This small aperitif is a required primer to properly digest the below correspondence. The following is a letter I sent to a friend reflecting upon an unpleasant conflict he was mired within. At the time of it’s writing my friend was struggling to restitute a relationship that had veered wildly off its desired trajectory because of a particularly nasty faux pas on his part. He required an apology that’s stature complimented the enormity of his transgression yet had the grace and delicacy to gently place the relationship back on track.
Because his situation was demonstrative of commonly misinterpreted nonverbal communication between genders, and because this giant ballerina of an apology would be fun to write about (and because I don’t have a real job) I decided to expand my response into a generally applicable mapping of the pathway to a successful apology, with an illustrative survey of the gaping crevasse between male and female communication along the way.
Here are the particulars of his situation. My friend, who is not named Mike, was enjoying a progressively more flirtatious friendship with a coworker, who name is not Antje. One day Mike was informed that Antje would be out of work to attend a funeral. Mike was not informed about Antje’s relationship to the deceased. The next day Antje and Mike were assigned to work on a project together which necessitated them traveling to their bosses home. That morning Mike was anxious to begin working and after their usual greetings suggested that they go to their bosses place to begin working. Antje agreed and they continued to chat and Antje began to eat a muffin. Amidst their exchange of pleasantries Mike suggested that they go to their bosses home after Antje was finished eating. This was a request Antje took offense too. She told Mike that he needed to relax and also voiced some other less than pleasant critiques of Mike’s demeanor. Mike, shocked and hurt by Antje’s sudden change in tone, reflexively responded with a sarcastic “Well you’re being pleasant this morning”. To which Antje lashes back “I spent yesterday morning at a funeral for someone who committed suicide, how do you think I should be?” Still unnerved by Antje’s initial outburst, Mike responded before he can process what Antje just said, replying with a dismissive chuckle “Oh sorry.” Clearly wounded, Antje wails “Yeah laugh it up asshole!” and retreats out of the room.
This incident took place 2 weeks before Mike had told me about it. In the interlude Mike tried to apologize for his behavior, although he still did not see why his mistake warranted such a protracted retribution. However, Antje refused to communicate with him. But she did make her disgust clear through vindictive baking. This admirable bit of passive aggressive communication entails Antje baking cupcakes for everyone in the office, except Mike. Pastries held particular significance to their relationship, for Antje’s baking had become an established mode of flirtation. She had twice baked Mike pies, one apple and one pumpkin, during the course of their budding infatuation.
Antje has since resumed only necessary communication with Mike. They exchange forced greetings and will converse when their work demands it, but are still worlds away from the energizing, enthralling banter they once shared. Of course Antje’s frustrating, impermeable anger has greatly accelerated Mike’s desires, to the point where thoughts of impassioned, vengeful, redemptive sex is all he is capable of thinking about. And of course Mike has no idea what to do about it.
You should also know that it took me quite some time to compose the below letter, hence the opening paragraph. So without further adieu…
First it is my turn to apologize for the delay in responding to your email. I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you. By apologizing I’m intending to display my remorse. The effectiveness of my apology, and hence the apology itself, is entirely dependent on how persuasively I am able to convey said remorse; and not, this is important, if I am actually remorseful. Whether or not my remorse is genuine is superfluous. If you are convinced that I’m sorry then for all functional purposes I am sorry. It really doesn’t matter if I am or not.
I hope you find this example applicable to your present situation. Apologies are like any other argument; they are a path to a destination. Your destination, as you have so evocatively stated, is for her to play with your penis. And like any other height worth ascending, the climb to this sensual Shangri-La is an arduous and exotic journey. Get ready for an adventure buddy.
Through this excursion you will traverse some terrifying terrain, but do not be disheartened. You can defeat such daunting domains. You will reach your nubile Nirvana. For you will embark on this quest well equipped, in possession of a treasure that others had not have the fortune to carry. This letter, both a compass and an aegis, will guide you through your travels and protect you from its perils. So make haste young adventurer. Glory awaits!
The first trek of your great venture is through a bewildering environment, a place you have never been before yet find perversely familiar. It’s a bizarro world; a muddling inversion of a road you know well. You are walking the contorted terrain of Antje’s mind. So tread lightly.
She feels that you have acted inexcusably unfair. Yes at its heart this is an issue of fairness, because unspoken yet powerful rules govern our communication and you violated a major one. The act of unwrapping your emotions is an equally great display of vulnerability and trust. You are presenting your delicate emotions unpackaged with the expectation that they will be handled with the appropriate care. Their mishandling is an egregious betrayal. Its opportunistically hurtful, the most vicious thing you can do. And this, dear Mike, is exactly what she thinks you did.
Her outburst at you was the dramatic unveiling of what she had been feeling all morning, the hurt and sadness that was wrapped way to tightly under layers of inconspicuous niceties. The yelling was not saying “you’re being a dick”, it was saying “look how hurt I am.” And although your initial folly was understandable (anyone without my Doctor Strange-esque empathetic abilities would err in the same way) your second comment, after she had said she was at a funeral for someone who committed suicide, was unforgivable. She had fully revealed herself to you, gave you her fragile, naked emotions and you threw them on the floor, laughing. That was a terrible thing to do.
Don’t agree with me? Think that she couldn’t have expected you to know how she was feeling? That you were only responding based on the information that she had given you and that it’s extremely selfish and in fact unfair on her part to attack you then audaciously expect you not to respond in equal measure? Then I have good news. Your feelings don’t matter! The success of your apology doesn’t have anything to do with if you are actually apologetic, remember?
We are walking this cold, muddy path to get to a wonderful place and your actual feelings are just going to steer us in the wrong direction. So ignore them. Ignore the siren song of objective truth. Don’t go towards were logic demands you go, to what you just know is right, because that is not where you want to end up. Stay on this path. Keep tromping through the mucky swampland and always look to that beautiful place just over the horizon.
Unfortunately this mucky swampland is as she sees it and to her it looks disgusting. It’s repulsive. It stinks of your sins. And as much as you want to stay clean, to stick your nose up, walk on the balls of your feet and touch everything with your elbows, you’ll never get out of here that way. The only path out of the swamp is through it Mike. You’ve got to submerge yourself in it, let it permeate your skin, absorb the muck and inhale the stink. You are an asshole Mike. What you did was awful; the worst thing that anyone could ever do to someone. People who kick dogs look down on you. God damnit just writing to you makes me feel sick.
Got it? Great. Now you can continue our journey. Right at the edge of the swamp there is a small silent town. The place is full of emptiness. No one lives here. Visitors stay only as long as they have to. Scant remnants of their presence litter the streets. This is the eerie little ghost town named Repentance, and this is where you’ll be spending the night.
No one would come to Repentance if it wasn’t the only place to clean oneself after the swamp. There isn’t another town for miles and if you don’t get that crud off quickly you’ll never be rid of it.
Most people rush through Repentance. They frantically clean themselves and get the hell out. Their haste is understandable. Repentance is not a comfortable place to be in. No one wants to spend that much time alone, examining themselves, remembering what they want to forget, prying themselves open to pick out dirt lodged deep within them. It’s a slow, painful process.
But if you never want to come back here you need to get it all out now. Search every bit. Find the filth stuck in every little part of you. Reopen every old cut and dig into every deep wrinkle. Get all of it. Even where it’s hidden, where it’s stuck so far back no one else can see it. Get absolutely clean. The journey back to repentance is much worse than the journey towards it.
So take the time to figure out exactly why you acted like such an asshole. Look at the part of yourself that caused you to be so reflexively selfish. Why did you think of yourself before her? Why didn’t you notice her hurt? What are your feelings for her and how did they compromise your judgment? You need to know the causes of your actions, the deeply personal, guarded, emotional causes, before you’ll ever be able to convince anyone you are sorry you did them.
After Repentance there is a deceptively formidable expanse before the end of your journey. It is a place that the assertive may bypass but unfortunately your circumstances dictate its traversing.
It has been a long time since you started this venture and the path you are upon has become maliciously familiar. Each day the same steps, the same up and downs of the same hills. You see nothing distinct. No markers, nothing to let you know you’ve gotten anywhere at all. It feels like you’re walking in your own footprints.
The swamp is out of sight. You’ve been rid of its stink for so long you’ve nearly forgotten the smell. Your time in Repentance is a faint memory. It’s hard to remember why you were there in the first place. Maybe you’ve always been on this damp grey road, shuffling along, dutifully making your way to nowhere.
The insidious trick of a day job is how it muddles your perception. You do the same things at the same times every day; spinning in circles, oblivious to the vortex you’re being sucked into. As you are pulled in deeper the distance between you and the outside world increases until you are too far away to see things change. Activity looks static; it’s like watching city traffic from an airplane window.
A lot of time has passed since you pissed of Antje and your shared work routine has undoubtedly displaced some of the tension between you two, but its still there. The amount of space (temporally) between you and the incident makes it easy to ignore, it’s a big thing that now seems tiny from so far away. It feels like you could just forget about it entirely, she will eventually move past it and maybe you could woe her without addressing your past faux pas. But there is a part of you that knows that is not true. It knows that Antje will never spontaneously forgive you and that the only way to return your relationship to its proper course is to confront this ugly situation directly.
It’s the part of you that knows triumph, that can see the golden land before you, that has been to such an Eden, that has reveled in its glorious bounty and made merry in its meadows. It will not let you abandon your quest.
It knows that to get where you’re going you need to go back to where you have been. Close your eyes. Remember the swamp. Remember the filth, you’re filth, its feel, its stink. Remember Repentance. See it all around you. Remember your cleansing. How long it took, how much it hurt. Remember the desolate calm of the endless grey road. Relive every moment of your journey. Examine every detail. And then open your eyes.
“You cannot pass!”
The thing between you and where you want to be, the thing now hissing in your face, is Antje’s hate. Its deranged arachnid limbs cling to an enormous door. It’s hanging in front of you upside down, its head is level with your own and its body is dangling above you. It leers at you with its terrible white eyes. It tastes you with its thick black tongue. It smells you with its deep, inescapable nostrils.
The door behind it looks new. Its wood paneling is a uniform soft amber. There are no cracks or knots. The only imperfections on its surface are the pockmarks left by the creatures restless pacing. You can see a golden light shimmering through its keyhole.
The door adjoins the ends of a gate that stretches exhaustively in both directions, enveloping the land ahead of you. This is the only way through. You must confront this monster.
“I hate you!” it screams as it chaotically dashes across the door.
“I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I HATE YOU!”
Antje’s hate has become a large, looming presence over the both of you. As long as its shadow darkens your relationship she will never completely forgive you. So you need to contend with it. And that will not be easy. Getting past this gatekeeper is the final trial in your journey. It will demand your most adroit maneuvering.
Anger, especially the protracted anger that gestates into hate, is a big expensive emotion. It costs a lot of time and energy to maintain. And like any expensive purchase the buyer is desperate for assurance that he hasn’t wasted his money. So he justifies the purchase by inflating its value.
Antje has spent so much energy being mad at you that those feelings have become an important part of her. They are now a great expense that she is emotionally invested in maintaining. She needs to believe that her hate is valuable, but more importantly that it has been worth the expense, before she’ll ever be ready to give it up.
So your apology needs to convey that worth. It must convincingly justify the inception of Antje’s hate, explicitly acknowledge its importance and then faintly suggest its retirement. First give her the validation she needs to fulfill the emotional obligation that is keeping her angry. Tell Antje that you appreciate the value of her feelings, that your error justified their purchase and you would have gotten just as angry if this happened to you. She was right to get angry with you (what you did was terrible) and it was important for her to stay mad (so you knew how much she was hurt).
After saying that her anger has served its purpose you can softly propose that it is no longer necessary. You now fully understand how hurtful you were and will never err in the same way again. But also understand that you are just humbly presenting one reason that she does not need to stay mad at you. You are not arguing that she should stop being mad at you. That is entirely her decision, one that you are not in any place to interfere with. Speak softly.
There is one last component you require to complete your apology. You need a sweetly uplifting statement, something that will elevate you two out of the emotional canyon your poignant confession burrowed into. A soft, pillowy balloon of a joke that carries you away from all this seriousness as it simultaneously reveals the enormity of the landscape you are departing. I’m sure you’ll think of something.
Now you have everything you need. You understand your mistake absolutely. You’ve seen it through her perspective; you believe that what you did was wrong and realize why your mistake was so hurtful. You’ve repented for it; you know your faults and how they caused you to screw up. And you appreciate her reaction to it; you empathize with her feelings and understand why they were appropriate. All that’s left is for you to tell her. Ready?
Then approach the gate. Meet the snarling monsters gaze resolutely. Stand before the beast, face it bravely, and recount each step of your journey.
“Antje I’d like to talk to you about something that’s been bothering me for a while now. It’s the way I acted to you after your friend’s funeral. It was horrible. It was callous, vindictive and selfish.”
“Shut up!” The beast screams at you.
“You were hurt and instead of comforting you, like you deserved to have been and like I really wanted to, I only thought of myself and lashed out at you and made you feel worse. I’m sorry.”
“Stop it!”
“But what’s bothered me as much as how I hurt you is what I made you believe. The way I acted would make you believe, make anyone believe, that your emotions aren’t important to me. That’s not at all true. I care about you and I care about your feelings.”
“Stop talking!”
“So I’m sorry I made you believe that I didn’t care and I’m sorry that I never told you that I did. It was really wrong and you deserve more than me just repeatedly saying I’m sorry.”
“Be QUIET!”
“So to truly convey my apology, I baked you this pie. (Reveal pie that you have baked for her) It’s cherry. The tart sweetness seemed appropriate for the circumstances.”
You hear nothing. You see no change. The door has not moved. The monster is silent. A minute passes. Still nothing.
It’s not going to happen. You apology didn’t work. Maybe too much time has passed. Maybe you spent too much time idling on the grey road while Antje’s hate prepared for your arrival. Maybe you passed through Repentance to quickly. Maybe you’re still filthy from the swamp.
It doesn’t matter. You’ve failed. You will never enter that gate, frolic in those fields or find pleasure in those prairies. Antje will never forgive you. And she will never, ever, play with your penis.
So turn around. Return to the damp grey road. Prepare to walk its path forever; never forgetting what could have been yours. The hills will remind you. Everyday, up and down. Seeing what you can’t touch. Smelling what you can’t taste.
Look at your hands. See them meekly grasp the cherry pie, a mighty weapon rendered impotent, a broken bleeding failure staining your hands red. Look beneath them. See your thin sad shadow lay before you. See it reach to where you are banished. See it stretch towards that retched road; a bony finger pointing at your purgatory.
Yet keep watching.
See your shadow grow blacker and larger. See it eclipse the land ahead; the road, Repentance, the swamp. See it swallow you failure. See it consume your whole journey. And feel the warmth on the back of your neck.
A shimmering golden light is throbbing through the gate door.
“AHHH! NO! NO! You need me! I protect you!” the monster screams. Its body is convulsing. Its limbs are thunderously pounding the door beneath them, splintering its wood surface. Light begins to beam out from the cracks.
“He’s going to hurt you again! Don’t let him in!” Its furious stomping is breaking more of the door. More light bursts through, searing the monsters pale sticky skin.
Now a thunderous cracking noise deafens the monsters screams. The door falls forward, crushing the beast, burying Antje’s hate.
It’s over.
The monster is dead.
Your quest has ended.
A glorious world lies before you.
The gate is open Mike.
Enter it.
