Upon occasion you are going to totally screw something up and be in the wrong. I’m not talking “gee I’m failing a shit test” wrong, I’m talking, objectively, provably wrong. Why did you do that wrong? Where’s the kids wrong. You taped over the wedding video wrong. Idiot, now we need to go to the ER wrong.
The solution is simple.
Say you’re sorry and put right whatever can be put right.
It’s amazing how often situations can be defused by a simple admission of wrongdoing and failure. Often what drives people’s anger higher and higher is the wrongdoers resistance to admitting obvious wrongdoing.
But sometimes that just doesn’t seem to be enough. Sometimes that story about what you did comes back around and around and no amount of apologies seem to make a dent in the situation. Plus you put right whatever you could put right long ago.
After a while the actual current problem stops being the original incident and starts being the unforgiving rage of the original victim. So they are the ones that have to fix that problem. So at some point you have to say you can’t apologize anymore as they are actively choosing to refuse to accept it. They actively want to remain angry. The problem lies on their end, not yours. Say so.
Just bear in mind that the worse the original incident, the longer you should allow for the anger process to work through. There’s some difference between forgetting her birthday and the time you were goofing off and accidentally shot her in the ass with the nail gun.
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