The Apology That Actually Repaired Something

Sundar and I had been colleagues and gradually friends at a firm in Hyderabad for two years when I said something in a group setting that was intended as humour and that landed, as I understood almost immediately from his expression, as something considerably sharper and more personal than I had meant.

The intended target of the humour had been a shared experience. The actual target, as he experienced it, was something vulnerable he had shared with me privately. I had used something he had trusted me with as material and I had done it in front of other people.

I said sorry in the moment in the way of someone who wants the discomfort of the situation to end. He nodded and the group moved on and I knew, with the specific clarity of someone who has made a genuine error and has received a polite acceptance of an inadequate response, that the thing was not resolved.

I sat with it for two days. The apology I gave on the third day was different from the one I had given in the moment and it was the difference that mattered.

I did not lead with my intention, which is the most common error in apology: I did not say I had not meant to hurt him, because the information about my intention was not the information that addressed the hurt.

I led with what I understood I had done and why it had been wrong specifically. I said I had used something private in a public way and that regardless of what I had meant to do, the effect was a betrayal of a trust he had extended to me.

I then did not offer an explanation that would have moved the conversation back toward my innocence. I sat with what I had said and let him respond. He said thank you.

We are closer now than before the incident, which is something I did not expect and which I think is the specific outcome of an apology that is genuinely for the other person rather than for the resolution of your own discomfort.