How To Apologize

Hey there. I'm Vanessa. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and the New York Times best selling author. Today I want to talk to you about the most important thing that you need to get right about an apology, because it also happens to be one of the hardest, and that is the difference between intent and impact. I'm going to give you an extreme example to illustrate this. Let's say I'm trying to hand my partner a heavy box and I accidentally drop it and it falls on his feet and hits him. So the impact of my actions is that it hurt him. The box fell on his foot. The intent was I was just trying to hand him a box. I was definitely not trying to hurt him. So in my apology, I need to focus on the impact. The intent was obviously important. Like, it makes a big difference if I meant to hurt him versus if I didn't mean to hurt him. But when I'm apologizing, I first need to focus on the impact that it had on him. So this example is pretty straightforward, but it can get a lot harder to do when there are more complex or more emotional examples at play, like you might have certain times where you think, I don't understand how words or actions could possibly have had that impact on my partner. It's so easy to get defensive and to want to focus on what your intentions were or even get frustrated that your partner can't see your intentions. But the true test of a great apology is being willing to put all of that aside and focus on the impact you had on that other person.