Pete Wright:
Welcome to How to Split a Toaster: A Divorce Podcast About Saving Your Relationships from TruStory FM. Today, does your toaster know how to say, I'm sorry?
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show everybody. I'm Seth Nelson, as always, I'm here with my good friend, Pete Wright. Today, we're sorry. There, we said it. Are you happy? We apologized, we don't even know what else we could do. We are very sorry that we've offended you by anything we've ever said. Okay. Apologies are hard, but our guest today says, "Adults should be able to do it." What I am not sorry about though is that we listen to our listener questions and comments because that is how we found Susan McCarthy, who is one of the writers behind SorryWatch.com and author of, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry: The Case for Good Apologies with Marjorie Ingall. She's here today to help us understand the anatomy of an apology and where it might just help you in your relationships. Susan, welcome to the Toaster.
Susan McCarthy:
Thank you for having me. I'm really pleased to be on Splitting a Toaster.
Pete Wright:
We're thrilled to have you for so many reasons. I am really curious how you ended up in the sorry business given your main line of work. I was telling you before the show, what a great honor it is to have you here as one of the authors behind When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals, which is just a glorious book, and yet here we are talking about you as a master of apologies. How did that happen for you?
Susan McCarthy:
Well, when I got out of journalism school, I made the mistake of telling editors I could write about anything, and then I realized that made their minds go blank and that I had to give them a category. So I told them, I wrote about animal behavior and humor and it was in my capacity as a humor writer that I wrote a piece for Salon about Sorry If, the dreaded Sorry If. And it was a humor piece tied on current events and it was well received, but I didn't expect it to last because current events go away, become less current.
But people kept writing to me and saying, "I showed to my mom. I printed it out and I made my boyfriend read it so he could understand why I was still upset even though he apologized." And I realized it was something people cared about. I asked my friend, Marjorie Ingall, who's a wonderful writer, who writes humor but who also writes for lots of Jewish publications, which means that every year she has to write about atonement, apology and forgiveness. And so she had thought about this quite deeply and I thought that the two of us could really bring a lot to the subject. So we started a website analyzing apologies.
Pete Wright:
It's got to be exhausting work.
Susan McCarthy:
Well, human beings are brilliant at coming up with ways to save their pride by giving lousy apologies. I'm sorry if you took what I said the wrong way. I'm sorry if the media made me look bad.
Seth Nelson:
Susan, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I got something important to say. You just said something that really struck me that we're brilliant on coming up with ways to fuel our pride.
Pete Wright:
To save our pride.
Seth Nelson:
Right, right. I'm just so excited because now I know that I'm at least brilliant at something.
Susan McCarthy:
I'll give you that.
Seth Nelson:
Okay, I got one beat. I was working for the show. I didn't feel like I was going to get one, so I got one.
Pete Wright:
You drummed it up, you found it. So this is where I'm interested in apologies in the divorce process, right? Because when you're under any sort of emotional strain, when you're angry, when you're scared, how authentic are you able to muster an apology? At what point do you feel like apologies are merited versus to maybe you should just shut your mouth?
Susan McCarthy:
I think sometimes the heat of argument is not the best time to apologize, but it's maybe time to put down a marker and say that's something we should talk about. I want to address that when I'm calmer. I want to set aside some time to talk about that. The other thing that comes up a lot in personal apologies is yes, I said some unforgivable things, but you were being incredibly annoying at a time when you knew I was in pain. Those are two separate conversations, and so the conversation about the unforgivable things that I said, which maybe they are forgivable, if I apologize, and the annoying way that you were behaving when you knew I was in pain, those are two separate conversations. You need to tease them apart. And of course, in something as complicated as a marriage, it's more than two conversations.
Let me just say as long as we're on the subject of divorce, my parents got divorced and they had an extremely amicable divorce, which has its own problems because their kids are always saying, "Well, wait, if you get along, why should you even be divorced? I would like things go back the way they were." Because they didn't fight in front of the kids. But in fact, my parents were divorced in the 1960s in California. They told their attorney that they wanted joint custody and the attorney said, "That doesn't exist, but we can work something out." At their next visit, the attorney said, "It turns out joint custody does exist in California law. Nobody ever asked for it before."
Seth Nelson:
How times have changed,.
Susan McCarthy:
Times have changed. I admire my parents so much for having an amicable divorce, even though I would've personally prefer that they didn't need to get divorced and just saying it can happen and it's worth it.
Pete Wright:
Did you get anything from your own roots about how to apologize?
Susan McCarthy:
No, not really. I think that most people do not see models of apologizing. They do not see models of accepting apologies, and that's one reason why it's so hard.
Seth Nelson:
Well also, isn't the problem too, that when kids are little and they do something wrong and you just say... The parent says, "Go say you're sorry." And they say, "I'm sorry." They got step one. Now they're little, right? But no one's teaching them 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, and then by the time they get to their teenage years and they're dealing with relationships that frequently will need apologies, they're not listening to their parents to teach them how to do it anyway, so they're going to learn these behaviors from their friends, their peer groups, their social media, whatever the case may be, but it's probably not doing a good job.
Susan McCarthy:
Yeah, I think the thing to do is to start teaching them when they're small, and as Marjorie says, "Little kids are feral." They don't really grasp that there are other people who are really hurt by, I tore the leg off your teddy bear. So you say, "Say you're sorry. Say you're sorry for tearing the leg off the teddy bear. Say that you will help sew the leg back on if my mommy trusts me with a needle," and then just scale it up as they get older.
Seth Nelson:
I'm so bad. Right when you said that, I was like, this kid's going to take the needle and poke the bear in the eyes, like Pete sewed it in my face.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah. I knew the attorney's sociopath would come out.
Seth Nelson:
Exactly, exactly.
Susan McCarthy:
Oh, yeah. My daughter went to a preschool where there was a biter.
Pete Wright:
Oh, dear.
Susan McCarthy:
There's always a biter.
Pete Wright:
There's always a biter.
Susan McCarthy:
And one day I arrived at the... Yeah, Marjorie's older daughter was a biter, I am told. One day I arrived at the preschool just as the biter was being told to apologize to a child she had bitten. And these are toddlers, and so she was being coached to give the other child a hug and a kiss, and the child who had just been bitten was like, "Oh, no, no, no"-
Seth Nelson:
No way.
Susan McCarthy:
"Don't come near me with those teeth."
Seth Nelson:
It's like Tyson biting the Holyfield's ear off. What are we doing here?
Pete Wright:
Can you break down the anatomy of a good apology before we start talking about how bad Seth is at it?
Susan McCarthy:
Yeah, absolutely.
Seth Nelson:
You don't know that Pete because I've never had to apologize, nor have I apologized.
Pete Wright:
Please see the evidence of this show.
Susan McCarthy:
Well, Marjorie and I came up with six steps, and then finally we added a half step, and not every step applies to every apology, but they're more important at the beginning. So the first one is to say, "I'm sorry, or I apologize." Because the brilliant human being like Seth, who doesn't want to say those words and humble himself may say, "I really regret the way this has turned out. I couldn't sleep last night so upset." That's about you. That's not a real apology. Secondly, we say, you should apologize for what you did specifically, so you don't say, "I am sorry, I messed up." You say, "I am sorry that I jumped up from the dinner table and stormed out." Thirdly, we say, show that you understand the impact and you say, "I realized that when I stormed out and took the car, I left you stranded and you had no way to get home."
Fourthly, we say, no excuses. Don't make excuses. Don't say, "You were being so annoying." You might need to explain. You might need to say, "I actually got a call from the doctor," whatever, you need to explain maybe, but you definitely do not need to excuse yourself. Again, that's a separate conversation. Further down the list, and this obviously doesn't apply to every apology, say why it won't happen again, and if it is appropriate and it's not appropriate... If I step on your foot, I should apologize, but do I make reparations? Not unless I stepped on your foot really hard and you need to go to the emergency room. So those are the six steps, and then we added a half step that's relevant to some apologies, which is listen. Listen to the person you're apologizing to. And they may say, "I wasn't upset that you stormed out. I thought that was part of the fair give and take of ideas, but I was upset that you took the car."
Pete Wright:
Okay, so know what you're apologizing for.
Seth Nelson:
Right? I feel like that's a mistake I would make.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, I do too.
Seth Nelson:
[inaudible 00:11:08] you guys for the wrong thing.
Pete Wright:
Well, so Seth, what are you thinking as you hear this? I mean, you see a lot of couples that are in strife. How good are apologies or relatively bad or apologies in your work?
Seth Nelson:
They're non-existent.
Susan McCarthy:
Really?
Seth Nelson:
And I'm not joking.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Seth Nelson:
They're non-existent. When people are getting a divorce, there are a lot of different conversations that are happening, some simultaneously. There's the conversations the parties are having with each other that the lawyers don't know about. There's conversations that the lawyers are having with their clients. There's conversations lawyers are having with each other if they're doing the right thing and trying to resolve the case or schedule or limit the issues and solve problems and not create them. There's formal conversations that the lawyers on behalf of their clients have with the court and written documents and in presentation of evidence or oral argument or just being in front of the court. So the apology that we're kind of focused in on here, Pete is one from one spouse to another. I don't see them or hear them often. I think it would certainly fall into the trap of apologizing for the wrong thing. I'm sorry that we're going through a divorce. No, you're not. You cheated on me. You bastard. I mean, so in the timing of it, you've already "lawyered up." If you're that sorry, why are you trying to take the house away?
Susan McCarthy:
Do you see clients who go through mediation?
Seth Nelson:
Oh, yeah. We mediate all the time. I was a certified mediator for a very long time.
Susan McCarthy:
I was recently reading an article about mediation, which had an interesting footnote about a couple going through divorce and the negotiations had extended pretty far, and the footnote said they were $50,000 away from the final agreement, which suggested to me that they were pretty prosperous people. And they could not agree on a piece of jewelry that the husband had bought to give to his mistress. Neither of them really wanted it, but it had such symbolic value for each of them. Like, I'm not going to let you have that and give it to her, and that is just childish revengefulness that you want to take it away from me when you don't want to wear it yourself.
And they just could not agree. And the mediator said, "What about an apology?" And they didn't give the process by which they convinced the husband that he should apologize to the wife in this case, and he did. He apologized for cheating on her, and they agreed to take the jewelry and put it in trust for their 8-year-old daughter. But the apology did not appear in the document. It was just a spoken apology between the two people. It was not one of the conditions of the agreement, so it didn't go very public.
Seth Nelson:
If it works.
Pete Wright:
That's interesting. Let's wait.
Seth Nelson:
If it works.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
People have asked for apologies during mediation and during the case, and I'm all for apologies. What I don't ever want to do is make a case harder to solve. So I'm very cautious and that's why we're thrilled to have you here today on the apology. Because you don't want to make it worse. You don't want to make a mistake out of the six that you gave us.
Pete Wright:
Well, and I think that's exactly it, because what you just outlined, it seems so simple and yet everything I'm thinking is, I'm sorry, I'm sorry for putting us through this, right? I'm environmentally sorry. That does not seem authentic to me, right? It seems like what you are saying, it's not apologizing for something specific. So when you're in a point of emotional, you already said, when you're in the heat of argument, don't apologize, I recognize that. But trying to build a model to recognize when you're breaking the pattern, when you're not being completely present.
Susan McCarthy:
I think that's a case where you've got to break it into pieces. And so you may say, "There's a lot going on. We've both done pretty terrible things to each other. I would really appreciate an apology for that time that you stormed out of the dinner party. That would mean a lot to me to know that you understood how that felt to me and that you're sorry." And the person who asks for the apology, if they get a good apology, they need to accept it because just as most of us have never really learned to apologize, most of us have never learned to accept an apology and the world has a fair number of people who enjoy holding onto grudges. I'm sure you see that in divorces. And so-
Seth Nelson:
Never.
Susan McCarthy:
So being able to say, "Thank you, I accept that apology." Or saying, "Thank you, I know that was hard for you to say, I'm going to need to sit with that for a little bit and get back to you about whether I can accept that apology." Those are grown up things to say.
Seth Nelson:
But once you give apology, someone does the six steps, and it's a solid, sincere textbook on what I'm saying, your textbook, which is great apology. If the other person doesn't accept it, there's nothing you can do about that.
Susan McCarthy:
There is nothing you can do about it. If a person prefers to have a grudge than to get an apology, then good thing you're getting divorced.
Seth Nelson:
Right. Or if they get the apology and they still hold the grudge.
Susan McCarthy:
Exactly.
Seth Nelson:
Then that's their decision.
Susan McCarthy:
Right. They haven't really accepted if they're still holding the grudge. And one of the strange things that we found in research for this book is the Zeigarnik effect and short version of that is you remember uncompleted actions better than completed actions. So in my case, if I say something really stupid to somebody, I will wake up night after night at 3:00 A.M. and think, oh, God, that was a stupid thing to say. That sounded racist, that was rude, that was disgusting. Ah, what a jerk I am. And if I get to apologize and sometimes I have invited people out to lunch specifically to apologize for saying something dumb, then believe it or not, I actually forget what it was, the stupid thing that I said. Not only does it not bother me at 4:00 A.M. but there are a couple of times when I wanted to put something, to post about something on the Sorrywatch webpage.
And I was like, "What was that stupid thing I said?" I went over that in my mind dozens of times. I invited her out to lunch and apologized. What did I say? That would be really useful to know and that particular one I've never recovered. There was a time when I apologized to my daughter, later and she couldn't remember it and I couldn't remember it until a song brought it back to mine. So I was able to write about that one. The point I'm making is that an apology accepted loses so much of its sting. It stops being a grudge. And one of the interesting stories that I came across was the psychologist, Claude Steiner was running workshops in emotional literacy. And there was a couple, an older couple in one of his workshops, and the husband said that when their first child was born, he visited his wife Rose at the hospital.
He was so happy, he was over the moon. He went out to a bar, he bought everybody drinks, and he went home with a woman in the bar and slept with her. And then he was horrified of what he'd done when he told his wife everything, he apologized and she was not happy and years went by and she would bring it up again and again and he would apologize again and again. And she was never over it. And in this emotional literacy workshop he said, "I've apologized to you so many times, I want to apologize again because now I think I understand better." In front of the whole workshop, he got down on one knee and he said, "Rose, I am so sorry. I did not realize how much I had hurt you. I've been apologizing for behaving badly and I didn't understand how much I had hurt you and you are the last person I want to hurt." And he apologized for the impact of what he had done, which had never been in his previous apologies. And she said, "Thank you. I accept that."
Seth Nelson:
But Susan, here's my question on this.
Susan McCarthy:
Yes.
Seth Nelson:
When you're saying you show the understanding of the impact, you might not know that. You might not know how it negatively impacted them. And so if you apologize and get the impact wrong and they don't communicate that back to you or if you apologize and say, "I'm sorry because I stormed out being specific, I don't even know how that impacted you. Can you share that with me so I can apologize specifically?" You might get that one wrong. Do you ask for information?
Susan McCarthy:
Yes.
Seth Nelson:
Because this example you gave went on for years.
Susan McCarthy:
Yes.
Seth Nelson:
But the wife in that situation never spoke up and said, "You haven't apologized for how it hurt me."
Susan McCarthy:
I think she didn't say that. I think she probably said, "You hurt me terribly." And he went back to, "I was a jerk. I was showing off. I couldn't resist a pretty woman, I thought..."
Seth Nelson:
So what's the communication about that impact? Because that seems to be an important part.
Susan McCarthy:
That's the part where it says listen, listen. And if you say apologize to someone and they say, "Okay." You say, "I get the feeling that maybe that apology didn't work for you. What am I missing?" You can do that. And the great thing about the story from the emotional literacy workshop is that the leader ran into the husband on the street about a year later and said, "Oh, hi, how's it going?" And he said, "Great. And I want to tell you Rose has never brought up that again. The apology worked. We're over it." And this had been like 40 years.
Pete Wright:
I think I get it, right? And I understand how that can be so hard. And I look at... One of the things that I love on your website is your dissection of assorted apologies, whether celebrity apologies or political apologies and the things that are said, I can understand how the person apologizing could get there, right? I can understand that. Like the Jimmy Fallon after the Rolling Stone exposé when it was reported that the work environment on the Tonight Show is rough. And he says via Zoom, "It's embarrassing and I feel so bad. Sorry if I embarrassed you and your family and friends, I feel so bad. I can't even tell you." I can understand how Jimmy might actually feel like that is the most authentic thing he can say, but by the six steps, he's missing something.
Susan McCarthy:
Yes, there's much too much about how bad he feels. The infamous Ellen apology was also way too much about how bad she felt about how this made her look and seem when that didn't agree with her self-image, which is something that people often encounter. You'll also see sports figures apologizing to the team. Let's say there's a drunk driving incident and they're apologizing to the team for making them look bad and bringing down the image of the team. They should be apologizing to people who were on the road that night, people whom they endangered. That happens a lot. If you beat up your wife, the apology is to your wife, not to the team because it got caught on video.
Seth Nelson:
Well, you can apologize to the team in private.
Susan McCarthy:
Oh, yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Because if you get suspended and now you can't play. But that's the whole point about understanding the impact, right? There's numerous apologies there. The one is absolutely to your wife and the person that you harmed. You've also harmed your team by being suspended and hurting their chances in the playoffs, which it might be a financial impact to them as well. It might be an emotional impact. These are young adults usually in men that are trying to win their lifetime dreams and they put a lot of work into it. So I don't think it should be first.
Pete Wright:
Maybe not the team, yeah, right. Maybe not in a press release.
Seth Nelson:
Right.
Susan McCarthy:
Also, in the case of public apologies if you say, "I apologize to the people whose life savings I stole." You should actually apologize to them and not just say that you're apologizing to them in the press conference.
Pete Wright:
Yes. And that actually leads right into my next question. The media matters, right? We learned from Marshall McLuhan how this works, right? That in the Fallon example, he apologized to his staff via Zoom. Is it possible to give an authentic apology via Zoom, text, phone? Is there an order of operations? Do you recommend one over the other given constraints?
Susan McCarthy:
That's a good question because there are different ways to apologize that are appropriate under different circumstances. So you don't want to trap someone in the car with you when you're apologizing because if they're upset, they probably shouldn't jump out while the car is moving.
Seth Nelson:
I was hoping you were going to say they can't get out. Because I was teeing that one up for a joke, but you saved it.
Susan McCarthy:
Ah, sorry. Can we start again?
Seth Nelson:
No, we're good. We're good. It's all about timing.
Susan McCarthy:
And if you send someone an apology in a letter or an email, they can sit down with it and they can think about it and you're not putting them on the spot. This is something that comes up a lot of times when people are doing the steps in AA or NA, is it's time to make amends. And you don't want to corner people and say, "I was such a shitty boyfriend." Let them have the chance to get away or let them have the chance not to have that conversation at all and say, "Yeah, you were a terrible boyfriend and I never want to speak with you again." And they do not have to listen. If you did something nasty in person and then you apologize in text, there's a mismatch there.
Pete Wright:
Oh, well, that's the model, right? Is I feel like the apology should match the thing you're apologizing for.
Susan McCarthy:
Yes. And that's the way it's supposed to be in the media as if the newspaper gets it wrong and they print a correction, the correction should be in the same section where they got it wrong. It shouldn't be way back in the ad section.
Pete Wright:
In corrections under the obituaries. Right.
Susan McCarthy:
Right.
Seth Nelson:
That's the first place I go in the paper.
Susan McCarthy:
We're so sorry. We wish we were dead.
Pete Wright:
We wish we were dead. We wish this idea would die. Yeah. All right. Do you have favorite apology stories? I mean, you've seen a bazillion of them.
Susan McCarthy:
We have seen a bazillion. One of my favorite examples of an apology, because even though it's a celebrity, it was a good apology. And so it's kind of been forgotten, which was the musician Questlove with the Roots. A great musician was on a Asian tour going to Japan and principally Japan and I think China and other Asian countries. And he was having a great time and he was filling his social media with pictures and little video clips and a lot of them were making fun of Asian accents, just making fun of people who were sleeping and trying to talk to him in English. And their English was terrible.
And people on social media said, "Ooh, that's racist. You can't do that." He was indignant, "You are accusing me of racism?" Then he took a little time, he took a couple days, he talked to his friends and he said, "Wow, I apologize. Of all people, someone like me, a black American who knows what racial discrimination is like, I'm the last person that should be making these jokes. They weren't funny." He went into a little bit more detail and he said, "And for those who are defending me on social media. I was wrong. Don't go after the people who are calling me ethnocentric because they're right." And it was just a really nice apology. It just really just calmed things right back down, and so none of us heard of it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. I mean, I think you've said that a couple of times, and I just want to amplify that the good apologies lead to sort of forgotten events.
Susan McCarthy:
Right.
Pete Wright:
Non-events.
Susan McCarthy:
That's over. That happened.
Pete Wright:
Really lovely, and he just totally diffused the thing by taking such ownership of it. That's really lovely. Quality guy, Questlove.
Susan McCarthy:
Absolutely. I admire him more than ever.
Pete Wright:
For sure.
Susan McCarthy:
See, that's the thing, a good apology... It's humiliating to apologize, but if you do it well, it actually makes you look like a good person.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Susan, do you have an equivalent six steps for learning how to receive an apology?
Susan McCarthy:
No, it's a lot simpler than that. I think that you have to respond. You might not want to respond instantly. It's good if you can say, "I accept the apology." It's good if you can acknowledge an apology that wasn't easy to make. So if you can say, "Thank you, I think that was hard for you to say, and I really appreciate your saying it." And if things are good, you can say, "I accept your apology. Let's put that behind us." Or you can say, "Thank you. I can see that was hard for you to apologize and I need to sit with that, but I appreciate your making the effort."
Pete Wright:
I'm not yet ready for a hug.
Susan McCarthy:
I'm still vibrating with rage.
Seth Nelson:
I'm going to bite your ear off Pete. But don't worry, Pete, you'll know it's coming because I'll have boxing gloves on.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, okay.
Geez.
Seth Nelson:
Well, Susan, what about, sorry, not sorry?
Susan McCarthy:
Well, there's a place for that and it's mostly in humor.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Seth Nelson:
Okay. All right, because that's what I hear from Pete a lot. That's why I was asking, and now it tracks.
Pete Wright:
Sorry, not sorry.
Seth Nelson:
It's in humor.
Pete Wright:
Now, it tracks.
Susan McCarthy:
Sorry, not sorry says, "I know this impacts you badly, but I'd do it again."
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right, right. Well, and as something sort of birthed from internet culture, right? It makes me curious how as you observe, apologies writ large, how internet culture and sort of the amplification of irony and satire have changed the way people give and accept apologies.
Susan McCarthy:
Well, that is a complicated subject because people with good reason complain about the internet outrage machine and public figures or semi-public figures being badgered to apologize for something they've done or typically something they said or did maybe years ago when they were in high school and thought that was a really funny thing to post.
Pete Wright:
Well, that begs a great question though. How do you apologize for something from years ago that maybe then you did and it was culturally acceptable and now it isn't? And I know where I'm giving an example that it immediately probably makes you think of public figures or politicians, but really could be anybody.
Susan McCarthy:
Yeah, that's completely doable. And oftentimes what will happen in a good example of that, and by the way, the good examples are more forgettable because good apologies were made, is to say, I really didn't get why that costume was offense... That Halloween costume that I wore in high school was offensive, and so I talked to some of my friends who are Native American or whatever, and they explained it to me and now I can apologize with a full understanding of what I did and not just because you're telling me that it was offensive
Seth Nelson:
When you were going through that hypothetical Pete was just saying with historical context, I was looking at the rules and the steps and saying, oh, show the impact, understanding the impact. Now I understand the impact. I didn't understand it then. I have no excuse for that. You don't say, "I was young or it was the culture," right? That's the excuse. I have no excuse for that, but I know-
Susan McCarthy:
Everybody laughed.
Pete Wright:
Oh.
Seth Nelson:
Right.
Pete Wright:
Great example. Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. But it won't happen again. Yeah, I like that.
Pete Wright:
I think that's the thing is apologizing and recognizing or amplifying the fact that... Understanding the impact and how important that step is amplifying the fact that because of this understanding my worldview has changed. I'm sorry because I came from a point of ignorance and now I am not, and I'm sorry that I did this thing from that point of ignorance.
Susan McCarthy:
That's very well said, Pete. Because then you're giving them something. You made the world a little better by understanding that.
Seth Nelson:
And as we talk about this, you asked the question early on like, "Seth, do you ever see apologies in divorce?" I said, "I don't." And a lot of that, I think we all were thinking about how do the spouses apologize to each other. But as we're having this conversation, I think there is a way to apologize to your kids because it's not their fault. I'm like listening and I'm going through the steps and it's right, it's I'm sorry that this divorce is impacting you, right? That's boom, I'm sorry, the specifics and it's the impact that you're going to have two houses, you're going to have to carry your shit back and forth. You're inevitably not because of any fault of your own. Whatever outfit you want to wear or your gym bag is going to be at the other parent's house, it's going to be a pain in the ass.
Susan McCarthy:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Right?
Susan McCarthy:
We're breaking up your home.
Seth Nelson:
And we don't have any excuses for it. Our marriage didn't work. It's impacting you. It kind of won't happen again, doesn't really work. But I'm here to listen to you. But I think that is something that can be pretty powerful. And we've had guests on the show that were married and remarried and divorced, and they've talked about how... One example, I remember the kid was like, "Man, it sucks that you guys are divorced." And the parents traveled together, they did all these things for the kid, and the dad was like, "Really? You're bitching about this? We've made this as easy as you can." But then he thought for a minute, in his world, he's still going back and forth. His shit is still in two different places. As good as they've made it, there's still some things that suck.
Susan McCarthy:
It's true. It's true.
Seth Nelson:
And I'm thinking of another one. Now like I'm on a roll, Pete to get ready to watch out.
Pete Wright:
I know. Look at you.
Seth Nelson:
You can apologize to your parents. I'm sorry that you're not going to get to see your grandkids every holiday now.
Susan McCarthy:
Yeah, that's a good point.
Seth Nelson:
Right?
Pete Wright:
Oh, jeez. Sure.
Seth Nelson:
Right. So there's a lot of people that get impacted by divorce, and I get it, going through a divorce, you are focused on you. I'm not saying you're not focused on how it impacts the kids, but you're really focused on you and what you think is best for your kids and how you're going to make it happen and the money and the house and all the stuff we talk about Pete, but there's other people that I think slowing down and thinking about it's okay. Like, "Hey, I'm sorry that my marriage didn't work and that it's going to have a negative impact on you." Right?
Susan McCarthy:
Yeah. Well, the Australian writer, Kate Rossmanith wrote an interesting book about apologies that because it's Australian hasn't gotten much attention here. Very good book. And she talked about her childhood where her parents fought dreadfully. I imagine they eventually got divorced, but they had terrible screaming fights and the three kids would just hide. They'd go in a room together and just hide and just be terrified. And they'd come down in the morning and their parents would be smiling and-
Seth Nelson:
All's right with the world.
Susan McCarthy:
Putting their hands on each other's shoulder and everything is fine. And the kids were like, "What happened? What happened?" And they never found out. She said, "We never saw an apology. We never saw how they made up their differences. We never saw how it went from, you monster. You've ruined my life to, more orange juice?" And that's difficult because you don't actually want your children in on every fight, but possibly you can say if it's relevant, you can say, "I apologize to your father or I apologize to your mother for being away," or whatever it is that the thing is. You can just let them know that an apology happened and that you were able to make it up to each other without making them witness the whole business.
Pete Wright:
Is there such a thing as over apologizing and got to thinking about this when Seth said you can apologize to the parents. So not necessarily... I guess there is the, am I apologizing too much to the person, former spouse, the person I have wronged somehow, but what is the locus of impact around an apology? How many people out do I need to apologize to? Rabbis, priests, therapists for infractions that involve being my spouse, when do we go too far?
Susan McCarthy:
Don't apologize to your therapist. Maybe I only say that because my husband's a therapist.
Pete Wright:
He can take it.
Susan McCarthy:
Yeah. Yeah. It's part of the gig. Apologizing too much is there's the one you're talking about the wider and wider circles of people you apologize to and I think you really don't want to get too wide. Because one of the other things is apologizing too much in a specific thing and you say, "I am so sorry I did that." And the person says, "That's okay, I understand." And you say, "No, no, no, I feel really bad about it. I could not sleep last night." And they go, "It's okay. I'm over it." And you say, "That's just not the kind of person I am and I don't want to be that kind of person." And what you're doing is you're making it all about yourself and your feelings of remorse may be genuine but you don't get to pile them on the person that you're apologizing to. That's too much.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Okay. That's the-
Seth Nelson:
Pete's not worried about that.
Pete Wright:
You just described so many lines that I feel like I've heard, right? Those are regular apology tropes.
Susan McCarthy:
Yeah. There's so many. And it's interesting, when Marjorie and I do interviews, sometimes questions come up maybe in the Q&A, maybe even from the interviewer that make us go, "Oh, you just told us something about yourself". If someone raises their hands and says, "Is seven weeks too late to apologize?" You know they did something seven weeks ago.
Pete Wright:
Let's just say on June 1st, there might've been something.
Seth Nelson:
It's funny you bring this up because I bought my wife flowers not too long ago and I don't know, I was just feeling really good. I was happy, married to her, life's good. So I bought her these really nice flowers and her mom came over and she saw the flowers and the first thing she said was either he did something really wrong or you did something really right.
Susan McCarthy:
Somebody's got to keep score.
Pete Wright:
Yes. There's always this-
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, I'm losing in the marriage points, I'm sure. But what about an apology with a gift? How does that go? That's the reason why I raised this.
Pete Wright:
Oh, that's a great question. Yeah.
Susan McCarthy:
That's really, really context dependent. Your gift should not appear to be a bribe. Much as I like receiving $10,000 checks, that's not going to buy the acceptance of an apology.
Seth Nelson:
Pete, I'll accept it for five. [inaudible 00:40:39] but can be bought.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
That's right.
Susan McCarthy:
The trouble with flowers is that if you walk through the street carrying them, people will be like your mother-in-law, and they'll be going, "Oh, what did you do?"
Seth Nelson:
Yeah.
Susan McCarthy:
And I mean, you could say, "Nothing, it's just because I'm a happy person."
Seth Nelson:
Stop and smell the roses.
Susan McCarthy:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
So anything else before we wrap up like that people really to like... We need to hit home on these apologies?
Susan McCarthy:
One thing is you can practice on easy stuff. You can say, "I have a hard time saying that I'm wrong." And I consciously years ago started practicing and saying things like, "Oh, the salt is on the table. You were right and I was wrong."
Seth Nelson:
Oh, sure.
Susan McCarthy:
That's not an apology. That's admitting I was wrong. And the more you do it, the better you get at it.
Seth Nelson:
Pete thought he was wrong once, but it turned out he only was mistaken.
Pete Wright:
Do you know you are being a smart ass about it? But I'll tell you, this really resonates with me because I feel like this is one of creating a practice out of the things that you need to change in your life makes a really big difference. For me, I was getting super stressed out over feeling like all stress was my stress had to carry my stress, and I had to really start saying, "I don't have a strong opinion about that." When I really was addressing, somebody came to me with a problem and I would say, "I don't have a strong opinion, you get to make the choice." Because I was feeling strongly about everything. The salt is on the table. The salt is on the table, right? I don't care where the salt is. Ultimately, I'll find the salt.
Seth Nelson:
I actually have a joke that I use on that same concept is I used to swear to my team the file's not in my office. And then I said-
Pete Wright:
Well, the file's always in your office.
Seth Nelson:
Exactly. But then I said, "Do you know there's this really weird rule of physics that I remember from high school?" And they're like, "Really? What is it?" I said, "The more that I swear the file is not in my office, the higher likelihood that it is."
Pete Wright:
That settled science.
Seth Nelson:
That's right. So it's the same thing, right?
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah.
Susan McCarthy:
Statistically speaking, the glasses are on top of your head and the file is in Seth's office.
Seth Nelson:
That's right.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Seth Nelson:
That's right.
Pete Wright:
It's like my kids growing up always had to have an answer to anything. And for them the mantra was learn to say, I don't know. Learn to say, I don't know the answer to that question. I'll find out, right? So this idea of practicing like learning the six steps or figuring out where your apologies fall short and really landing on that, making that the thing you practice, I think is brilliant.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah.
Susan McCarthy:
I will tell you that when I have said to people, "You were right and I was wrong," half the time they go, "I don't think anyone ever said that to me before."
Wow.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Right.
Susan McCarthy:
Huh. So it's powerful.
Pete Wright:
It makes a difference. Makes a difference.
Seth Nelson:
We've done that in the office. I've taken a sticky note and put it on Sterling's door and put, "You were right. I was wrong." And of course it becomes a big joke in the office. He's like, "Oh, my God, I'm saving it." And I'm like, "Saving what?" He goes, "The sticky note." I said, "First off, your name's not on it. Second off, it's not dated."
Pete Wright:
It's not dated, [inaudible 00:43:57].
Seth Nelson:
"Third off, it's my handwriting, but it's not my signature." But then everyone's laughing, right? They all know that I was [inaudible 00:44:07], but I was just doing it more of a humor way, right?
Susan McCarthy:
Yeah. That's excellent.
Seth Nelson:
Just like a lawyer, right, Pete?
Pete Wright:
Oh, yeah, attorneys.
Seth Nelson:
The little attorney humor.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, this is great. And the books, it's got a name change. We introduced it as, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry. But it's changed as it went to paperback, Getting to Sorry: The Art of Apology at Work and at Home, why the name change, what happened?
Susan McCarthy:
We found that we got a lot of interest from business that various business groups were saying, "Could you do a training for our employees?"
Seth Nelson:
And you said, "I'm sorry that I can't."
Susan McCarthy:
I'm sorry, but you'll have to pay for that.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. Right.
Susan McCarthy:
And that echoes the classic business negotiation book, Getting to Yes.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Susan McCarthy:
So we wanted to address that also, because frankly people don't want to apologize. It's not a pleasure to apologize. It's a pleasure to have apologized, but people don't want to apologize. And so they're less likely to pick up a book about apologizing. And also if you give someone a book about apologies, they might think it's a hint that you want them to apologize to you.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
I was totally going to play that joke on my wife. Like I read this book. I think you really need to read it too.
Susan McCarthy:
No, no, no. You don't need this book, but it's got some funny stories in it.
Pete Wright:
Oh, that's better.
Seth Nelson:
Come on, Susan. Help me out here.
Pete Wright:
Powerful stuff. Thank you so much, Susan McCarthy for hanging out with us and teaching us a little bit about how to get to, sorry. We've got links to the... Sorrywatch, links to the book in the show notes and we will encourage everybody to please, please, please go check this out. And I want to say this whole show is essentially a listener question response because we had someone write in who actually did suggest specifically, please reach out to Marjorie and Susan about this book because it's great analysis. And so we're thrilled to be able to both answer that listener question-
Susan McCarthy:
Send them flowers.
Pete Wright:
And yes, deep thanks to them.
Seth Nelson:
It was anonymous, so we don't know where to send them.
Pete Wright:
We don't know where to send them.
Susan McCarthy:
Okay. Can't send flowers to everyone who is anonymous, but thank you.
Pete Wright:
But we're sending the spirit of beautiful flowers in the direction of anonymous for actually pointing us in this direction. It's a great resource. Happy to be able to share it. Thank you, Susan.
Susan McCarthy:
Thank you so much.
Pete Wright:
Oh, and thank you everybody. Don't forget, you can head over to howtosplitatoaster.com and submit your very own question. We would love to hear your questions and get them on the show. You got other people you want to recommend, clearly that works. So send us people you want us to talk to. We'll reach out and have a great conversation with them just like this one today. On behalf of Susan McCarthy and Seth Nelson, America's favorite divorce attorney, I'm Pete Wright, and we'll catch you next week right here on How to Split a Toaster: A Divorce Podcast About Saving Your Relationships.
Outro:
How to split a Toaster is part of the TruStory FM Podcast Network, produced by Andy Nelson, music by T. Bless & the Professionals and DB Studios. Seth Nelson is an attorney with NLG Divorce & Family Law with offices in Tampa, Florida. While we may be discussing family law topics, How to Split a Toaster is not intended to, nor is it providing legal advice. Every situation is different. If you have specific questions regarding your situation, please seek your own legal counsel with an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction. Pete Wright is not an attorney or employee of NLG Divorce & Family Law. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.
