Comedian Adam Carolla has remarked upon having long-lost friends call him to apologize for old harms, because they’re in a 12-step program, and they’ve hit the step wherein they’re supposed to make amends to the people they’ve wronged. He said that more often than not, he’d forgotten the incident. Now that it was dragged out of the past, it’s on his mind again, so while the person apologizing feels better, he feels worse.
Of course, he’s exaggerating to be comical, and YMMV.
I used to run a shelter and I could always tell when people were on that step because they kept apologizing for things that I didn’t know they did and rules I didn’t know they broke. It was mostly cute and nice to see them in treatment. I figured I was the easy one to practice on.
Interesting thread.
An old friend from school got in touch with me a couple of years ago, on the pretext of wanting to get back in touch. She sent a very heartfelt email apologising for some not very nice things she did to me whilst we were at high school.
I sent her back an email thanking her for her apology, and telling her some stuff about my life since high school. She has never responded.
I feel a bit miffed, to be honest. If she had simply wanted to get in touch with me to say sorry, that would have been fine. But she made out that she wanted to get back in regular touch. Clearly, she didn’t, she wanted to say her words and that was it.
So, think about why you actually want to get in touch with them. Do you really want an on-going relationship or is this more about closure for you?
If it’s about the closure, then send them a nice email but make it clear what your intentions are.
Just my two pence worth. 
Great advice sandra_nz. Thanks.
I just sent a chapter of memoirs (a long sucker–87 pages) to my girlfriend from college. We haven’t spoken in 30 years, mainly because I broke up with her very badly, three separate times, in fact (freshman, sophomore and junior year). I found her address on the Internet, mailed her my account of my college dating of which she was the final 15 pages, and said that I thought she might enjoy reading this, painful as it might be, just to find out how poorly I think my own past behavior reflects on me, and to offer apologies for treating her much more callously than she deserved to be treated.
To my delight, she wrote me back a few weeks later, told me that we were both young and foolish, and we’ve been corresponding ever since (I mailed the memoir chapter a little after New Years). I think she feels validated by my admitting to having been a total jerk, and I feel GREAT now that someone whom I’ve thought of correctly as hating my guts all these years being understanding and generous and kind to me. This was one of the best things I’ve ever done.
Agreed. Frankly, I’d just be weirded out if someone contacted me 20 years after the fact to apolofize for something mild. I’d probably accept the apology, but wonder why they felt the need for it, since I would’ve gotten over the event long before that.
If it was a major wrongdoing they wanted to apologize for, it would make more sense to me.
Okay - that went surprisingly well:
I went ahead and emailed him, basically a 1-sentence “is this you?” but since we were in a band at one point in college, I added a PS asking if he was still involved in music.
He got back to me pleased that I had reached out - he had thought of me and wondered where I had ended up - but he mostly wanted to talk about music. He is in a popular local band and really excited about it and obviously wanted to share.
Based on his response, I felt I had a much better sense of how to approach what I wanted to say. I got back to him with a general update - at the end, I included:
All good. In this case, the experiment seems to have paid off…