Why You Struggle to Apologize (and What It’s Costing Your Relationships)

Most people who never learned how to apologize don't even realize that's the problem. I grew up in a Korean household where apologies never happened, so I spent years refusing to apologize without understanding what that was doing to my relationships.

In this episode, I'm getting into why some people genuinely can't apologize, why over-apologizing does just as much damage, and what shifted for me when I finally stopped holding back.

In this episode:

• Growing up without any model of what a healthy apology looks like
• How being punished into saying sorry as a kid turned apologies into a shame trigger
• The moment in my relationship when I realized accountability wasn't optional
• The metaphor I use to think about what apologies are actually for
• Over-apologizing and why so many women are quietly burning their credibility
• How my parents, in their 70s, started doing something I never thought they'd do
• What changed across all of my relationships once I stopped withholding apologies

If you've ever struggled to say sorry, or you're waiting on an apology you might never get, this one's for you.

Transcript

I don’t know about you, but growing up, my parents never once apologized to me for anything. And I don’t mean stuff like, oh they forgot to pick me up from school one time. I’m talking about things that really hurt, like yelling at me for things that weren’t my fault, or even verbal, emotional, and physical abuse.

See, I come from a Korean family, so that’s pretty normal. The older generation just doesn’t apologize to the younger generation, like ever. It’s not a thing and it doesn’t matter what actually happened - they don’t apologize. That’s probably why I can count on one hand how many times they’ve said I’m sorry in my entire life.

Maybe you’ve experienced this, even if you’re not Asian. Maybe you grew up in a household like mine where “sorry” just wasn’t a word that existed. Or maybe you’re on the other side of it, where you’re the one who has a really hard time apologizing and you’re not totally sure why.

Either way, today I’m talking about why some people can’t apologize, my 2 cents on how to understand apologies, and why they’re so crucial to building relationships that last.

You’re listening to This Is How You Think, the show that remodels your mindset. I’m your host Jule Kim. Let’s dive in.

So I grew up with zero modeling of what an apology looked like. My parents never said, “hey, I was wrong about that, I’m sorry.” It just didn’t happen, and my siblings were the same. When that’s how you’re raised, you don’t even realize what’s missing until you’re much older and you start seeing it in other people.

For example, I recently learned that a friend really struggles with apologizing to her kids. Even when her husband tells her, “hey, you need to apologize to our child,” she just can’t do it. She says it feels wrong, like physically uncomfortable.

Personally, I think it makes a lot of sense, because her parents never apologized to her either, so she never received that, which is why it’s very hard for her to give that, because her family was like mine.

My parents weren’t any better. Their idea of teaching me how to apologize was terrible. Like whenever I was “bad,” they would not only punish me, usually by making me stay in the plank position for hours, but they would demand that I apologize and say that I was sorry, which honestly just made me hate apologizing. I would only apologize to make the punishment stop, which was really about compliance, and not genuinely being sorry. That’s probably why I spent a good portion of my younger life almost never apologizing.

But it wasn’t because I didn’t care or I didn’t feel remorseful. It was because whenever I heard “you need to say sorry” or even the idea of apologizing came up, it automatically triggered this feeling of “I’m a bad person,” because of those childhood memories. The idea of apologizing would bring up all this shame, like I was some kind of criminal.

It wasn’t until I started dating my ex and went through so many frickin ups and downs that I eventually realized you can’t forge a strong relationship if you’re both unwilling to acknowledge that you’ve hurt the other person, and that you’re sorry for that. I had to learn that apologizing is really about owning what you’ve done so you can move forward with this other person. 

My parents never taught me that, so it took me way too long to learn the lesson as an adult in my 30s.

Now I get that not everybody gets to the same place. But just know that if you’re like how I used to be, and if you continue to go through life never apologizing, your relationships are going to suffer like mine did, because people don’t forget what they can’t forgive when there’s never an apology.

So if you’re the person who never apologizes, just know that most people can’t put up with that forever. 

And that’s me, I’m one of those people.

If somebody wrongs me and doesn’t apologize, I just can’t stay in that relationship. It’s a dealbreaker. Friendships, dating, professional, it doesn’t matter. The way I look at it is, if someone can’t even acknowledge that they did something wrong and offer an apology, how do you know it’s not going to happen again? Like, really. That’s why apologies are important.

But I also don’t believe in over-apologizing, and unfortunately I think a lot of women fall into this. You know what I’m talking about. Someone bumps into you at the grocery store, and yet somehow YOU’RE the one who says “sorry.”

Or you send an email that starts with “sorry to bother you,” when you’re literally just doing your job. 

Maybe you ask a question in a meeting and you open with “sorry,” and that one especially makes me cringe, because I’m like, “sorry” for what? For having a question? Why would you start like that?

As a woman, I really wish women would stop with the perpetual apologizing. I think for people like that, apologizing has become a reflex. They don’t even realize that they’re wasting their credibility and their authority on this “I’m sorry for existing” aura, and then they’re surprised that they’re not getting the promotion or they’re not seen as a leader.

But I digress.

So on the one hand you’ve got people like my parents who never apologize, and then on the other hand you have the people who apologize for everything so it’s practically meaningless. 

And I think you see people all over the place like this because most people have never really been taught to think about what an apology is even for.

So when I think about apologies, this is the picture I have in my mind. Your life is like your house. You let people into your house, and they spend time there.

The longer people spend time with you, inevitably, they’re eventually going to cause some damage. They might knock something over, or spill something and make a mess. Some of them will even put a hole in the wall or get drunk and puke on your carpet.

Apologizing is like noticing the mess and saying, “oh man, I broke that, let me help you fix it.” They help you repair or replace what got broken. They roll up their sleeves and help you clean up the mess.

The people who never apologize, they’re the ones who come into your house, they break stuff, and they trash your place. After a while, you’re standing in your house looking around at the wreckage, that they’re not helping you with, like any part of it. So at some point, you stop having them over, right?

But what do you do when you’re dealing with family, or other people you can’t cut out of your life, and they don’t seem to understand this? Well, that’s my parents. And if you had told me ten years ago that my parents would ever apologize to me, I would’ve said you’re crazy.

But in the last five years, something has changed. They’ve actually both given me apologies for small and big things, like last year when my mother got really upset at me and told me I’m not her daughter. She called me later that night to tell me how sorry she was, and I was surprised, right?

My dad and my brother had both told me, don’t ever expect her to apologize. She’ll never do it. But here we are.

I’ve thought about this a lot, like why the change, and it might be because I apologize to them. When I mess up with my parents, I make sure they know that I’m genuinely sorry and I try to make it right. And maybe over time, maybe that taught them that apologizing was okay and that it’s not about who’s wrong or who wins. Apologizing has really made our whole house stronger.

Now, I know I’m lucky that my parents have changed. I’ve had so many of my friends tell me, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” and yet my parents have shown me so many times that that’s just not true.

But I’m not going to sit here and say that everybody out there is like my parents, obviously not. And there’s a reason so many of us go no contact with certain family members. I’m also pretty sure all of us know at least one person right now who would rather die before they ever say the words “I’m sorry.”

And that’s really hard, because then it’s up to you to navigate the balance between accepting people for who they are but also understanding what you need in a relationship so that you can feel good too. 

The thing is you’re allowed to require apologies to set things right in your relationships.

And you’re also allowed to stop apologizing for things that were never yours to own. Both of those things can be true. It’s up to you to define that in a way that feels right for you, and I’m still figuring that out every day.

What helps me is understanding that no one is born just knowing how to give an apology. It’s a skill everyone can learn. Some of us are taught how to do it and how to do it well.

I wasn’t, and I had to figure it out on my own. And unfortunately, not apologizing is also a skill that too many of us have learned, and we don’t see the damage it’s causing in our relationships.

The really cool part is that once I stopped holding back on apologies, it didn’t just improve things with my parents. Every other relationship I had got better almost immediately.

I think that happened because I started asking myself, “have I done everything I can on my part?” And if I haven’t given an apology, well that’s the first place to start. 

When I offer an apology, I’m signaling that I want to stay in this relationship and that I’m willing to take responsibility for my actions and make things right. Whenever I do that, I find that more often than not, people are willing to meet me in the middle.

So if you’re someone who still struggles with apologizing, just know that you can learn it, and giving apologies doesn’t make you a small, or weak, or bad person in any way. If anything, it shows that you care about the other person.

And if you’re the one who’s waiting for someone else to apologize, maybe you don’t have to wait for them. Maybe you can be the one who shows up with your hammer and nails first. Sometimes that’s enough to change everything.

Alright, that’s it for this week. If this resonated with you, send this to somebody who needs to hear it, or text the link in the description and let me know what you think. By the way, that link even lets you leave a voicemail, which is so cool. I’d love to feature you in a future episode, so feel free to leave a comment or a question.

As always, thank you so much for listening. And remember, I believe in you. See you next time.