You remember last week when we talked about struggling with our marriage? How some days are easy and others are incredibly hard? This past week has been much better on the marriage front; however, I’ve been a real not nice word a lot this week to #myforeverpagel.
In the marriage vows I wrote and swore to for Matt, I promised that I would screw up, but I would apologize. Y’all that is hard! But so absolutely necessary.
Matt is so good at apologizing for his wrongs and I need to get better. It takes me a while to get to the point of realization that I need to apologize, that it was my fault or my bad. Here are the four things that I include in my heartfelt apologies.
#1: I’m sorry
Yes, that’s right. I say, “I’m sorry.” And I mean it. I don’t say those words unless I really am sorry.
#2: Explanation
This is the part that Matt really loves, talking about our feelings. Some people think saying only I’m sorry is best. Don’t explain, don’t reason out your behavior, don’t make excuses. I don’t agree, at least in the marital realm. I’m gonna be with this man for, God-willing, a lot of years. I don’t wanna have the same fights over and over and over again.
By the time I’m saying I’m sorry, we’ve both cooled down. I explain why I reacted the way I did (emotions, hormones, feelings and perspective all have a lot to do with the reason I react the way I do). I tell him the things that were going through my head. I put it out there so we can both learn from it.
#3: Say I’m sorry again
After saying I’m sorry, explaining why I reacted the way I did (not blaming, not rationalizing how I was really right, simply explaining my head space), I conclude by saying I’m sorry again. Then we have incredibly hot makeup sex and live happily ever after and only have pretend fights so we can have makeup sex. Not really. You already know my stance on fairy tale marriages– there is no such thing.
Both of us are two individual human people. We’re going to think differently. We’re going to act differently. That doesn’t make either of us evil. It makes us human. It’s easier to apologize and move on than it is to hold a grudge and start resenting the other person. The last part of an apology and the part that I struggle with most…
#4: Let It Go!
That’s right. Move on. Do not revisit this. Do not bring it up in next week’s fight. Do not get 4 years down the road and say that one time you did this terrible thing to me. NO! It’s resolved and fixed. It is done. It doesn’t go in the history book to revisit. It gets forgotten. The apology has been made and accepted. The end.
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