In 2016 my husband, Brad, lived on the road reporting on the election all over the country. We were newlyweds and right when we said “I do” to each other he also said “I do” to a fancy new reporting job. He spent our entire first year of marriage going to events with Hillary and Trump, and I spent our first year of marriage working at home being pretty lonely. But all of that was going to change once we went to Argentina after the election.
This was our big plan. We were going to reconnect while trekking through the wilds of Patagonia. While this may sound amazing to most of you, I’m gonna be honest, I am not a fan of trekking. I know I am lucky to have trekked enough to even know the fact that trekking isn’t my favorite activity. I spent all my school years at a small school in Oregon that forced yearly backpacking, camping, and hiking treks starting at age ten, and I always associate trips like this with feeling like a kid being forced to do arbitrary activities against her will. Not a fan.
Brad, on the other hand, is a huge fan of treks, adventures, wandering aimlessly . . . all of those cool traveley things. I love his curious, adventurous heart; I love it so much I don’t want to disappoint—so that’s how I ended up lying to myself and him and agreeing that hiking across an iceberg, and up many windswept cliffs in the pouring rain, was a great way to come together with my beloved after a year apart.
I basically ignored all the planning he was doing. I didn’t want to know specifics about which activities I’d be dreading the most, so I simply pretended it wasn’t really happening. But while we were on our flight, I figured it was time to face the music and I finally asked about our itinerary in detail. I did not like what I heard.
As Brad listed remote daylong hikes, insane weather, and the fact that we’d have to do this all with strangers in small groups (note: My least favorite thing next to trekking is being forced to do said trekking with small groups of strangers), I ended up having a huge meltdown. I cried for hours as we flew, feeling trapped between wanting to spend time with him and not actually wanting to go on an adventure. While I cried I said mean things to Brad about how he ignores my needs, is selfish, is pushy, and doesn’t appreciate me for who I am. These things were all kind of true, to be honest. We had really disconnected while he was away, but screaming this all at him while trapped in an airplane long after having agreed to go along with him on this trip was not helping my case, nor was it very nice.
He apologized a lot for his part. We spent long nights staying up late talking. We talked all about how I felt our trip was a chance for intimacy that we were wasting on his outdoor adventure fantasies. He asked me all about how I’d felt overlooked during the year he spent away and overlooked as he planned activity after activity he knew I wouldn’t want to do. He apologized for not considering my needs without being told; he admitted he knew he was planning things I wouldn’t like and resented that I wasn’t speaking up, so he kept planning more and more. He apologized, asked how he could make things up to me, and he started taking action right away. That night he changed our itinerary for me, so we’d spend more time in the city. And when we got back home he found a couples therapist for us to start seeing so we could work together on our communication and he could work on showing his empathy for me.
I can tell you, almost three years later, all of this work is paying off. We’ve never again gotten to a place as low as we were on that flight (which is funny because you’d think that you couldn’t be hitting rock bottom in your marriage while flying in the air). But there was one thing wrong with how we moved forward. I never really dealt with my part . . .
That’s right, I never apologized to Brad for berating him for hours, telling him he was inconsiderate, selfish, and incapable of thinking of me and my needs. I threatened divorce on that flight and called him many mean names, and I got away with it.
From then on anytime we had to travel Brad and I would fight. Planning trips and holiday visits was a nightmare. I just figured we were bad at traveling and would be for the rest of our lives. But then Kristen and I were asked by The Science of Happiness podcast to be their happiness guinea pigs and learn how to give an effective apology.
The Science of Happiness is a show that brings together science and stories about living a meaningful life. Based out of UC Berkeley and produced in tandem with the university’s Greater Good Science Center, the show highlights the most provocative and practical scientific findings about compassion, gratitude, mindfulness, and awe.
Kristen and I were asked to follow the guidelines laid out by the center on how to give a truly effective apology. After getting our assignment, I sat down with Brad and asked him if there was anything in our ten-year history that he felt was unresolved and could maybe use an apology.
I assumed he wouldn’t come up with anything and would tell me I was such a perfect wife there was no way in hell he’d feel like there were any unresolved issues between us. I was wrong. It took him only a split second to say, “I mean there’s the way you handled Argentina. You said a lot of hurtful things on that flight and I did a lot of work to learn from the mistakes I made back then, but you never really did.”
Oh no! He was right. He totally deserved an apology for how I acted. So I got to work using my new guidelines to craft the perfect “sorry about Argentina” speech. You’d think this would be a monumental undertaking. But it was surprisingly simple.
All I had to do to make amends was acknowledge what I did wrong, explain the misguided intentions behind what I did, share my remorse by communicating what I regret doing and how I’ll work to not do that in the future, and last, offer a way to repair the damage done.
I followed the rules and apologized to Brad for misleading him by acting okay with everything until it was too late because I was afraid to disappoint him. I told him I could easily see how he must have felt like I lied to him by acting as if everything was fine until it was way too late. I promised to do better voicing my preferences in the future and offered to help plan our next trip so we wouldn’t end up in the same predicament.
When I finished telling Brad all these things, it was like I had put a magic spell on him. He was over-the-moon happy because he finally felt understood and reassured. And it didn’t just end there. I followed through on my offer to be more involved in our travel, and we just went on a trip to Jamaica that was awesome for both of us—and no one had a meltdown on the flight.
And what’s great about apologies is you can make them no matter how big or small the issue is. They work with big hot-button issues and little everyday accidents. Kristen’s Happiness Guinea Pig apology is the perfect example of this. (Is it me, or is Kristen the perfect example of most things?)
Kristen’s apology was to her husband, Dean, for accidentally breaking his favorite kitchen tool. She used her effective apology to acknowledge how she’d be more careful in the future and offered to buy Dean a replacement.
From little mistakes to divorce-threatening blowouts, being acknowledged and reassured helps alleviate the pain of those we hurt. And if we learned anything from Why Good Things Happen to Good People, it is that putting positivity into the world and righting any wrongs we’ve left unresolved can only bring about more positive things in the future. Or at least better vacations and unbroken kitchen gadgets.
Dear Kristen and Jolenta,
Women are brought up to apologize all the time for everything. We’re supposed to apologize when someone bumps into us. We’re supposed to apologize when someone misinterprets what we say. We’re supposed to apologize from the day we’re born until the day we die. Shouldn’t you be telling your female audience to apologize less?
—NS
Dear NS,
We’re sorry! Ha! Just kidding. We’re not sorry. But we do understand where you’re coming from. And we absolutely agree with you to a point. Yes, women are told to apologize all the time, including moments when we’ve done nothing wrong (and we understand that many of our Canadian followers of all genders suffer from this same social programming).
But to be clear: We’re not asking you to apologize more. We’re actually not asking you to do anything! We just want to illustrate how apologizing in a more targeted way—focused on understanding, remorse, restitution, and a deeper sense of human connection—made us feel better. It also made those we wronged feel better.
That being said, we do wish certain people would practice more effective apologizing. Specifically, we’re referring to politicians, captains of industry, and people in power more broadly—many of whom refuse to admit when they’ve done something wrong, much less try to make things right.
So, NS, if you happen to be one of these people in power, I’m going to backtrack and say: Yes, we actually do want you to apologize more, and apologize more effectively. Doing so will make you a more decent human being and more popular with the masses, regardless of your gender. And isn’t that what you want? Of course it is.
—Kristen