thatkindoffangirl:

scereyaha:

openupnsay-ra:

I swear I’m trying to learn this.

But also learn the difference between an “excuse” and an explanation that demonstrates genuine understanding of the issue and why it’s a problem, or information relevant to whether it will be repeated. Problems aren’t always one sided, and an apology -by classic definition- is an explanation of your behaviour, so the other person understands how and why it happened, or even what the situation looked like from the other side.

I see us conflating -explaining a behaviour- with -trying to excuse it- or -arguing it shouldn’t be changed or worked on- all the time. This gets in the way of healthy dialogue, especially when the unique needs of someone who is disabled, or the unique social behaviours of someone socially or neurologically divergent come into the equation.

For example, if someone is upset because their friend is not socially available to them and thinks that it’s because they’ve lost interest in being friends, the other person apologizing for hurting their feelings is incomplete without explaining the real reason they are like that.

If someone has a disability that affects their ability to remember names or associate them with faces and compensates by giving everyone a nickname to help them remember their real name, and someone is offended because they personally interpret nicknames as a sign of disrespect… An explanation becomes prudent.

This whole “don’t ever explain yourself while apologizing” is highly context specific, and I see it often being touted out of context.

THANK YOU this lack of nuance always irks me so much in apology discourse