Apologies and receiving a genuine apology. Advice and experiences, please?

[ComtesseDeSpair]

At the weekend, at a party, I behaved like a dick towards somebody I really like and respect. My actions were self-absorbed and casually disrespectful and I hurt their feelings (and possibly embarrassed them, though I’m not certain of that.) I can’t blame alcohol, I’d had a couple of drinks, but was not drunk.

They’ve been gracious enough to agree to meet this evening so I can apologise. Which is why I’m here, starting this thread. I’m not apologising because I think they have an obligation to forgive me and keep things between us as before - a significant part of me suspects our relationship with each other can’t be recovered, and I accept that, that’s not why I’m apologising, it’s really not solely a self-interested apology and I don’t want it to come across that way.

If somebody had hurt / upset / embarrassed / disillusioned you (for context, we’re not talking anything enormous - just dumb, shitty behaviour on my part because I got carried away and failed to think or care about how they might feel about it) what would you want from an apology that would make YOU feel better, rather than just seem to be making the person apologising feel better? Would it actually mean anything to you to get an apology? What would you need from it for it to actually make a difference? Any thoughts?

How did you get on @ComtesseDeSpair was it ok?

Thank you everybody for your advice and thoughts, all of it was really useful - even the posters who said they probably wouldn’t be interested in being apologised to, as it helped me approach very open-mindedly and aware that he might feel similarly. The link provided by Emerald was a good read. Anyway. We met. We talked. I apologised, using the advice given here. We had a proper throw-it-all-out-there. We can move on, though exactly how is still in flux, and, more importantly, he was very appreciative that I cared enough to apologise.

The (actually rather uninteresting situation, apologies to those who were so curious!) is that I’m in an open relationship with person A, who was previously a very good friend for years. It’s all mutually agreed but we’d yet to have a formal conversation about what our boundaries are and what we each understand by “open”. On Friday night, in a nightclub, to which he had invited me along to meet some cool people he knew, I kissed another guy dead in front of him, and he wasn’t prepared for that (and yes, I am a grown adult with a senior level professional job, dancing to techno in Fabric on a Friday night and making out with strangers.) It was a dickish thing to do and I was only thinking about myself when I did it.

I didn’t want to give the precise situation because inevitably then the responses start becoming snarkily directed towards my lifestyle (unhelpful, not up for a-changin’) or about the situation itself or opinions on whether or not an apology is warranted because it wasn’t so bad and person A just overreacted and so on - and really as far as I’m concerned, I was thoughtless and didn’t take the due amount of care and concern for somebody else’s feelings and hurt them as a result, and didn’t want to be talked out of feeling bad about it.

Thanks again!

Glad it went well OP, hopefully things can settle down for you now.

A genuine, honest apology will always come across as what it is, and I think that must have showed.

Also think you were right to hold off on the situation that resulted in the apology being needed or the thread would have derailed! Hopefully you and A are ok from now on.