subconsciously trying to meet a hidden goal. It sounds like you genuinely want to acknowledge how you were and talk about how you've changed, regardless of whether it means a continuation of whatever was happening between you and her before (if that happens, so much the better).

 

If I were in your situation, I'd work on holding the intention in my mind to communicate the changes I'd made and apologize, but be sure I wasn't trying to make her feel a certain way if she was annoyed about it, not trying to influence her. It'd be like delivering the message to an audience of all the people I'd abruptly stopped communicating with. I'd just deliver my message, then quiet down and listen carefully to whatever she says in response, reflect it, keep listening until she's expressed anything about the experience she needs to. After that, perhaps on another occasion, express the desire to relate more again.

 

I know I've had people seem to apologize, but then "tailgate" me if I don't immediately act like I'm all fine and over it. Like I try to express my experience of it and frustration and they're like "Oh I understand and I'm sorry, bla bla" instead of quieting down and listening to what I'm saying and sitting with that while I elaborate. This sort of un-empathetic approach comes across as emotionally manipulative and turns their apology/amending as something merely to feel less guilty.

[ribuck]

This issue is clearly eating away at you. I can't see what you have to lose by apologising for something that you regret from the past. It will set your mind at ease, and might help to maintain a great relationship between the two of you. If you don't apologise, your doubt will keep nagging away at you.

 

I recently apologised to someone for something that I did when I was a teenager, decades ago. Apologising didn't lead to anything positive (just a "thank you" and an exchange of a couple of emails), but it sure felt good to have cleared out a piece of unresolved clutter from my brain.

[creakins]

I did it!

 

I feel like by having that face to face conversation to apologize, I've learned a little more about how to be a better communicator. She was really cool about it too. After I got to the point and said what I needed to say, I stopped talking and just listened. She told me how it made her feel, but that she understood and is really glad that I finally came to her with this apology. That's all. There was no, "how do we move forward from here," or "do you want to pick up where we left of." Nope. Just really good closure, and one of the best most honest conversations I have had to date.

 

Thanks for all your advice.

 

C