Diamond Problem Solver 5 -''I'm Sorry''

    Hello Tired of “Sorry”. Thank you for sending me your question. Even though it did come from another server, I believe there are some things here we can still learn from and discuss to help out our server.
    First of all, you are not being mean, you’re being cautious. That’s a good thing. It’s good to forgive and move on from people and events that wronged you, but there’s no need to leave yourself open to danger. What you need, and what I think we could all benefit from, is armor… the armor of knowledge! *Enter cheezy triumphant music here!*

The Empty Sorry

    You’ll hear this a lot more often than you’ll hear a real sorry. Sometimes it’s just a tool of politeness to move on from a small matter and continue with progress. So it’s not always a bad thing. More often than not though, it’s what people use to get out of trouble in some way or another. An Empty Sorry is one that isn’t genuine, and doesn’t have thought put into it towards making amends. 
    The most common kind of empty sorry is the word drop. Basically:

“You did this thing and it made me angry with you!”
“Sorry.”
The End

    This is minimal effort, minimal caring. Children (and those who haven’t matured) use this quite frequently. They think that just by saying “sorry”, people should be less mad at them.

    Not all empty sorrys are so easy to spot though. Sometimes people will put effort into them to sound convincing. They’ll go on and on with “Sorry! Sorry! I’m really sorry!” and sometimes they’ll even throw in that they’re a bad person or try to explain that they’re having a hard time with something and it’s making them act that way. The issue here is that these “sorry”s still lack some fundamental things to be believable, and that’s why you and many others in similar positions tend to doubt them.

If you detect an empty sorry. Don’t trust it. You can tell these people to leave you alone.

The Real Sorry

    If you’re dealing with an individual who is mature enough to genuinely mean it when they say sorry, you can usually tell right away. But why is that? What makes them so convincing?

There’s a lot that can be going on, but they boil down to these three things:

• Caring - They care about your feelings, and about their own behavior.

• Reflection - They spent time thinking about what happened beyond their own emotional standpoint, and thought about how their actions affected others.

• Effort - They put in effort to make things better.

    
    You can usually tell if those things are present, because of the way they apologize. Real sorrys tend to follow the format of:

“I’m sorry that I did _ to you. I shouldn’t have done that. Next time I’ll _ instead. Can I make it up to you somehow?”

    Just reading that sentence, I think you can probably tell there’s a big difference in the way you feel hearing it. You’d be much more likely to forgive someone who spoke like this because you can tell they care. So really guys, you already knew this stuff, I’m just helping point it out a little clearer so you can use it on the harder-to-discern cases.

    With those differences in mind, I think you’ll be able to judge for yourself if this person’s sorry is “Empty” or “Real”. If they weren't convincing enough to you, and they want to know why, you can always send them over to this journal to read for themselves what a Real Sorry is.


Let’s Discuss it!

    Now I’m calling out to you readers to ask your opinions. What advice do you have for Tired of “Sorry”? Is there something I didn’t make clear enough? What do you guys think? Let’s talk it out and help our fellow Denizen!

Please do not talk about specific events or people, unless they are positive in nature. This is a place to encourage growth, not to shame bad behavior. I will delete any comments I feel might hurt or embarrass anyone else!

And above all, Be Good to Each Other! ^_^