It occurs to me that nearly every time the words ‘I’m Sorry’ are uttered, it is not a statement of fact, but rather a gesture of apology.
Yet, isn’t being sorry supposed to be a state of mind? (and not a short way of saying “I shouldn’t have done what I did”)
If so, what does being sorry feel like?
Like most emotions, guilt is best defined by the actions it impels the person experiencing it to commit. Anger makes you want to attack; fear makes you want to run or hide; lust makes you want to rip out clothes and make the two-backed beast.
In that vein, I’d say that, when you trulyfeel sorry, you are seized with the impulse to saytht you are sorry, and to make amends, independent of any coercion or pressure from any other person, including the person you believe you have wronged.
If you’re looking for personal feelings, for me, whenever I’ve felt sorry, it’s one of two things: Either it’s an emptiness that fills quickly with guilt unless I do or say something to make ammends, or it’s a knowledge that the person I’m talking to needs some sort-of connection to someone (usually this is the ‘I’m sorry’ when I hear someone else’s bad news), and a sudden need to connect with them so their own pain is lessened.
It means you’re not in love.
Queue music… Fade out…
Regret with a sense of personal culpability in most cases* and a desire to make amends by an apology to the person who was harmed.
*Although not always. You can be sorry somebody’s mother died but you’re not going to feel culpable unless you ran over her with a car.
For me I feel sad. Embarrassed. Scared. Worried. Regret.
If I hurt someone or do something that would warrant a “I’m Sorry”, I often fear if I have changed whatever relationship that was existing. When my actions result in something changing or not being the same, I am scared shitless that things won’t reset. Go back to the way they were before. Embarrassed because I should have know better. Sad because I hurt a person or person that I care deeply about by my own actions or words.
If I say, “I’m Sorry”, there is almost often the feeling of fear.
It’s a mix of feelings for me.
>It means you’re not in love.
Nope. Not working for me. When Love Story came out, I saw it, and fell in love with Ali McGraw like I guess I was supposed to. But I don’t think it works, coming from somebody named Boyo Jim from Wisconsin.
Where were we?
Oh, “sorry”, of course.
Sorry feels, to me, sad like the opposite of content, rather than like the opposite of happy. And it feels a bit sickening. And, it tends to displace most other emotions.
Then I guess “sorry” makes me want the other person to shut up and go away. 
This, only with a rather sickening feeling in my stomach.
Interesting description (this is the earnest “I apologize” sorry and not the “I feel compassion towards your pain” sorry). When I feel truly sorry I feel grovelling and pathetic because I know whatever happened can’t be fixed with ‘sorry’ but there’s nothing else to be done-- or horrified that the person slighted won’t accept (cash, labor, future of good works, whatever) to make things even and will instead make the ‘sorry’ suffice, which of course it won’t.
I try, like most human beings, to avoid situations in which I have to apologize, but when I do commit some offense, I do apologise, sincerely.
Being sorry for me hurts on two levels:
FML
Assuming this is not just an expression of sympathy, it is a very nasty combination of shame or guilt and (assuming you’re not just sorry you were caught) a horrible realization that once again you so totally misread yourself or the situation that you completely missed the fact that you were causing another person pain/extra work/whatever it is that pissed them off and probably the very fact that they were in pain or having extra work or being pissed off. In other words, you’re not only ashamed of having done (or not done) whatever, you’re ashamed of not realizing that you didn’t and that the other person was bothered by it. In extreme cases, I’ve been near suicidal over things like that, feeling that I would just never, ever manage to get the self control I needed to let myself loose on an unsuspecting public. Like the time a guy under my management complained to my manager, saying that I had driven him into therapy. The only thing that saved me at all was that in his complaint, he stated that he’d had this problem with several managers before me, which made me suspicious (but not certain) that the problem lay elsewhere. This was on a Friday, and did not make for a pleasant weekend.
Tact is the first syllable in ‘Tactical’.
It is to forestall reaction, while regrouping for another push.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Eades, but I think You’ll find the line is ‘alas poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio.’”
Yes, I’ll go to the principal again, but we’re all dumber for having listened to you.