Latest / Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship / #166 - Friendship Repair: How to Say I'm Sorry, Accept Apologies, and Ask for One (Marjorie Ingall)

Transcript

#166 - Friendship Repair: How to Say I'm Sorry, Accept Apologies, and Ask for One (Marjorie Ingall) · Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship

0:00
[SPEAKER_00]: But a good thing about getting older is knowing your self better and being more willing to take the risk for people you love because as you get older you start losing the people you love and saying hey you mattered to me I want to apologize to you I want you to apologize to me can do incredible work in helping us move forward.
0:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Dear Nina Conversations About Friendship.
0:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I am your host, Nina Vazza.
0:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been writing about Friendship for over 10 years, podcasting about it for over 4, you are listening to episode 166.
0:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And it is placed here for a very specific reason, although I want to mention that I know people listen to episodes.
0:40
[SPEAKER_01]: At any time, maybe you just discovered the podcast.
0:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that there's plenty of people who start from the very beginning, which I admire because that's a lot of episodes or people who started the beginning, but also listen to the current one.
0:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're listening to a few of my episodes are usually only around 30 minutes.
0:56
[SPEAKER_01]: That's very doable.
0:57
[SPEAKER_01]: You could start with the most recent one so that you're up to date, but then also go backwards towards the beginning.
1:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And each episode is different, occasionally do an on-core episode and you can note that, it always says on-core, and then decide to keep going.
1:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Although I always redo the intro with something more current about what I'm thinking about at that moment.
1:13
[SPEAKER_01]: So back to the timing of this episode about apologies, how to give an apology and how to accept an apology.
1:20
[SPEAKER_01]: They are equally important parts of friendship.
1:22
[SPEAKER_01]: If you are listening to it on the
1:25
[SPEAKER_01]: day or week that it came out.
1:26
[SPEAKER_01]: It is between the Jewish holidays of Russia, Shana, and Yom Kippur.
1:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't want to go on too long about that at all.
1:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to put a couple links in the show notes that explains this very important time in the Jewish calendar, especially the 10 days between Russia, Shana, and Yom Kippur, that is a very important ripe time in the Jewish year for issuing apologies.
1:47
[SPEAKER_01]: and accepting apologies, really both, but the part that's in your control at first is to issue an apology.
1:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Although I guess it's also in your control to accept one if an apology comes your way.
1:58
[SPEAKER_01]: We also talk in this episode about an apology that does not come your way, when you're waiting for an apology, which I also wrote about extensively over a decade ago, when I was doing a lot more writing for Jewish publications.
2:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It's still one of the favorite things I've ever written.
2:12
[SPEAKER_01]: It still exists on the internet.
2:14
[SPEAKER_01]: There's plenty of essays and articles I've written for websites that are long gone, but this one is still there.
2:19
[SPEAKER_01]: That was for Cavallar.
2:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I will have that in the show note, and that piece I was thinking about, you know, there's some people who owe me an apology.
2:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And what do you do about that?
2:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And my guest today, and I speak about that as well, this idea of how to apologize, how to receive an apology, and how to solicit an apology when you feel your old one.
2:37
[SPEAKER_01]: All really difficult, but full of opportunity, friendship issues.
2:42
[SPEAKER_01]: My guest is the wonderful marching angle who I've admired for a long time.
2:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I invited her on the show because I wanted to talk to her.
2:50
[SPEAKER_01]: She along with her co-author Susan McCarthy wrote, sorry, sorry, sorry.
2:54
[SPEAKER_01]: The case for good apologies.
2:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it was released as a paperback more recently with a different title.
3:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And that title is getting to sorry.
3:02
[SPEAKER_01]: They are also the co-creator of a
3:05
[SPEAKER_01]: website called sorrywatch.com.
3:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Marjorie is also the author of a book called Mammalano's Best What Jewish Mother's Due to Race, Successful Creative, Empathetic, Independent Children.
3:16
[SPEAKER_01]: She often writes about children's books for the New York Times book review.
3:19
[SPEAKER_01]: We talk about one of her favorite ones here.
3:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And she's written for many other magazines and newspapers.
3:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's how I know about her.
3:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I've read her work for a long time.
3:26
[SPEAKER_01]: She's written for tablet and the forward.
3:28
[SPEAKER_01]: She's a columnist for both.
3:29
[SPEAKER_01]: She's written for town and country,
3:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And back in the day, this is amazing.
3:37
[SPEAKER_01]: She was the senior writer and books editor of the late, great, sassy magazine.
3:43
[SPEAKER_01]: If you are my age, my age is late 40s, you lived by sassy magazine.
3:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't speak for everyone, but I should say, I can speak for myself.
3:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I loved, say I see magazine, just saying sassy fills me with nostalgia.
3:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I will have all the ways you could find Marjorie in the show notes including her book with Susan.
3:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's get to it.
4:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's learn how to apologize.
4:02
[SPEAKER_01]: There are six steps that Marjorie's going to tell us and how to accept an apology and how to solicit one.
4:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi, Margie.
4:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Dear Nina.
4:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi, Nina.
4:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so glad to be here.
4:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I've heard you on various shows.
4:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I just always been a fan.
4:15
[SPEAKER_01]: You are a very reasonable, straightforward thinker.
4:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I admire your work real long time.
4:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, thank you.
4:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would like to say that your Midwestern accent makes me feel right at home as somebody who married into a family from Milwaukee.
4:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just feel very comfortable right away.
4:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
4:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you're out there in the East Coast.
4:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so interesting because I don't hear my accent, but people do come into on it.
4:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's fair.
4:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And I see like my Rhode Island only comes out when I've had a couple of drinks.
4:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, buddy.
4:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So before we get into how to help listeners apologize well and receive apologies, well, which are two different skills.
4:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, we're going to have to slice those up.
4:51
[SPEAKER_01]: How did you get into this.
4:54
[SPEAKER_01]: beat the contest when I tell people and people ask me how I get into friendship.
4:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, I'm a writer.
4:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a therapist.
4:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I never pretend I'm a therapist.
5:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I quickly tell people when I'm a guest elsewhere.
5:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a therapist.
5:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a writer who ended up on a friendship beat over 10 years ago.
5:08
[SPEAKER_01]: How did you end up on the apology beat?
5:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'll be just quickly respond to what you said and I think that writers actually make really good people talking about specific topics because we read so much research and we're able to see it without bias because that's what we've been trained to do and we're really good at synthesizing so for me the apology stuff came both because as you mentioned we both come from a Jewish background.
5:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Every year, the art of apology and thinking about how to apologize well is a thing that is on our radar at the high holidays.
5:42
[SPEAKER_00]: When I was writing for the Jewish press, I was writing about it.
5:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought about it myself every year and when I had a child, I know everyone says their kid was feral, but my kid was really feral and spent like pretty much all of pre-K in the consequences chair.
6:01
[SPEAKER_00]: to understand how other people feel and how to reign in your worst self is really closely tied to apology and when you think about how to teach kids about something that actually makes you think hard about what are the real steps behind it.
6:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that makes a lot of sense.
6:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I have a very grown-up and nuanced concept of apologies and yet my husband accuses me of being a terrible apologizer.
6:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I know, it's really a problem.
6:30
[SPEAKER_01]: He is a good apologizer.
6:31
[SPEAKER_01]: He does apologize quickly, but I actually sometimes feel it is too quickly.
6:36
[SPEAKER_00]: You are probably correct, because this is research on the timing of apologies.
6:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes when people rush to apologize, they're not processing what they did and they aren't giving you time to process what they did.
6:52
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a researcher at Oberlin named Cynthia Frans, who studies the timing of apologies.
6:59
[SPEAKER_00]: She has found people need the time to process.
7:03
[SPEAKER_00]: You would need time to say, here's why it upset me.
7:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you need time to say, oh, I think I understand why it upset her.
7:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you apologize too quickly, the term we often use is spiritual bypassing when you're rushing to get to the resolution
7:22
[SPEAKER_00]: you're not really addressing the underlying issue when you're doing that by passing.
7:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's what I'm feeling.
7:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like a needle in the balloon.
7:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like it's now like I want to walk around angry for a long period of time, but maybe just a little bit give me like a little bit of time with my like puffed up right.
7:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And then like he comes along with the little needle to be like, I'm sorry.
7:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And he means it.
7:40
[SPEAKER_01]: He says it genuinely, but it does feel fast.
7:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I think ultimately at its core being a good apologizer is about both listening and about thinking about what the other person wants as opposed to what you want, and those can be really challenging.
7:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's a good point.
7:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And we'll mostly focus on friendship here.
7:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I just had to bring that up about Brian and he listens to every episode so he'll hear this and he may take it up with you.
8:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Personally, I'm Ryan.
8:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so let's get to what do that we just answered one of them.
8:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I was going to ask you what people generally get wrong about apologies.
8:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was one I guess that could be too quick at bypassing like you said.
8:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And like exact virtual spiritual bypassing.
8:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It can be really hard to apologize well.
8:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we ought to frame good apologies.
8:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes in our culture, we talk about apologizing as something weak.
8:28
[SPEAKER_00]: and it's not.
8:28
[SPEAKER_00]: It's something incredibly strong when it's done well because it is not in our nature.
8:33
[SPEAKER_00]: We function by basically seeing ourselves as good people and being able to go through the world thinking of ourselves as the main character.
8:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes when we have done something that warrants in apology, it means we have to see ourselves as the villain in someone else's story.
8:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is really hard to do.
8:51
[SPEAKER_00]: being able to put yourself in the position of the other person is not as I said with my federal child.
8:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not something that we do automatically.
8:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It's something that has to be learned.
9:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And our tendency is to immediately reconcile the disconnect between, well, I'm a good person with, oh, I did a bad thing in favor of a good person.
9:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So, oh, it wasn't that bad.
9:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, they did something
9:21
[SPEAKER_01]: All that makes sense to me.
9:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I know I felt that way myself where and I have done something that nothing major even just a little thing But I know it probably hurt someone's feelings.
9:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I do immediately think to myself Oh, but I did so many good things over the years and doesn't that come for anything because we talk a lot in relationships I've talked about it on this show about sort of that deposit in the withdrawal concept of a relationship of friendship
9:42
[SPEAKER_01]: being on the other side of it, I really do try to urge people not to be so easily offended, because you don't feel like you're constantly requiring people to apologize to you.
9:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you feel like you are constantly owed an apology from not to people, I do think it might be sort of a negative way of looking at the world that you're looking for people to offend you, but because I have that belief, I think it does make me a little less sensitive sometimes, that sometimes I do owe an apology, even though I've done a lot of good things.
10:09
[SPEAKER_00]: right.
10:09
[SPEAKER_00]: We live in a world that has been so speeded up that our reactions to everything tend to be really knee-jerk.
10:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the notion of taking deep breaths and offering other people and yourself a little bit of grace, a little bit of most of us are just doing the best we can, really goes a long way.
10:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you really are offended as opposed to like that was a I can let that slide in the interest
10:38
[SPEAKER_00]: sort of soliciting an apology can be really difficult, but it also can be such a friendship builder.
10:44
[SPEAKER_01]: it's a gift you're giving somebody the opportunity to explain themselves who hasn't had a time when years later somebody brings something up and you kind of go why didn't you ask me at the time I would have told you I hadn't sleep the night before or I didn't hear it correctly I didn't it's the opposite of a gift it's like you're punishing your friend for something I think if you're going to let something go you have to truly let it go it's that fair to let it go
11:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, that is an old thing from the tomod that we say, don't keep berating a child, either punish him or forgive him.
11:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I love that.
11:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I also, when you were saying about when somebody tells you that they've been holding onto something for so long, my co-author on this book.
11:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Susan McCarthy came up with this really great example of a turn-of-the-century Lithuanian psychologist named Bluma Zygernick.
11:36
[SPEAKER_00]: After whom the Zygernick effect is named, she found from hanging out in those cafes in Europe, drinking things with Schlag on them.
11:45
[SPEAKER_00]: She discovered that waiters could remember everything a whole table ordered until they paid their check.
11:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And the minute the check was paid, they forgot everything.
11:57
[SPEAKER_00]: are less remembered than incomplete ones.
12:00
[SPEAKER_00]: So if something is weighing on you a few months ago, somebody came to me to apologize for something that happened in college.
12:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And that I remembered it after he told me that he had been carrying this for, you know, I don't want to tell you how many years, when you apologize for the thing that has been weighing on you for such a long time, that can help you forget it.
12:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, so interesting.
12:22
[SPEAKER_01]: You can move on.
12:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
12:24
[SPEAKER_00]: In this case, you had forgotten it.
12:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I had forgotten it, but it was something, he didn't, he was really upset.
12:29
[SPEAKER_00]: We were freshmen, we were 18.
12:31
[SPEAKER_00]: He wanted to borrow my notes for an exam.
12:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I said no because I needed them.
12:36
[SPEAKER_00]: He just hectored me and he hectored me and hectored me.
12:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said fine, take it, and he threw the notebook at me.
12:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And it caught my lip.
12:44
[SPEAKER_00]: it was bad, but I also forgot.
12:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, 18 is a kid.
12:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew he was also going through a hard time.
12:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I was so eager and quick to forgive him because again, what a gift.
12:54
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't somebody I talked to a lot.
12:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want him to feel bad about it and I hope that he has forgotten about it.
12:59
[SPEAKER_00]: All of his ironic effect completed tasks easier to forget than in complete ones.
13:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It makes sense that till you get to the point that you can forget about it, it is going to land you.
13:09
[SPEAKER_01]: The apology might be the only way to get to the forgetting part of you.
13:12
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't force you.
13:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if you're worried that you won't be forgiven, you will still be helped by the attempt.
13:18
[SPEAKER_01]: That's very powerful.
13:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope people let that in.
13:20
[SPEAKER_01]: It isn't always for the other person.
13:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, yes, it'd be nice that the other person, obviously, if they can be released, if they've been carrying that with them, too, but either way, you give the apology for yourself, like unburden yourself a little bit.
13:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there ever a time when it's too selfish to do the apology that it would hurt the other person too much to bring up the thing?
13:41
[SPEAKER_00]: there are some things that are unforgivable.
13:44
[SPEAKER_00]: People's definitions of what is unforgivable may differ, but let's go with Harvey Weinstein, any kind of apology that he would make toward his victims, how could he make up for what he did for that huge, huge betrayal for that huge power imbalance, if you have done something that you suspect is unforgivable and you really want to do the work of
14:10
[SPEAKER_00]: do not force the person to come face-to-face with you, do not make the person hear your voice, and you are going to have to live with not being forgiven, which can be really difficult, because sometimes people pursue and pursue and pursue.
14:23
[SPEAKER_00]: At some point, you have become the aggressor when you do that, and you've got to let it go, and you've got to have just sit with the consequences.
14:30
[SPEAKER_01]: That's good advice because I was going to ask you to, um, in terms of the form of an apology because then we still will, we'll get to your six steps of apologies, but the form, meaning in person, text, letter.
14:41
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a place for a letter.
14:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, I didn't episode one of my most popular ones.
14:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I've done over 160.
14:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And I do have a lot of like known authors and people like you, people that are out in the world.
14:52
[SPEAKER_01]: This was with my own friend, just a regular person.
14:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, hi.
14:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
14:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
14:57
[SPEAKER_01]: She is a college friend.
14:58
[SPEAKER_01]: who is still one of my best friends, but our episode was about the two or three years we didn't speak after college.
15:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And like she wasn't at my wedding.
15:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I basically ended the friendship.
15:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I was 22.
15:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I had my reasons, but that was a drastic choice I would have made today.
15:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Especially all this work I've done on friendship.
15:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I mean, I just wouldn't do that.
15:15
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so over the top.
15:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And I did it in.
15:17
[SPEAKER_01]: kind of a direct way.
15:19
[SPEAKER_01]: By the way, people ask me all the time, meaning this comes up in many episodes.
15:23
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the best way to end a friendship?
15:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm telling you, the answer is there's no good way.
15:27
[SPEAKER_01]: If you kind of just slowly back away and to kind of do what seems like a kind of thing, which is over time, you don't text us off in this and that, I've had that done to me, and then what that feels like is a mystery.
15:37
[SPEAKER_01]: You kind of feel like you're going crazy.
15:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Wait, are we not as close?
15:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels so unkind to have somebody just...
15:43
[SPEAKER_01]: slowly disappear and not be direct, but nobody likes to be directly told either.
15:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think we should be friends anymore.
15:48
[SPEAKER_01]: There's really no good way.
15:49
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
15:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Is the answer I'm sorry to say that?
15:51
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no good way.
15:52
[SPEAKER_01]: But I did the more direct way.
15:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I really regretted it a few years later.
15:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I wrote her a very long letter, handwritten, long letter to your point.
15:59
[SPEAKER_01]: She did not respond for a long time over a year.
16:02
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that what I did was unforgivable.
16:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I had no reasons for doing what I did, but it was still in her court now.
16:08
[SPEAKER_01]: She got to decide whether to respond and I was really hard
16:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Is she going to is she not going to and then we were invited to a wedding together.
16:16
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a lot of college friends and come and we are in our mid 20s at this point.
16:19
[SPEAKER_01]: We were going to have to see each other and she did forgive me.
16:23
[SPEAKER_01]: She basically emailed me or texted me or I don't even know if we were texting at that point.
16:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Not just us like anyone if we might have been like punching things into flip phones anyway.
16:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I think she was like looking forward to seeing you at the wedding.
16:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's put it behind us.
16:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So she didn't quite give me the satisfaction at that point though.
16:38
[SPEAKER_01]: What did I want?
16:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to go through each paragraph process.
16:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I wanted her to be like, no, this is what I thought at this time.
16:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And I got why you did this, but this is what I would have guessed.
16:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to process years went on and we really did get close again.
16:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, this episode I'm talking about is where we actually processed.
16:55
[SPEAKER_01]: We kind of put it behind us, but I got a little bit of a chance of process on the episode.
16:59
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why I think it's such a powerful one.
17:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's hard to take so much time.
17:02
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I'll leave the time that on the episode list, or you can tell me after we, yeah, I'll send you to which one it is.
17:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'll put it in the show notes for everyone else and it is a good example of a slow burn apology and acceptance of an apology when it comes to sort of the day to day apologies, I love that you wrote a letter because that didn't put her on the spot.
17:24
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, apologizing to someone who's really angry while you're in a car, you do not want that person bailing out the side.
17:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I once had somebody apologised to me in an office while standing with their arms on either side of the door of the office.
17:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And I literally black and they blocked me in and I literally ducked under his arm and went to the women's bathroom because I did not want to hear it.
17:48
[SPEAKER_00]: but you also don't want to make a bigger deal out of something if it wasn't that huge a thing to the other person, but you feel bad.
17:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I always say if you misgender someone in a conversation, that can be either a quick, oh, I'm so sorry.
18:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll get it right next time.
18:03
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't want to turn it around so that the person has to comfort you.
18:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god, I'm so sorry.
18:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I got that wrong.
18:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel terrible.
18:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't make an apology all about you.
18:11
[SPEAKER_00]: It would always in apologies about the other person.
18:13
[SPEAKER_00]: If it was just, you know, something small, you accidentally took credit in a meeting for somebody else's work and it was corrected in the meeting, but you can just send a text afterwards saying, I'm so sorry.
18:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I did that.
18:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to make sure moving forward that I give you the credit for this work.
18:30
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you really screwed up and also if it's a friend, you know, some of us have some older friends, older people really appreciate the value of a letter.
18:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And there is also research on, which I think we can extrapolate to apologies, but a research on how much people love fake you notes.
18:46
[SPEAKER_00]: People really love fake.
18:48
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's way more than we expect them to, especially receiving a printed out thank you note.
18:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're just like, I can send a text or
18:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that's true of written down apologies to that you've really thought about it enough to go find a friggin' stamp.
19:05
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's funny, my mom is the, and she's been a guess on the show a lot to people of her.
19:09
[SPEAKER_01]: She's 80.
19:10
[SPEAKER_01]: She is the queen of the letter.
19:11
[SPEAKER_01]: She's used a letter in two ways.
19:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I think to apologize and also to a solicitor and apology.
19:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd like that expression that you use.
19:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I got that from you to solicit and apology.
19:19
[SPEAKER_01]: She's done it with me.
19:20
[SPEAKER_01]: She was upset with something I did and wrote me a three-page single-space typed letter and I was like,
19:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Probably could have been like one paragraph, and I would be like, you're right, Mom.
19:30
[SPEAKER_00]: But, um, you know, the fact that she whipped out the typing, I mean, oh, yeah.
19:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And Brendan, I'll found them.
19:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Made the printer work, made sure there was ink, you know, she meant it.
19:39
[SPEAKER_01]: She meant it, and I could see how her sending the letter got it off her chest.
19:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I was able to really understand where she was coming from, and yeah, I'm the fan of the letter.
19:48
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a good thing.
19:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I bet people are texting way too often.
19:51
[SPEAKER_01]: As for what I'm guessing, that there's a lot of text apologies going on.
19:54
[SPEAKER_00]: probably.
19:55
[SPEAKER_00]: But there are also a lot of little tiny sins.
19:58
[SPEAKER_00]: If the text apology is for something small, I think it's totally fine.
20:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, if you're the wrong party, you can always solicit a better apology.
20:06
[SPEAKER_00]: When you're bargaining that a market in Europe somewhere, you don't have to accept the first offer.
20:12
[SPEAKER_00]: You can say, okay, I really appreciate you saying that, but here's what I'm really upset about, or here's what you didn't address.
20:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, now when we live in such an online, we all watch these horrible influencer and celebrity apologies, and we all know exactly the beats of the terribleness of each one, and a lot of it is, they don't address the thing directly.
20:33
[SPEAKER_00]: They never say what they're apologizing for.
20:36
[SPEAKER_00]: It was that thing that happened, the incident what happened last week.
20:41
[SPEAKER_00]: the insincerity and the evasion, but then again, because we need to see ourselves as the year of our own story.
20:48
[SPEAKER_00]: When we're the one in the hot seat, the similar evasion start coming out, hey, you know, that thing, I just wanted to tell you that like that, that was not me, pretty sure it was you.
21:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I like your suggestion to accept it, you know, kind of first level and then say, but it didn't address XYZ, unless you have a chance now.
21:08
[SPEAKER_01]: This is your opportunity to have a conversation.
21:11
[SPEAKER_00]: You also, when you do that, here's what I'm really upset about, that person might not know that that was the thing you were really upset about.
21:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
21:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're doing the thing to build the friendship on both sides, and it is hard on both sides.
21:23
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to apologize, and it's hard to say that doesn't meet my needs, that isn't good enough.
21:30
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are committed to the relationship, doing this work can be so gratifying.
21:36
[SPEAKER_00]: The asking for more and the accepting of the apology.
21:39
[SPEAKER_01]: this perfect segue to the six steps of apologies, which I know you've written about extensively in your book.
21:45
[SPEAKER_00]: My co-author Susan McCarthy and I have read so many studies on what makes a good apology.
21:51
[SPEAKER_00]: We've looked from the fields of law, and medicine, and business, we've
22:01
[SPEAKER_00]: you would be surprised at how many people managed to avoid the phrase, I'm sorry, or I apologize.
22:06
[SPEAKER_00]: They may go with, I regret regret is about how the speaker feels and apology as I keep saying is about how the other person feels.
22:14
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to say you're sorry or say you apologize.
22:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, you have to say what you did, which can be really hard because our brain is doing backflips to make us forget what we did to make us avoid having to name the thing, but if you can't name it, you can't conquer it.
22:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry for what I did and say it.
22:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Number three, show that you understand why what you did was hurtful.
22:36
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where people start to go off the rails.
22:38
[SPEAKER_00]: They talk about, I feel so bad.
22:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like a horrible person.
22:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care what you feel.
22:44
[SPEAKER_00]: show me you understand that you hurt the other person.
22:48
[SPEAKER_00]: How did it affect them, not you?
22:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Number four, if there's any explanation that's relevant, you can offer it, but do not make excuses.
22:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is often where I personally go off the rails and why when I have real serious apology to make, I practice it on my co-author Susan because I start going, but you have to know the backstory about, and she's like, nope, nope, that's so nice to have you
23:13
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not for this conversation.
23:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Explanation would be, I am so sorry.
23:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I missed the party.
23:19
[SPEAKER_00]: The bus was incredibly late.
23:21
[SPEAKER_00]: You could have worked that out.
23:22
[SPEAKER_00]: An explanation and an excuse often get really close together.
23:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Number five is what steps are you taking to make sure this doesn't happen again?
23:31
[SPEAKER_01]: The map is like the most Jewish piece to me.
23:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It's number five.
23:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's what we're doing this time of year.
23:38
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, yeah, it's making steps to actually not do it again.
23:42
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the deep word.
23:43
[SPEAKER_00]: The great Jewish sage, my monadies, said apologizing to someone without taking steps to make sure it doesn't happen again, is like walking into a purifying ritual bath carrying a dead lizard.
23:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's so good.
23:59
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to drop that lizard if you're going to apologize well, explaining why it won't happen again.
24:04
[SPEAKER_00]: That's also where we see so many corporate apologies go off the rails where they'll apologize for the thing.
24:11
[SPEAKER_00]: But okay, how are you going to make sure your employees won't be racist again?
24:15
[SPEAKER_00]: How are you going to make sure you're not going to drag an elderly man off your airplane again?
24:19
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, all of these were so sorry it happened,
24:23
[SPEAKER_00]: what you're doing to make sure it doesn't recur.
24:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Number six, if possible, make reparations.
24:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, this isn't for everything, but sometimes there are ways to make it up to someone.
24:34
[SPEAKER_00]: As I think you and I would probably agree, everybody likes getting flowers.
24:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone likes a donation in their name to a charity that they really believe in.
24:43
[SPEAKER_00]: There are various ways to make reparations.
24:45
[SPEAKER_00]: If you spilled wine on someone because you were tipsy at a party, reparations is you pay for the
24:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there is a half an extra step.
24:52
[SPEAKER_00]: The six and a half step, listen, don't interrupt.
24:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I can see that part being, you say all your stuff.
24:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it's like, it's like the emoji with the zipping, literally zipping the most.
25:01
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like you have to just zip it, shh.
25:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm good.
25:04
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, but you know, but no, you always, nope, nope, nope, zip it emoji.
25:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
25:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, that's so helpful.
25:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's really good and and I think between friends as opposed business and and even just little accidents Like I know we're just using is an example like the wine I think we have to appreciate that when someone has told us that they have felt wrong in some way or you did wrong or friend is deep That we carry that around and it is important to apologize correctly if you're gonna go through the trouble of apologizing to literally do it softly
25:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Another thing that research seems pretty clear on is that a bad apology is worse than no apology.
25:42
[SPEAKER_00]: When you look at jury verdicts, it's unfortunate that a lot of times doctors and hospitals are trained to apologize but not take any responsibility and what people want is to know their pain meant something.
25:57
[SPEAKER_00]: When they get a medical apology, they want to know how did this happen?
26:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you sorry?
26:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And what steps are you taking to make sure this doesn't happen again?
26:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually they only get the sorry if they get that.
26:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It can also that can be a bad regret one.
26:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And jury verdicts tend to be higher after crappy apologies than after no apologies, which is why unfortunately lawyers tell doctors not to apologize.
26:22
[SPEAKER_00]: A bad apology is worse than no apology.
26:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell them to apologize well, and this won't happen.
26:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are countries in Scandinavia where apologizing is part of the curriculum.
26:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody teaches doctors how to apologize here.
26:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And this isn't friendship related, but I do think we can extrapolate to friendship that we all know how it feels to get an incredibly grudging defensive apology and it feels terrible.
26:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I would rather have someone sit for a really long time and then come to me and say I've thought about it and I feel really bad about what I did and I want to talk to you about the fact that I'm sorry and how we can repair this relationship.
26:59
[SPEAKER_01]: let's talk about accepting the apology.
27:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Now what's the other person's turn now?
27:03
[SPEAKER_01]: You have gotten the thing maybe you wanted, possibly you've been hurt in some way and your friend actually acknowledged it.
27:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean just being seen in our pain is so huge, you don't think you're overreacting or all these things like you actually got the apology and then how to receive one well and actually forgive.
27:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
27:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, as I'm sure other guests have talked about, forgiveness if you can do it is good for your immune system.
27:28
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good for your blood pressure.
27:29
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good for your heart rate.
27:30
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good for your cortisol levels.
27:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good for your sleep if you can do it.
27:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Forcing yourself to feel something you don't really feel is not a recipe for good health or for genuine forgiveness.
27:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And we are a culture that loves the idea of forgiveness and often that forgiveness can be really difficult, but we also have to remember I have messed up they messed up if they sincerely seem to want to preserve this relationship can you take those steps to do it we are all imperfect people your friend is never going to be a perfect person.
28:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I think one of the greatest lessons is from the great children's book, a bargain for Francis Francis is that badger.
28:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll see if I can show the camera.
28:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I have bread and jam for Francis tattoos.
28:17
[SPEAKER_00]: My daughter has Francis and I have the bread and jam.
28:19
[SPEAKER_00]: But a bargain for Francis is another one of the books that's also super deep in which
28:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Francis's friend cheats her out of the t-set she really wants and Francis ends up with the crappy plastic red and white t-set instead of the beautiful blue and white china ones she really wants.
28:36
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a great story of an imperfect friendship because both of them sort of act deviously as she says to her friend what her mother says to her is do you want to be careful or do you want to be friends?
28:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you constantly want to have to be on guard or do you want to say, you know what?
28:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I know my friend is flawed and I still want to be friends.
28:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be careful or do you want to be friends?
28:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It really speaks to me.
29:00
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like what I was saying kind of earlier to be careful about not yours in careful in a different way, but always sort of looking to be When I say offended, I don't mean by someone used the wrong word or something to be careful to not always look for your feelings to be heard because we sometimes we can find proof anywhere I given as an example a lot that we have to let our friends hang out without us
29:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Because because we sometimes want to do so for just a few people, I think other people also enjoy doing so for a few people.
29:26
[SPEAKER_01]: If you can accept that you want to do so for us people, you cannot be expected to be invited to everybody.
29:31
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the same kind of concept to me to let people off a little more totally.
29:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are times, especially as we get older, where there are people who've been in our lives for a really long time, whether they're family or friends, you know what their flaws are.
29:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And there may be sometimes when you want to challenge them and sometimes when you want to be just like, I would rather be friends than careful.
29:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that whole thing that whole stranger I'm never, but I probably read that book a long time ago, but it's not familiar to me.
29:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Both, bread and jam for Francis and a bargain for Francis, are totally worth putting on your reading list.
30:04
[SPEAKER_00]: All kinds of life lessons in there.
30:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I was here anything else about accepting, well, we were talking about forgiveness.
30:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think there also has to be a level of self forgiveness when you screw up.
30:14
[SPEAKER_00]: That has a role in friendship as well.
30:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes we go into avoidance mode, like a mole, or I guess Francis is a badger.
30:22
[SPEAKER_00]: But we're so ashamed of what we did that we just do a little duck and cover and avoid the other person when we're embarrassed.
30:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I had to pause you on it.
30:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that happens a lot actually.
30:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's not a small thing.
30:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that is a huge thing people do.
30:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I've done it myself.
30:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm not just accusing other people.
30:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, you know that you kind of did a thing and it's shame.
30:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I think kind of gives you from oh,
30:45
[SPEAKER_01]: up to it or it's like you don't want to face the person even if you're not ready to apologize yet.
30:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Then you kind of make a worse because now not only have you done a thing, you're ghosting your friend, you've started to make steps towards making that friendship that is the communicative as it used to, and now you've done two things.
31:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Gilt is something we can act on.
31:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Gilt is about what we do, shame is about who we are.
31:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So Gilt is, oh god, I said something awful.
31:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I am going to butcher the hell up and I'm going to face my friend and say, I'm sorry, I screwed up.
31:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Shame is, oh my god, I suck, I suck, I suck, I suck, I suck, and that is when we hide.
31:22
[SPEAKER_01]: That's really well said.
31:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an important distinction.
31:24
[SPEAKER_01]: It would another thing my mom always said is you can talk to a friend about something they did.
31:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Give your kind of soliciting an apology, let's say.
31:31
[SPEAKER_01]: But not about who they are.
31:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And she says that in service of like you were saying, accepting certain flaws and foibles of our friends.
31:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if being in a friendship does mean that you're not looking for perfection.
31:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Luckily, we get to have more than one friend.
31:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And now that you're spouse, this is not the perfect either.
31:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, you don't need each friend to check every box and to always do everything right.
31:51
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, God willing lots of friends for those reasons or it should aim to have more than one or two.
31:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It puts too much pressure.
31:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I think maybe that would help is to not require so much of each person.
32:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And then that's how much is required of us with each person.
32:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Such a good point.
32:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we could wrap up soon unless there's anything else I miss any big lessons.
32:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to say for the record that I really loved the piece that you wrote about hoping for an apology that is not forthcoming.
32:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to explain that a little to the listeners and then we can talk about it for a minute.
32:20
[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't mind, it was fun for me to read it too.
32:23
[SPEAKER_01]: When I asked my injury to be on the podcast, everybody, this was a case where I asked the author to be on.
32:33
[SPEAKER_01]: 15, I think it was, or 2014, and 2014 is also the year I started writing about friendship, but I was writing a lot of Jewish pieces back in that day for Kevelar, the forward, all kinds of places.
32:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And I chose, because I was curious about it to write about this idea of not just the game about who do I own an apology to, which I do try to do in this time of year, but I flipped it, and I was like, you know what, enough of people who I should say, I'm sorry to,
32:57
[SPEAKER_01]: What about the people who won't mean apology, which is really not the spirit we're supposed to go into the holiday with?
33:02
[SPEAKER_01]: The idea that's what it was about.
33:03
[SPEAKER_01]: It was titled waiting for an apology that will never come, which happens a lot.
33:07
[SPEAKER_00]: To give another shout out V, the writer formerly known as Yvensler, who has spoken and written about being terribly abused by her father, who is no longer with us, wrote a whole book, imagining getting that apology.
33:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes we can do that with friends.
33:25
[SPEAKER_00]: If we know that the person is just not capable, that might be a helpful exercise for us, is imagining what it would be like if they would apologize.
33:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you can actually make yourself here at in your head, it might be able to make you take a deep breath and go.
33:41
[SPEAKER_00]: But we don't live in that world and I can want that and it's not happening.
33:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And I am choosing to be a friend to this person anyway.
33:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you can also feel pretty good about yourself that you're the bigger person.
33:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we're so magnanimous.
33:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I like that point.
33:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Suddenly, people don't apologize because they just are not the kind of person who's able to.
33:59
[SPEAKER_01]: You said at the beginning, I think it's true.
34:01
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't always know that they've done something.
34:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think we had to leave room for that.
34:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Most people are not out there trying to be malicious.
34:08
[SPEAKER_00]: No, and it is, it's fine, better than fine, commendable to solicit an apology because you are doing the work of relationship building when you do that.
34:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're doing the work of protecting your own emotional health by not sucking it down and pushing down the bad feelings.
34:24
[SPEAKER_00]: You're giving them an opportunity to come out and to improve.
34:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And for you, both your emotional state and your friendship to get healthier.
34:34
[SPEAKER_01]: This is how we grow.
34:35
[SPEAKER_01]: This is how you grow.
34:36
[SPEAKER_01]: This part of what friendship is for is to develop you as a person and relationship too, but I focus on friendship, and it never ends.
34:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, in a good way, in a bad way, some of the issues of friendship never end, no matter your age, but also the opportunity to grow, change, and live up to your best self.
34:53
[SPEAKER_00]: There are things that are crappy about getting older, but a good thing about getting older is knowing yourself better and being more willing to take the risk for people you love, because as you get older, you start losing the people you love.
35:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And saying, hey, you matter to me.
35:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to apologize to you.
35:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to apologize to me.
35:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Can do incredible work in helping us move forward.
35:14
[SPEAKER_01]: What a perfect summary to the end, Marjorie Engel.
35:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for being here.
35:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I will have your book with Susan McCarthy in the show notes.
35:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll find actually going to talk to you for a minute about what it's like writing with a friend.
35:25
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's a whole different episode.
35:26
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm curious about that.
35:27
[SPEAKER_01]: So, sorry, listeners, you're going to have to maybe I'll tell you about it in the show episode.
35:32
[SPEAKER_00]: If we ever do a, I think about collaboration.
35:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's exactly.
35:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Listeners, come back next week when our friendships are going well.
35:39
[SPEAKER_01]: We are happy you're all over.