Do humans prefer acting stuck up and insensitive to other's feelings over apologizing when we have hurt someone's feelings? This seems to be especially true between family members more than with friends. Why are we quicker to apologize to friends? Well, friendships are conditional. How we treat our friends is how we get treated back. If we treat them poorly, the relationship can potentially end. With family, regardless of age or living location, we have the familial obligation to visit on holidays and special occasions. We believe our family will always be there regardless of how we treat them. Therefore, we are more likely to mistreat, argue, and act unapologetic towards them. It's the scarcity principle that comes into play for any relationship. Unfortunately this is human nature.
Remember the last time you had an argument over something seemingly trivial and insignificant? For me, it was this past Saturday. My mom, sister, brother, and I had just left Costco. My brother bought a cake and my mom felt buying a cake undermined her attempts to help my dad lose weight. My dad is significantly overweight and my mom has been trying for years to get him to lose weight. I would certainly agree with her as my dad is jeopardizing his health. Here’s the thing though, my mom practices baking and decorating cakes at home. After she makes them, we all eat them. Some of us more than others. The cakes my mom makes are not as sweet as those bought outside, so they are healthier. Yet, my brother believes that if he should eat dessert, he’d rather devour the sweetest, tastiest, and therefore unhealthiest food. My brother says that the cake he buys is responsible for my dad’s weight gain, but since my mom makes cake herself and is thereby also contributing to my dad’s weight gain, he feels he has more righteousness to buy the cake. When it comes to buying or making cake, both sides are not helping my dad lose weight. But instead one side letting go and toning it down, both sides added more fuel to the fire by getting more emotional. As the argument continued, the more righteous side, my brother, pushed it too far. I don’t remember what he said exactly but we all felt it once we heard it. It was one of those situations where someone yells something out of anger, and immediately, we all recognize what was said was out of line. It had gone too far, and was hurtful to my mom.
Everyone in the car fell silent and my muscles tensed up as I felt the discomfort and tension in the air. My mom said very little to us for the rest of the day and even when she did, we could tell from her tone of voice that she was still fuming, ready to blow like a boiling tea pot. Instead of apologizing for saying something that hurt her feelings, my brother and I acted stuck up and insensitive. It wasn’t because I didn’t feel bad for what we said, but for some reason, it feels strange for me to say “I’m sorry” to someone in my family. With friends and acquaintances, I feel comfortable saying it, especially if I truly feel bad for doing or saying something that may have hurt their feelings- not that I have hurt many people’s feelings, at least to my knowledge. I guess the question is, why do I feel like I have a hard time to get myself to say “I’m sorry” to my mom or anyone in my family in particular? Perhaps it’s cause saying “I’m sorry” requires us to show one of the most caring and vulnerable emotions possible. A genuine apology requires us to be completely sincere. It requires us to show them that deep down we feel bad for something we did. There’s potential risk for rejection, we don’t know if our apology will be accepted. Fear comes into our mind if our apology goes unaccepted. In a way, we’ve put our heart out, our true feelings out, and the fear of the other person scolding us and judging us can be terrifying. In my past experience, when I’ve said “I’m sorry” to friends, it wasn’t something I was truly, deep down, whole heartedly sorry for. Those “I’m sorry” were more out of politeness and something you would say if you accidentally stepped on your friend’s toes.
To put it simply, I’ve never truly apologized for something I’ve felt bad about. It’s not easy to admit to ourselves that we can act insensitive, hurtful, and unapologetic during arguments. It takes someone truly special to leave his or her ego out of arguments. It’s rare to meet someone who will admit to the other party during a heated debate that what he or she said may be wrong. We put so much importance on who is right. During arguments, we all want to be right and to be completely honest, we want to destroy the other person’s argument. This is all the more true with arguments between family members as again, as previously stated, regardless of how bad we make our family feel, they are still family. At the end of the day though, would we rather be right, or have a happy relationship with that person? There are more important things than being right. So what if you are wrong? So what if you spoke out of emotions and not logic? Someone foiled your argument? No problem, you were wrong. It’s no big deal. It only becomes a big deal when we become emotionally involved. When we feel like we are emotionally invested in the debate, we have already lost. Even if we are right, our relationship is on the rocks, and the other person is going to do all they can to avoid looking like their argument was a complete joke. If we try to push it further to destroy their argument and humiliate them, they will resent us. After the heat of the moment, we may have destroyed a friendship or damaged a relationship, and days later, we think about how hurtful we acted.
With family, apology can be communicated nonverbally. Slowly beginning with small talk again, slowly standing closer to each other as opposed to giving each other wide berths. With friends, how are we going to show them that we are sorry if we are not living with them? The only way is to apologize. The question then is who is going to do it? Both sides are still angry with each other. It’s going to take someone who values relationships over being right. At the end of the day, the person who takes responsibility and shows humility to repair the relationship will be seen as the better person. Even the person who receives the apology will think that in the back of their minds. Now if the breakup of a relationship is truly a result of a one-sided affair and act of insensitivity, then that would be a different case. But how often is that truly the case? Most arguments ensue and destroy relationships because of both sides. We will have to be 100% honest with ourselves.
There is a saying that whichever feelings are not talked about, are acted out. Ever see yourself in this type of situation? You feel angry at someone so you slam the door extra hard as you walk out? Ever find yourself poking the airs out of someone’s tires because they hurt you in some way? Everyone’s engaged in this type of behavior one way or another. A situation related to this has just come to my mind. When I play a 5 on 5 basketball game every once in a while now, there is this guy that behaves a bit cocky towards me. I know in my mind that if I were to play him one on one and really tried, I would beat him with not much competition. I wonder to myself why he seems to care about beating me. My first reaction is one of arrogance. “He can try all he wants, he can’t beat me” is what I usually think to myself as I attempt to bolster my ego. However, next time when we are not in a competitive atmosphere, I could tell him personally that I understand where he is coming from. I believe that before I came along to their group to play basketball, he was one of the best players in his group. Perhaps he felt intruded and threatened that I was taking over the competition and dominating the games. I could think that, “oh that’s what competition is about, don’t be so soft, don’t care so much about that!” or I could say to him privately, “you know, I get the feeling that you really dislike losing. In the beginning when I first started playing with you guys, if you ever felt like I was being intrusive and ball-hogging these games, I’m sorry. I understand that you are one of the better players here and I suppose you might have felt a bit threatened when I started playing here so often. If I ever made you feel like that, I apologize.” Which one will better allow me to connect with him? The answer is obvious. Maybe I’m all wrong and that’s not how he felt at all. The latter response will still allow me to connect with him better as that will allow him to open up and talk about how he feels about it.
Anger truly is a manifestation of fear, frustration, or feeling hurt. If we can stay calm ourselves the next time we see someone reacting angrily, perhaps we can feel better towards them as we know that they are feeling hurt in some way. How vulnerable of an emotion is that? Hurt emotionally. Anger is someone hurting emotionally. Why is it that we react angrily when we are hurt emotionally? Anger tends to drive people away from us. Evolutionary speaking, wouldn’t anger work against us? I guess this question is beyond me. When we express we feel hurt in a calm manner we are expressing vulnerability. Vulnerability can be scary. I find myself feeling my heart beat when I disclose about my more personal self. It’s scary but vulnerability deepens our relationships. Ironic isn’t it? It’s the things in our lives that we feel the most pain in, the things that have bothered us in our lives that allows us to connect with another human being on such a deep level. Those who always appear strong, confident, flawless, and do not let other people know about their true feelings are depriving themselves of deep connection with others. Drop the ego, as hard as that may be. Flawless human beings do not exist. Embrace who you are and the pains you experience in your life, as these are keys to true and lasting relationships.
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