While I agree that apologizing “that you got offended” or “for whatever it is I did” (which has the clear subtext of “I still don’t think I did anything wrong”) is effectively a non-apology, it is still not of zero value.
It’d be different if you’d pressed him for an apology for a specific act, like “that time you called my children prison-bound brats in front of me, my wife and my parents”, and this is all you got. But given that he’s coming to you with this of his own initiative, it is still an overture for re-establishing a social relationship. You may not want that, which is fine, but it doesn’t make it meaningless.
Take me, as a case in point. I refuse to apologize for something I did that I do not feel was wrong. If I apologize for something it is an act of genuine regret and contrition.
I’ve had post-argument arguments with my wife about this, where I apologized “for getting so angry” and doing something unacceptably physical, such as slamming doors or throwing some item of contention in the garbage. She pointed out (correctly) that I was not, in fact, apologizing for my position in the argument, because I wasn’t changed on that. My apology was not a “you’re right, and I was wrong” apology, but acknowledging that I had crossed a boundary that I should not have.
Your friend may be in a similar position. He knows you’re upset about his being “disrespectful”. I don’t know what exactly that means, not recalling reading any earlier threads of yours on this topic, but perhaps he’s got a sarcastic or abrasive sense of humor that grates on you for certain topics. So this non-apology could amount to saying he’s not going to change that part of who he is, but if you can accept and overlook that, let’s just move on.
I don’t think this is always true. The subtext of any apology is “I’d like to put this behind us” and that can certainly be sincere. There are also instances where the offended party can’t state exactly what the offense was, but the offender understands that something went wrong and knows he is partly to blame.
On occasion I have said, “I’m sorry for my part in this.” I’m not shouldering all the blame, I’m not trying to apportion blame to anyone else, and I may not agree with the offended party as to what I should be sorry about (if we even agree on the facts). I’ve had third parties to these situations say to me, ‘what have YOU got to apologize for?’ But I know that disagreements are rarely 100% anyone’s fault and I want to move on.
And you know what? So does the other person. I’ve never had anyone shoot at my white flag.
Actually there have been repercussions. I just abridged the story massively for the OP because we’re talking 20 years of history. You can trust me, he actually did pay attention, because usually I was giving advice about why other people were pissed with him.
He has burned through good friends in the past, but he used to have a job that required him to move a lot, so he would just start new and collect a whole new batch of friends, and the old one were “out of sight, out of mind”. I’m one of the very few “old friends” he had. Things are starting to catch up with him though because now he’s in one place.
How I wish that was the case! Actually, my dear douchebaggy friend is basically just testing the waters to see if we’re still pissed. Over the years I’ve noticed that rather than reform, he tries to just “wait until they get over it” and then try to pick up where things left off before they went sour.
Unfortunately, as per the OP it’s been a long-term issue. (Again, the OP was abridged because it would take way too long to go into all the subtleties of his douchitude.)
In all honesty, he’s not a bad guy at heart, he just has some infuriatingly self-centered behaviors and treats people like crap in small ways. He’s been told for years that he can’t pull that kind of shit with people. And he knows damn well he can’t pull that shit with me. He knew straight up that if he crossed the line, I wouldn’t put up with it.
Think of it this way: you can take tiny doses of poison and be relatively immune to it over time… But in the long-term, you’ve eventually got to realize that you’d be better off without the poison at all.
That’s fair enough. A lot of time hurt feelings or misunderstanding can be tough to articulate. Particularly if the problem boils down to behavior or accidental cluelessness rather than a particular action. “I’m sorry for my part in this” is fair in some of those instances.