Victims Can Apologize Too

Imagine you're in a situation where a good friend has gossiped about you regarding something very personal about you. They told something to others, let's imagine they told lots of people, that they promised never to tell. What would you do? Who would you talk to about this?

This is a situation where it is safe to say that you have been harmed. But is that where it ends? Usually not. If you were honest, you would probably have said that you would have told all of your close friends what that person did to you. Then you would start thinking about how much better you are than the other person. Then you might have tried telling the person you were hurt but did it in a way that did not even try to understand why they might have shared the information in the first place.

The point I'm trying to make is that we often do something wrong when we have been wronged. And we always have done something wrong when we cannot let an offense go. It scares me to go to such a distance, because I know how difficult the issue is, but we will inevitably do something wrong when we suffer something heinous as a victim, like physical or sexual abuse. That is not to say that we need to carry more shame. But we should not deny or discount our selfish reactions in any circumstance, especially when we are clearly the victim.

Especially when we are clearly the victim? That seems counter-intuitive. We think that the more we have done wrong, the more we are responsible to admit our wrong. But I have two simple reasons for saying this.

1) Admitting our wrong narrows the gap between how wrong we were and how wrong the original perpetrator was. It is more likely that the other person will not apologize if they feel that there is less distance between you and them. Again, it is a bizarre truth that the greater the sin, the harder it is to accept responsibility for it. Thus, admitting our wrong draws us closer to getting the apology we deserve because it decreases, ever so slightly, the shame of the wrong that the other person committed.

2) Admitting our wrong allows us to better handle problems in the future. We should desire to be less affected by the evil actions of others. But often our way of handling the wrong that has been done to us exacerbates the problem. Accepting that we have done something wrong means that I will be more aware the next time I am in a similar situation and will be able to control my reaction better.

A final warning. We should never approach a person with the expectation that our apology will guarantee us that they will apologize in return. In some instances people feel more free to apologize when we apologize first but that is not the rule. It would be easy to feel coerced into apologizing if someone apologizes for their smaller offense first. That is why we need to remember the second reason. We may hope that they apologize, and will likely be disappointed if they don't, but we should be careful not to take the focus off of what we can gain from apologizing.