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I wanted to talk a bit about what I think constitutes an appropriate apology. I once received an apology letter from an emotionally abusive ex that I felt so insulted by that the best response was a dispassionate one-liner. What made it so bad?
First, it didn’t address the ways in which I truly felt wronged. And even worse, the apology centered around him—how he felt. How he felt terrible. Inviting me to do yet more emotional labor. What about how *I* felt??
People aren’t looking for you to say you feel bad. People want to feel understood. If you truly understand how awful you made someone feel and why, you’re much less likely to engage in the same destructive behaviors. And you’ve validated their experience of the interaction.
So: focus on empathy. Really try to see how your words/actions affected the other person and verbalize that. “When I did abc, you must have felt xyz...” Be specific. Don’t equivocate. Do lay out steps for how you will behave differently and hold yourself accountable.
Does this mean the other person will accept your apology? Does this mean they will forgive you? Nope. But they’ll probably feel better and that’s the whole point: an apology is NOT about you.
That said, people tend to have a startling capacity for forgiveness. We want to believe that people can grow and change. We don’t want to hold on to anger forever (which is why “die mad about it” always sounds to me like a curse 
). We just want to feel heard.
). We just want to feel heard.
