Apologize

One of the reasons that we do not want to apologize for an incident is because we would rather be right.  We feel that someone else offended us.  It was not our doing.  They should shape up and say they were wrong.  Then the relationship can improve.  But they say nothing and we punish them with silence or ignore them and their wants in some other way.  The relationship is tense.  Friction.  Moody.  So we maintain that we are right, but the relationship is becoming a mess.  So what do we apologize for?  For our response, our attempt to punish them, since we are the judge giving sentence. This apology can open up to conversation, to clarification as to the why and what of whatever happened.  Sometimes we find out stuff we did not know that affected the way they acted in the first place.  So apologize.  Unless you would rather be right.