Apologizing for Your Part Even If the Other Party Didn’t Notice or Care

Some of you following my journey know that I had a pretty tough breakup last year and a serious chapter of grieving.

Friends kept telling me that it was exactly right for me to go all the way into the grief without distracting myself with constant activity or new possible partners on adrenaline-packed dating apps. I followed this advice as much as the grief sucked.

And I came out on the other side. And it is so, so grand over here. I am so happy. I am so relaxed. I am so inclined to find joy. Even more inclined. Now that I am living the life that happened on the other side of an insanely stressful partnership and an even more absurd separation and divorce process, I would do it again if I knew that five years of frequent suffering would give me this much bounty and freedom.

Hallelujah.

A few months ago I decided I had done my time in the dungeon of facing the rough stuff and I began dating a bit. I met some people. Mostly non-starters, in keeping with the basic economics of dating online.

And I matched with this one fella. His profile pictures were mostly about rock climbing. His profile content suggested a well-read dude with a high regard for self-inquiry and authenticity.

I tend to get to the heart of things quickly on dating apps…because I get to the heart of things everywhere. My first message to him was something like: “Hey, you seem interesting. Do you think you would be truly open to dating someone who isn’t a rock climber?”

He wrote back a few days later and reported that my question (and his ambivalence around the answer) had sparked some concerns about whether he was truly game to start dating. He said he’d reach back out if that shifted.

If you haven’t used dating apps, know that, just like in regular life, people sometimes offer themselves up to do a thing without being quite ready to do the thing. They also say they may get back in touch again in the future, and that almost never happens. All good. I responded to say that I appreciated his honesty and wished him the best. Although I almost always disconnect quickly from contacts on dating apps, for some reason I didn’t take him out of my queue.

Thirty days later, he wrote to see if I might like to be friends. Now I’ve told you I have more time on my hands, and I said sure. We met as friends. Hung out as friends for a time, and then it became obvious to us both that we wanted to be friends and to be dating. So that is all happening now.

We have had exactly two quite minor fights over five months. If you know me, you know that’s very few fights. One was about Moore’s Law and the other was about the negative reverberations of AI. Ridiculous, right? No one had engaged in fuzzy connection with someone that felt like infidelity, no one had loaded the dishwasher “wrong.” Two academic technology topics.

Candidly, compared to my last romantic rodeo, these “fights” were like playing on the monkey bars in elementary school for me. They were spicy and animated, but almost nothing got personal. Both people listened. Both people paused to spot their own projections or notice places of hyperbole. Honestly, it was quite fun to intellectually spar with a conscious, loving, present combatant. Both fights ended in hugs and appreciation.

Later on the day of the AI kerfuffle, he said “I want to apologize for how I behaved in that last argument.” I was surprised, but I listened. He said he felt he had let his righteousness get out of control. That his spirit or enthusiasm had crossed a line and broken some internal governance systems he has for his own behavior.

How about that?

As much as I teach 100% responsibility and accountability as a precept of conscious leadership, this was a serious ninja move. A PhD example of the concepts. I accepted his apology, shared my appreciation for his conscientiousness, and we moved on.

Today I realized how important that entire episode is. His apology was an ideal example of 100% responsibility because he wasn’t apologizing for something he “did TO me.” He wasn’t apologizing in reaction to any adverse feeling or impression I’d expressed. No reactivity at all. He was apologizing for his part of a situation, and it didn’t matter at all that it was fine with me. It wasn’t fine with him, and he wanted me to know that.

That capacity for self-awareness, for staying up to date with their own experience of where they felt “off” and making it known even if everything was fine, is a new bar for me. It inspires me to return that quality of loving honesty. I think I would have stayed quiet on something like this in the past, imagining that I got away with something. So it’s time for me to level up.

Any thoughts, feelings, or blurts? Share them here.