Would you accept their apology if they never changed their behaviour?

There are two kinds of narcissists; those who never apologise and those who pretend to apologise, all the while knowing they have no desire nor will to change. As far as east is to west, the pattern narcissist can never change; they never wish to; they never see the need; they never can because they never see their wrong. Harsh words? They possibly sound harsh.

But the only hope anyone has
if they need to change is to change. 

Sometimes what people need most of all is for people to doubt their ability to change, so they are motivated to prove the doubters wrong.

Let’s talk about resistance versus reluctance to change for a moment. The person who is resistant to change, who needs to change in order to relate respectfully with others, but refuses to is a hopeless case who cannot be honest or trusted. Notice how I used the word ‘resistant’ rather than ‘reluctant’—most of us are reluctant to change, but resistance to change when one must is another level of stubbornness below and beyond help.

The question that this article asks ought to be on all our hearts as we ponder the success or otherwise of our relationships.

Too many of us have become ‘yoked’ to people—partners, bosses, family members, friends, pastors, etc—who fell short of a standard the common person might expect in terms of reconciling wrongs.

I love the idea that we as contributors to conflict ought to own 100 percent of our contribution to the conflict; not 80 percent nor 100 percent of our own and 20 percent of theirs also. The best relationships feature protagonists prepared to own 100 percent of their individual contributions.

If someone cannot own what they did wrong, and they cannot be honest to this degree, they have no hope of reconciling the matter with the one they hurt. But even if they do agree, and they do apologise, how do we feel if they accept they did wrong but cannot or will not change?

Will that be acceptable? Well, we do need to ask ourselves if it makes a difference. We need to be ready to deal with more fallout if their apology is as thin as their words are and we’ve trusted them again. Perhaps we’re ready to forgive the fact that they harmed us, but we’re not ready to trust them to the extent of another foray. Maybe it’s fairer to say that we’ll wish them best and keep our distance from now on.

Perhaps we see that there is no sense for repentance in them at all. Then what do we do? If there’s no repentance—absolutely no insight for the damage they did—what are we to do? Surely we must protect would-be targets of such a person—as far as that depends on us. We should expect not to be listened to, because people go headlong into all sorts of affairs of risk.

But the real issue we’re discussing pivots around whether an apology in and of itself is enough. Maybe we can agree that a central part of an apology is promising to change and delivering upon that change.

In this way we could say that an apology that falls short of the action of change is no apology at all.

Certainly we could say that the original offence is more than doubled, and even compounds, if there’s no apology; and, where the apology is given, but  action falls short of being sustained, that it never was an apology to begin with.

There is at times a cost borne on empaths who forgive and forget too easily. It would be best to wait and see and give a person a long opportunity to prove that they’ve changed. That process takes more than just a few months. In the meantime, we have to live our lives.

Photo by Francisco Gonzalez on Unsplash