“I’ll Take Steps to Prevent a Recurrence”
PLANNED CHANGE
Whether we’re scanning it spread out over our kitchen table with our coffee or online at the office, we expect our daily paper to tell the truth. Imagine, then, the shock of some Cape Cod, Massachusetts, residents when they read the front-page apology from the publisher of the Cape Cod Times. A longtime reporter had simply been making up feature stories. A sharp-eyed editor had gotten suspicious. Databases were searched. Sources were contacted. The conclusion: the people in the stories did not exist and the events described never happened.
So the publisher admitted wrongdoing: “[How] did we allow this to happen? It’s a question we cannot satisfactorily answer … We must learn from this painful lesson and take steps to keep it from happening again.” He then went on to outline exactly what those steps would be.1
On the other hand, many couples can identify with the wife who lamented, “We have the same old arguments about the same old things. What upsets me most is not the offending action—it’s the repetition of the offending action. He apologizes. He promises not to do it again. Then he does it again—‘it’ being as small as leaving the bathroom light on or as annoying as needless crabbiness.
“I don’t want ‘sorry.’ I want him not to do the thing that bothers me—ever!”
This woman wants her husband to change.
In the context of an apology, planning new steps means that a person realizes that his or her actions are unhelpful, counterproductive, or even destructive. The person regrets the pain he or she is causing others, and is choosing to make lasting improvements.
Planning out specific changes is more than saying “I’m sorry; I was wrong. How can I make this up to you?” It is saying—as the newspaper did—“I’ll try not to do this again.” For some people, it’s a genuine plan for change that convinces others that the apology is sincere. The offending person’s new plan that really holds water, then, elicits the offended person’s forgiveness.
Without laying out specific steps to prevent a recurrence, the other languages of apology may fall on deaf ears. What people who’ve been hurt want to know is, “Are you going to take real steps toward change, or will this happen again next week?”
In our research, we asked the question, “What do you expect in an apology?” Repeatedly we heard statements like the following:
“Show that you are willing to change, and do it differently next time.”
“I expect them to find ways to stop it from happening again.”
“I want them to have a plan for improvement, a plan to succeed and not to fail.”
“I expect him not to go into a rage a few minutes later or do the same thing again.”
These and scores of similar statements reveal that for many people, true change is at the heart of a sincere apology.
IT BEGINS IN THE HEART
How then do we speak the language of change? It begins with an expression of intent to prevent a recurrence. All true change begins in the heart. We recognize that what we have done is wrong, that our actions have hurt the one we love. We don’t want to continue this behavior, so we decide that by our own power or with supernatural help, we will change. Then we verbalize this decision to the person we have offended. It is the decision to change that shows something vital in neon letters: we are no longer making excuses. We are not minimizing our behavior but are accepting full responsibility for our actions. When we share our intention to change with the person we have offended, we are communicating to them what is going on inside of us. They get a glimpse of our heart—and this often is the language that convinces them we really do mean what we say.
Abby is thirty-six and thinks her husband, Jeff, is a good apologizer. “What makes you think his apologies are sincere?” I asked.
“Well, he’s very honest,” she replied. “And what I really like is that he tells me he’ll try not to let it happen again. To me this is really important. I don’t want to just hear words; I want to see changes. When he indicates that he intends to change, I’m always willing to forgive him.”
Tom, fortyish, said, “I expect the person to come to me and sit down face-to-face, not over the phone, and tell me that they were wrong and tell me that they’re going to make changes so that it won’t happen again. I want them to be realistic and tell me that they know they have to work on it so I should be patient with them.”
Some may resist the idea of verbally expressing an intention to change for fear that someone will not actually change. “Won’t that simply make things worse?” one man asked me. It is true that changing behavior takes time, and in the process we may have additional failures. (We’ll talk about that later in the chapter.) But these failures need not keep us from ultimately making genuine positive changes.
The bigger question is, “What if you fail to verbalize your intention to change?” Your philosophy may be “Just make the changes; don’t talk about them.” The problem with that approach is that the offended person cannot read your mind. He or she doesn’t know that in your heart you have decided to make changes. It may take weeks or months for them to observe the difference in you, but even then they may not know what motivated the transformation. When apologizing, it is far better to state your intention to change. Then the person knows that you truly recognize that your behavior is wrong—and that you fully intend to change that behavior.
It is perfectly fine to tell them that you hope they will be patient with you because you know you will not be 100 percent successful immediately, but that it is your intention to change this destructive behavior. Now they know your intention and sense that your apology is sincere so they can now forgive you even before your changes are fully completed.
“I’ll Apologize, but I Won’t Change”
Nick is by nature a joker—jovial, always making a humorous comment. The problem is that many of his jokes are off-color. This offends and embarrasses his wife, Teresa. Nick argues, “Hey, they aren’t dirty jokes; they’re jokes that everyone can identify with. That’s why I get so many laughs.” However, Teresa is not laughing, and this joking has become a huge issue in their marriage.
Nick is willing to say, “I’m sorry I offended you. It is not my intention to hurt you.” But he is not willing to say, “I was wrong, and I will change the kind of jokes I tell.”
In my office, he defended himself by saying, “No one else finds my jokes offensive.” But by doing a little research we found that a number of people, especially women in his office, found his humor offensive. They had simply not taken the initiative to confront him.
A few weeks later when I shared this information with Nick, he began to think differently. However, it should not have taken this information for Nick to change his behavior. The fact that it deeply hurt his wife and created an emotional barrier between the two of them should have been enough to motivate him to make changes. It was, in fact, his unwillingness to change that had brought the marriage to the point of divorce. When Nick realized he had to change or lose his marriage, he was willing to change.
The idea that we only need to make changes when we are doing something morally wrong is erroneous. In a healthy marriage, we often make changes that have nothing to do with morality but everything to do with building a harmonious marriage. For example, I don’t enjoy vacuuming floors, but I do it regularly. I stopped being insensitive to meeting Karolyn’s needs when I discovered that her primary love language is acts of service, and that vacuuming floors is a special dialect that she greatly appreciates.
Vacuuming in itself is not a moral issue. It is, however, a marital issue and can make the difference between a wife’s feeling loved and not feeling loved. I much prefer to live with a wife whose love tank is full. Therefore, my change was a small price to pay for the privilege of living with a happy woman.
BEYOND WORDS—TO REAL CHANGE
The second step down the road of change is developing a plan to prevent a recurrence of the problem. Often apologies fail to be successful in restoring the relationship because there is either no plan for making positive changes, or the plan is not very specific.
Jan and Tom recently marked their silver anniversary, but Jan admits they don’t have much of a marriage after twenty-five years: “He has a drinking problem. He often apologizes for the way he treats me when he’s drinking, but we both know these are merely words. Words are said in sincerity at the moment, but both of us know that there is no commitment to stand behind the words, no plan for making changes.”
Checking himself into a residential treatment center is a plan that could radically change their lifestyle and marriage, but to this point Tom has been unwilling to have a plan to change, so he continues down the same predictable road.
“He’s a Good Man, and I Don’t Want to Lose Him”
I met Rick and Rita in New Orleans after my lecture on the five love languages. Rick began, “We’re having problems in our marriage.” He explained that after reading The 5 Love Languages a year earlier, he realized his love languages are physical touch and quality time. He told this to Rita and thought her speaking his love languages would help their marriage.
“At the time, I was feeling really unloved by her,” Rick said, with Rita standing at his side. “She spent all of her time with her mother and her friends. I felt like she was married to them more than she was married to me. She told me she was sorry, that she did not want to hurt me, that she loved me very much, and that she would try to speak my love languages, but that was the end of it. Nothing ever changed. It was like we didn’t even have the conversation.
“It’s a year later, and I still feel like she doesn’t care about me or our marriage.”
I looked at Rita, who was standing next to him. “I really do love him,” she said. “It’s just that I didn’t grow up in a ‘touchy-feely’ family and I find it difficult to initiate physical touch. I enjoy spending time with him; it’s just that I work full-time, my mother’s very demanding, and I like to go out with my girlfriends one evening a week and before I know it, all the time is gone.”
“Would you sincerely like to have a better marriage?” I asked Rita.
“I really would,” she said. “He’s a good man, and I don’t want to lose him.” In the next five minutes I mapped out a plan for her on how to learn to speak the love language of physical touch. Then I shared some ideas about quality time. I challenged her to sit down with Rick for fifteen minutes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights and discuss their day and how things went. I told her she would find other ideas on how to speak the language of quality time in the book and urged her to read that chapter again.
It was a quick conversation and one that I would have forgotten had it not been for a letter I received six months later. Rick said, “Dr. Chapman, I can’t thank you enough for the time you spent with Rita and me at your seminar in New Orleans. It made all the difference in the world. Rita took your plan seriously. She has become extremely fluent in speaking my love languages. I am a happy man and I just wanted you to know that you have made a difference in our marriage.” Rita made changes once she had a plan. She had the desire to meet Rick’s needs much earlier, but the desire was not turned into reality until she adopted a plan for making changes. Plans need not be elaborate, but they need to be specific.
“I Feared Being Forced to Protect My Child against His Own Father”
Sometimes the offended party will be able to help you work out a plan. A while back I (Jennifer) spoke to a small group of women on the apology languages. A few weeks later I got a call from Carla, one of the ladies who attended. She told me the following story. “My husband, Chad, is a fantastic father, but we all have our moments. One night, he really blew up at our four-year-old son out of his own anger and frustration. My son was pushing all of his hot buttons. My husband did not hurt our son physically, but his rage did scare him terribly. I was so upset that I told him if he ever acted that way again toward either of our children, I would leave him.”
Carla and her husband had agreed they’d never threaten each other with leaving, yet she felt anger and dismay over his behavior. “I feared being forced to protect my child against his own father,” she explained.
“I told Chad that I needed an apology. He said, ‘I’m sorry, but …’ and then he started talking about our son and how he had made him mad. But I needed him to see how he was 100 percent wrong and responsible in disciplining out of anger. I needed him to see how it scared both our son and me.” Carla wanted a plan “so that it would never happen again.”
The two worked together on a plan, and the next morning, Chad apologized. “He was so sincere, it made me cry. He also apologized to our son. Our son told him, ‘Dad, I was really scared.’ My husband’s heart broke. He asked, ‘Would you forgive Daddy?’ My son replied, ‘Yes.’ Then my husband said, ‘I will never do that again.’”
Carla told me that a part of the plan they worked out together was that if her husband felt himself getting angry with the children, he would go to her and say, “I’m getting heated. Will you please take over?” He would take a walk around the block and come back and try to help her in any way he could. “So far the plan is working really well,” she said.
PUT IT IN WRITING!
The third step down the road of change is implementing the plan. A plan that is not implemented is like a seed that is not planted. Making the plan work requires thought and action. I have often found it helpful to write on an index card the changes I am trying to implement and to post them on the mirror where I shave in the mornings. It is a way of keeping them on the front burner of my mind. I am more likely to make the improvements if I am consciously aware of what I am trying to do differently today.
Small Changes, Big Difference
Joel’s wife, Joyce, was quarrelsome. It seemed to Joel that almost everything she said was negative, and whatever he said, she disagreed with. In our counseling sessions it became obvious to me that for Joyce the world was either black or white. She tended to see everything as good or bad, right or wrong. So, if she disagreed with Joel’s idea, his idea was “wrong.” It took a while for her to come to understand the difference between something being morally wrong and something being simply a different way of doing or seeing things. Much of life falls into a nonmoral category. The way one cleans a house or one’s taste in restaurants is not a moral issue. It is important to find ways to disagree without being condemning.
Another reality is that people perceive things in different ways. When Joyce realized that her speech patterns came across to Joel as judgmental and affected their marital relationship, she was open to exploring ways of changing those patterns.
One of the plans Joyce developed was that if she disagreed with Joel’s idea, she would first give an affirming statement and only then share her opinion. We actually wrote out three affirming statements that she might try.
1. “That’s an interesting way to look at it.”
2. “I can appreciate that.”
3. “One of the things I like about that idea is …”
The following week, Joyce admitted that it had been very difficult for her to implement the plan. “I guess I’ve been in a rut for so long, it’s difficult to change,” she said. “But by the middle of the week, I was beginning to make the transition. I immediately saw how differently Joel responded. I guess it was seeing the smile on his face and knowing that he was pleased with my efforts that encouraged me to continue working.”
She had written the three affirming statements on an index card and read them several times throughout the day. “The card really helped,” she said, adding, “I never knew that such a small change would make such a big difference in our relationship.”
The Cost of Rebuilding
Sometimes implementing the plan for change can be costly. Caroline came to me (Jennifer) for counseling to help her deal with depression and feelings of betrayal. She had married an attractive professional athlete named Chris when they were each twenty-five years old. Shortly after the birth of their first child, her husband had become involved in an affair. When confronted by Caroline, Chris admitted wrongdoing and said that he wanted to repair the marriage.
During counseling, Caroline and I discussed terms under which she would be willing to work on rebuilding the marriage. For Caroline, it was critical for her to hear from Chris that he was not only sorry for his wrong action but that he would make changes in his lifestyle.
In the end, Chris made a very drastic change. He left the professional sports world and took a desk job in order to avoid temptation. In addition, Chris worked to rebuild Caroline’s trust by telling her where he would be and opening up his smartphone and email accounts to his wife.
Caroline needed to know that things would be different in the future, and Chris offered these concessions in order to reestablish trust. Caroline forgave Chris, and five years later, they have a strong marriage.
Julia and Hope were close high school friends who decided to room together when they went off to the same college. In high school, their friendship had been satisfying and comfortable. In college, Julia was quite social, and she busied herself with new activities. Hope, on the other hand, was more introverted, and she wished that Julia would spend more time with her in their shared dormitory room. For her part, Julia noticed that Hope rarely went out except to attend her classes. So she invited her friend to join her in attending a weekly activity with her friends as well as her trips to the gym. Hope consistently refused, saying, “No, because …” almost before Julia finished her offer. Hope grew increasingly resentful of Julia’s rich social life.
One evening, the lid that Hope had been keeping on her resentment blew off, and in a fit of anger she accused Julia of being a cold, uncaring, self-centered, unavailable, terrible friend and roommate. Julia was quite hurt, and the two lived in near-silence for a few days. To her credit, Hope finally realized that she had been unfair in blaming Julia for her own loneliness. She apologized to her roommate for her unkind words.
Julia wanted to accept the apology—for the sake of harmony in their room, if nothing else. But, she wondered, Hope has blown up on me once. What if she keeps on doing that? For Julia, feeling safe in accepting Hope’s apology would require a plan for change. The two talked and finally agreed to the following prevention steps: Hope would either join Julia in making friends or find her own way to make new friends. If either of them felt a frustration beginning to build toward the other, they would talk about the issue before they exploded in anger. Finally, they agreed to plan some fun things to do alone together—just like in the old days.
WHAT IF WE FAIL?
Just because we’re working on a plan for constructive change does not mean we will immediately be successful. There are often failures along the road even when we are sincerely trying. These failures need not defeat us.
Becky and Josh have been married for four years. She gives this account of what happened in the early months of their marriage: “We had been married for nine months when Josh lost his job, which represented 50 percent of our income. He became depressed, as he was unemployed almost a year. During this period, he threatened to leave me. I knew he was depressed, so I tried not to blame him, but it hurt. He later apologized for threatening to leave me. He said he would try never to say that again.
“He was successful for about a month. Then one day in the heat of anger, he said, ‘I’m not good for you, and I may as well leave.’ It created a lot of insecurity in me, and I told him how much it hurt me. The next day, he apologized again and told me that he was just so depressed and down on himself, that it was not my fault. He asked me to pray for him, and he hoped never to talk about leaving again.
“He hasn’t brought it up again in over three years. In fact, he has a good job, and we’re getting along great. I’m glad I didn’t abandon him when he was down.”
It’s better when you can acknowledge any subsequent failure quickly, even before the offended person has time to confront you. A quick apology indicates that you are sincere in your efforts to change. One woman said, “I’m really aware of my tendency to be critical of my twentysomething married daughter, especially when it comes to housekeeping. I’m a neat freak and she is not. My husband actually called me out on my tendency to go over to her house and point out some mess, or bustle around picking up. Otherwise she and I have a wonderful, close relationship, and it bothers me when we bicker. I’ve apologized and promised to do better, and more than once I’ve found myself saying, ‘Why don’t you … ’ then stopping and declaring, ‘No, I am NOT going to nag.’ Otherwise known as biting your tongue!”
On the other hand, when we fail to admit our relapses, it communicates to the spouse that we were not sincere in our apology. Due to shame or embarrassment, we usually don’t want to admit our failure, but it is better to acknowledge the relapse up front.
Get Up and Try Again
When in our efforts to change we “fall off the wagon,” we must admit our failure as quickly as possible. Get up and try again. This is one of the reasons why Alcoholics Anonymous has been so successful in helping people overcome addiction to alcohol. One of the twelve steps is: “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”2 Admitting wrong and confessing that wrong to God and another trusted person does require both humility and honesty but gives the opportunity to begin anew.
A while back, I was playing with my young granddaughter. She was trying to build a structure from plastic Legos. It kept falling apart at a certain juncture. I could tell she was getting frustrated with the process, so I said to her, “Let me tell you something that my mother told me. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’ Do you understand what that means?” I asked. She nodded and continued to work on the project.
Later that day, I was trying to open a pickle jar and was having difficulty. She looked up at me and said, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” I laughed. She laughed and I tried again, this time successfully. It’s an important lesson to learn.
Thomas Edison failed many times before he succeeded in inventing the common lightbulb. Babe Ruth struck out far more often than he hit home runs. Stories abound of famous actors and authors who toiled in obscurity for years, rejected by publishers and overlooked for movie roles, before they found fame. The tragedy is that people often give up when they are next door to success. Old behavior patterns die slowly, but we will be successful if we persevere, prayerfully committed to change and seeking the support of trusted others to help us through that change.
Inviting the offended person to help you come up with a plan for change is perhaps the best way to effectively show them that you are turning over a new leaf. You might say something like this:
STATEMENTS OF PLANNED CHANGE
I know that my behavior was very painful to you. I don’t ever want to do that again. I’m open to any ideas you have on how I might change my behavior.
How could I say that in a different way that would not come across as critical?
I know that what I am doing is not helpful. What would you like to see me change that would make this better for you?
I really do want to change. I know I’m not going to be perfect, but I really want to try to change this behavior. Would you be willing to remind me if I revert to my old patterns? Just say “relapse.” I think that will help me to stop and change my direction.
I let you down by making the same mistake again. What would it take for you to begin to rebuild your trust in me?
This is such a long-term pattern for me. While I want to change, I know it will be hard, and I may fail, hurting you again along the way. I would really appreciate it if you would help me think about a way to help my changes stick and encourage me when you see me doing things that help. Can I count on you to be my teammate in this?
TALK ABOUT IT
Name some of the differences you have noticed between men and women when they apologize. Where do you think these differences come from?
This chapter says that all true change begins in the heart. We recognize that what we have done is wrong, that our actions have hurt the one we love. What do you think of this idea? Have you ever seen lasting change begin with an expression of intent to prevent a recurrence?
Talk about a time when you wanted your spouse (or other person close to you) not to just apologize but change their behavior. What happened?