| > 'm not sure how you handled the experience or what the general case is but I remember for me, for a while I was genuinely sorry for hurting them every time and then it eventually switched over to me just wanting to say whatever it took to stop the episode. It's actually a fair bit more complicated than that but basically the point of the apology wasn't really about remorse or making amends; for the other person it was about control and for me it was just a survival technique. For me the relationship ended basically the day after I refused to apologize again, because at this point the pattern went to ridiculous extreme; apologizing then would require me to explicitly lie to myself about what I believe is true, and I do value truth very much. > If you truly feel bad about somebody being offended, does whether or not you think they're "right" to be so really affect whether you feel bad about being a partial cause for that state? Or is it more that whether or not you deem them "right" really affects whether you feel bad about them being offended in the first place? I say (or do) something. The other party gets offended. I will feel bad regardless of who is "right". The situation sucks, yes, but I care about feelings and internal emotional state of others much more. Can't help it, empathy turns itself on automatically. I feel compelled to resolve the issue as soon as possible not just because there's someone angry in front of me, but because I genuinely feel bad about causing them to feel bad. That's my weak spot that was used to take advantage of me once. I worked hard for that experience to not destroy my empathy. Instead, I settled on following defense mechanism: if I start to feel that someone is playing me this way on purpose, I pause the situation and calmly but explicitly note that I feel I'm being emotionally manipulated and do not wish for it to continue. So far it only happened once, and the person involved backed down immediately, and the problem did not occur again with them. Public apology situations are usually different than private ones, but the manipulative element can be still present. Looking at Twitter outrages in particular, it's more often present than not - probably due to the fact that the most outraged people are the ones who have absolutely nothing to do with the issue. Here, outrage is far too often used as a tool to control the words and actions of the accused party. |