I’ve been thinking about the ways people behave around apologies. Sometimes folks don’t really know how to express themselves well when an “I’m sorry” situation arises.
Consider the following scenario:
Sam and Sally are housemates. Sally really loves curry. Suffice to say that there is a convincing reason to treat Sally’s curry as sacred.
Sally leaves her leftover curry in the fridge one night. Sam comes home after an evening of heavy drinking, finds the curry, and scarfs it.
The next morning, Sally opens the fridge and is furious. She doesn’t say anything, though, because her general approach to conflict is to be passive-aggressive. Sam wakes up (several hours) later and comes into the kitchen, opens the fridge, and realizes with a smack to the forehead that he ate Sally’s curry and she’s going to be very unhappy about that.
Sam goes to his silently fuming housemate and apologizes. What is Sally’s response?
“It’s okay,” she says.
This doesn’t sound right to me.
Yes, Sam is doing good by noting that he has wronged his housemate and taking the initiative to apologize. However, that doesn’t make the original act “okay.” It may repair the rift in his relationship with Sally and allow them to move forward without hard feelings, but simply declaring everything to be “okay” is sweeping it under the rug. It certainly doesn’t do anything to help Sam understand how much he has hurt his roommate.
I think I don’t like the phrase “It’s okay” as a response to apologies unless it really is okay. The phrase should be reserved for moments when someone is apologizing unnecessarily — like if they accidentally bump into you.
In the scenario above, it seems that Sally would get more mileage out of saying something like “Thank you for apologizing, it makes me feel better about this whole thing.” That way she smooths over the problem between her and Sam but without creating the impression that Sam’s behavior wasn’t actually hurtful.