Your going to apologize by text and you expect that to be good enough?! :smack: Man up and tell her in person, or don’t tell her at all! :dubious:
It depends on the circumstances. Sometimes a written apology is better - it doesn’t put as much pressure on the person receiving it. They can read it, think it over, and decide if and how they want to respond. It’s generally the best way to apologize to somebody you haven’t seen in a while.
If the apology is going to a person you have personal contact with on a regular basis, then you’re generally better off going with a face-to-face apology.
And if you’re apologizing for something you did to a person before a crowd, you might consider apologizing in front of a crowd. Although this can be tricky - you don’t want to turn the apology into a second public ordeal for the person. If you’re not certain, make it a private apology.
Given that your behavior was not as one-sided as your OP might have led one to believe and that you’ve already run into her since your breakup and told her that you were over all that stuff and gotten a “yeah, me too” in return, you’re fine. She doesn’t think of you as a monster, you were just a guy she was with before she decided to sabotage / create drama by making out with your friend in front of you. The ensuing drama was not a surprise. Any attempts to apologize now are going to look like (and let’s be honest, probably are) an effort on your part to relive/rekindle the drama dance.
Everyone has moments where they’d be nicer or handle themselves better if they got a do-over. Sitting and dwelling on them, or worse trying to go back and fix them now is a terrible way to live. Let it go and move on. Apologizing won’t change what you did, or what she did, or make you feel better five years from now when you think about how you acted back then.
I agree with Giraffe. After you saw her the last time, what more is there to “resolve”. She’s over it, you’re over it. Time to move on.
I am glad you have chosen as you have.
Do it, but do it in person. It will mean a helluva lot more to her than just getting a text message.
And kudos to you for recognizing what you did was wrong and trying to make amends for it.
I still think you should do it. You’re much more likely to regret NOT doing it someday than you will regret actually doing it.
Do it!
Nice try!
Second cynic here.
Post seconded .
I think you have your answer there. If you’re alright with letting it go, then…let it go. If another opportunity in person shows itself, then by all means, take it. But..yeah. You’re closer to the situation than anyone else, and if it feels alright to just let it go, it sounds like that is for the best.
There are two steps in Alcoholics Anonymous’s 12-step program that I think address situations like this:
I think everyone, not just alcoholics, ought to keep #9 in mind, especially if you can answer yes to the following three questions:
- is it truthful?
- is it kind?
- is it helpful?
So, truthfully, you feel bad, but . . . you’re not really doing this out of loving-kindness, are you? And it doesn’t really sound like it would be helpful to her - which is the point. You don’t apologize to make yourself feel better. You apologize to make someone else feel better.
And if you’re not doing it to help her, then there’s a very real risk that you’re going to run afoul of Rule #9.
You said you don’t want to drag her into your drama. You also said that she’s stated she’s over all that. Unless you have some compelling evidence that she’s not over all that, and even more compelling evidence that an apology from you would help her get over all that, you need to let it go.
Chalk this one up to Life Experience and make a commitment to be a better person. It works out better for everyonet hat way.
I apologized to a girl that used to be picked on by everyone first in my elementary, then in Junior High. I didn’t pick on her, but i didn’t stand up for her, even though i knew it was wrong.
I called her once, years ago (at least ten years after the last time I’d seen her) and told her I was sorry, she had never been anything but nice and I wish I had been stronger. I wanted her to know it wasn’t about her, she did nothing to cause up, so there was nothing she could do to stop it.
I had no agenda except that I thought she should know someone had known it was wrong, but was too weak to stop it.
I’m sure that in your mind, you assumed that your noble gesture would make her feel better. And I’m here to say that that that is a pretty bold assumption. It’s quite possible that with all that time and distance, she had moved on, and was finally in a good head space. Then you call out of the blue, wipe your conscience clean, and hang up feeling better about yourself.
Before calling, did you consider how SHE’d feel afterward? Do you think that the knowledge that you sat by, mutely, while she endured years of abuse, is really making her feel better? I’m thinking not. I’m thinking that it’s quite possible that dredging up a bunch of really painful memories put her in a funk that took her weeks to get over.
This is why people really ought to consider what their agenda is before offering up out-of-the-blue apologies. Sometimes we can’t undo the wrongs we’ve done and living with a guilty conscience is our best penance. If you really do care about another person, sometimes the kindest thing you can do for her is to leave them in peace.
I’m thinking yes, because its happened to me. When you’ve been abused, the simple acknowledgement that other people saw it and knew it was wrong at the time is validating. MORE people need to say “that sucked for you and you didn’t deserve it.” Many victims of abuse, bullying and harassment blame themselves.
Some of the BEST things to have happened to me are when other people validate that bad treatment of me was not deserved. I would hate to think that other people are not getting that validation because it might bring up painful memories - you know what, those painful memories are always there…once you are validated, they are less painful when they come up because you passed a playground, or heard a name you haven’t heard for years. And if those memories don’t intrude on you in the course of your life, then it probably won’t be that painful when someone brings them up.
I also had one guy who harassed me apologize ten years later. And he said “for years I thought you were over reacting…and then I talked to someone who made me see it from your side. I’m sorry…I thought I was flirting.” It was nice. His excuse helped me understand that what happened between us had been miscommunication - but at the same time, he was willing to take responsibility for it, since the communication was one way - he wasn’t hearing me say “no.” Since we are in the same circle of friends, the apology was needed. We’ll never be good buddies, but he now knows I’m not a bitch and I now know he wasn’t intentional - and his experience with me and his new awareness has changed his interactions with women.
"I’d like to hear “I’m sorry too” but I don’t think I’ll get it. "
Drop it. Permanently. You have a huge agenda. And you are back to “didn’t really deserve” which lays some of the blame on her, which is not a pure apology. Drop it for her sake, drop it for your own sake, back away slowly and don’t look back.
Yeah, the time to apologize would have been in person then.
I dated a girl in college and it ended kind of shitty in that she had some kind of episode and started blowing me off and acting like a jerk towards me (I later found out that she cut out 90% of everyone she was friends with in addition to me, so something was definitely). Years later she came into my work and apologized to me. I really appreciated it.
Having been on the receiving end of quite a bit of shitty behavior from men throughout the years, I would really appreciate it if one of them contacted me and said “Now that I’ve grown up, I realize what a jerk I was and would like to apologize for X, Y and Z. You didn’t deserve that treatment. I was wrong, and I’m ashamed I ever was That Guy.” In fact, the one time someone apologized like that to me (no agenda, he wasn’t looking to get back with me, we were never together…he pulled a chair out from under me in sixth grade as a prank and I got hurt and cried in front of the class and they all laughed at me)…at our tenth year reunion he told me he had always felt bad about embarassing and hurting me like that just to get a laugh. It was nice to hear.)
However, that being said (and I think if we took a vote, more women would said apologize and men would say let it go) a dear male friend recently tried to apologize and clear the air with someone he was involved with many years before his marriage, as a sort of “now that I’m nearing the end of my life I’d like to tie up loose ends” kind of way, with no intention at all of re-establishing any kind of relationship, and she slapped him with a restraining order. Which reinforced to him what a bullet he had dodged but now he has to be careful of where he goes and keep track of her performances so that he doesn’t accidentally come within 1000 yards of her…and she has, after many, many years, started doing a lot of performances in our area! He cynically thinks she is now trying to trap him into violating the restraining order (by going about his business and attending the church he has always gone to and the libraries he has always gone to) and he is constantly on edge. Plus several of his friends who were also friends with her believed her lies, and he was too much of a gentleman to correct them, and one actually died thinking my friend was this total jerk…a man my friend had known and admired his entire life. He finally wrote several of us a letter explaining everything that had happened 35 years ago, and what he had done recently, and how she had reacted, because he didn’t want us to come up against her craziness and not have his side of the story.
So tread carefully. If she was not a psycho before, you may be okay. And I still say do it.