Relationships Thursday: The Art of The Apology!

Often in relationships we make mistakes and offend others, more so those who are closest to us leading to conflict and disagreements. It’s part of the deal to make mistakes, in fact part of our nature as humans to do so as old adage puts it perfectly ‘to err is human, to forgive divine‘.The big question often is how do we deal with conflict? How do we let by gones be? As you would know by now forgiveness is the key to sustaining relationships. Without it we would have murdered the ones we love and those close to us a long time ago! Simply we can’t do without forgiveness.

Actually, I was gonna write something about my experience in Luanda, until i saw a post by one of our good friends, Nancy on her wall that caught my attention on forgiveness.

Perhaps, she articulated the subtleness involved in forgiveness only too well, and here I quote:

Sometimes it is not enough to simply apologize for your words or actions. It is often necessary to not only apologize but to also prove that your apology is sincere. A truly sincere apology proves that you are sorry by addressing the issue and acknowledging what you have done wrong while validating the other person’s right to be angry and addressing how you will avoid similar actions in the future.

Well, well, well.. don’t we often get in trouble in this part of the equation. No hands raised please!

She goes on further to share,

It’s also important to give the other person a chance to vent their anger and calm down before rushing to apologize. After a reasonable amount of time approach them and let them know that you understand their anger and believe that it is justified and that you wanted to give them a chance to calm down before apologizing.

I couldn’t have put it more perfectly than that! I also could tell from the rejoinder posts that its a topic that affects all of us and one that often gets us flat footed as we often don’t know how to deal with it.I hope this snippets shared by our friend will inspire you in sustaining the key relationships in your life. Wishing you all a wonderful Thursday, its #Throwback all the way ~ memories are made of this!

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This post is largely inspired by the thoughts and expressions of Nancy Wyna as here quoted, Check out the Relationships Column every Thursday to read more from her.