Sorry Wishes for Your Husband — For Hurting Them

When the hurt is the main event rather than a side effect, the apology has to centre their experience and not your intention.

I hurt you. I am not going to soften that with what I intended. I am sorry.

A different angle on the same first move, in case the first one is not how you speak.

You were hurt by something I did, and that is the whole fact of it. I am sorry.

A different angle on the same first move, in case the first one is not how you speak.

I am sorry for hurting you. You did not deserve it and there is no reading of this where you did.

When the only thing left to add would be an excuse.

I am sorry. I know that word has been cheapened by how often I have used it, so let me be specific instead. I dismissed something that was important to you because it was inconvenient to deal with. Then I let it sit, which made you feel like you were the only one who cared about fixing it. That is an awful position to put someone in and I put you in it. Whatever you need from here — space, a conversation, time — I will take it without arguing.

The one you would rather not send, which is usually the one that works.

There is a version of me that handles this well, and you did not get that version. You got the one who went quiet, then defensive, then slightly cruel, in that order. I am sorry. I have thought about why it happens and I do not have a clean answer yet, but I do know that you have never once been the reason for it, and that you have absorbed it more times than is fair. I am not going to promise it will never happen again, because promises like that are cheap and you have heard them. What I will say is that I am taking it seriously now, not as an argument to win but as something about me that costs you.

So the night does not do the damage that the argument started.

I keep going back to the moment I could have stopped and did not. That is the part I am most sorry about — not the heat of it, but the choice inside it. You gave me an opening to soften and I walked past it. I have no complaint about how you reacted; I would have reacted worse. What I want you to know is that I understand the difference between being sorry that we fought and being sorry for what I did, and this is the second one. Take the time you need. I will still be here, and I will be easier to be around when you get back.

For sending while it is still raw, when anything long will read as a defence.

I have written this three times and deleted it twice, which probably tells you how much I have been thinking about it. I was wrong. Not partly wrong, not wrong-in-context — wrong. You raised something that mattered to you and I treated it like an inconvenience, and then when you reacted I acted like the reaction was the problem. It was not. I was. I am sorry. I am not asking you to move past this on my timeline. I only want you to know that I understand what I did and that I am not planning to repeat it.

Asks for nothing, so there is nothing they have to decide right now.

I owe you a real apology, not the quick one I gave at the time. What I did was careless, and careless is worse than angry because it means I was not paying attention to you at all. You have never once made me feel small, and I did that to you without even noticing. I hate that. I am sorry. I am going to be more careful with you, and not just for the next week until this fades.