not understanding apologizing

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I did my roommate wrong and I didn't think about apologizing. She's mad now. I realize I don't understand "im sorry" and I wonder if it's an as trait. She did something wrong toward me and my husband and she eventually apologized but I forgave her independent of "im sorry" what is the magic of "im sorry?" I don't understand how those words make a situation better. When people tell me im sorry I don't feel any different about the situation.

Saying "sorry" is an acknowledgement to the person that you have wronged that you are aware of it and regret it. It's won't necessarily make you feel better, but it allows the relationship to continue progressing.

I am an adult now and have been told by many that they couldn't believe that I could have AS.

I do now use apologies, please&thank you, etc. now and I fully understand their use and convention. However when I was a child and when I was a teenager, I did not get it either. "Sorry", "Please", and "Thank You" seemed mostly useless and unnecessary to me.

Now however, I can understand:

"Sorry" is to help smooth over bruised feelings. It is not necessary for it to be warranted, it is only necessary for it to be helpful.

"Please and Thank You", and some of the other social ceremonies, are like the engine in a car. The car engine was designed to have the oil there -- the parts are not expected to be able to move against each other without it. With the oil, the parts are able to interface with each other without too much friction. The same goes for people; there is friction when people interface with each other, and so there is an expectation for certain social ceremonies to be present and they act like the oil so that the people can "slide against each other" (conversations, business dealings, etc.) without too much friction.

"I'm sorry" is a short way to say: "I know I did wrong and I feel bad about it. I will try my best to not do it again. Please, forgive me.". If you don't say "I;m sorry" the person might understand your silence as "I don't give a damn about you. I don't know what I did wrong. It's your problem, not my. Deal with it.".
It is easier to forgive if you know the person didn't mean to hurt you and she/he care to not do it again even if you know she/he might hurt you again unintentionally.
Would you forgive someone who you think hurt you intentionally and doesn't feel bad about it?

Apologizing has subtle social overtones . There is a short video to better illustrate thoseovertones.

[youtube]www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJhPLGMhRuQ[/youtube]

I don't have any difficulty understanding the purposes of such social conventions, even though they often seem empty and pointless to me, but I run into an internal ethical quandary sometimes where apologies are concerned.

I may be disappointed that you chose to take offense at my actions, but that doesn't mean that I regret what I did, which was the rational thing for me, under the circumstances.

So, if I apologize and you take it to mean I regret what I did, then I feel like I've lied.

And should I apologize to you, because you made the choice to feel offended over something that shouldn't have concerned you at all?


^ BTW, These are rhetorical questions, I am not seeking an answer.

I have always found this difficult.

It's an NT thing, if you screw up you're expected to say sorry and then in their world everything is just fine. Me, I can't see the point, I'd rather not screw up in the first place.

Apologizing is a symbolic gesture; the words are meant to signify one's attitude (remorse) towards the situation, rather than fixing the problem.

Of course, the gesture is undertaken with the assumption is that the person to whom the apology is made will care about the remorse of the apologizer. I think not understanding apologies is an AS thing; but I don't think that it's the core issue. I suspect that the core issue is a cognitive style that results in indifference to the apologizer's remorse (thereby precluding the personal experience that would facilitate understanding others' concern with expressions of remorse), and an inherent disinclination towards purely symbolic behavior (thereby precluding or at least complicating an abstract, non-experiential understanding of apologies).

Honestly, I have issues with apologizing for things as well. When I was young, I basically learned that an apology was a method I could use to make someone "get over" me wronging them somehow, which would often happen as I would do things that I didn't realize would upset other people. Eventually, as I got older people started seeing through these insincere apologies, and I started holding back when I realized that my apologies didn't actually make people feel better. This has lead to a few situation where people have demanded apologies from me, but I was hesitant to give them because I either didn't see how apologizing would help, or I didn't see how I "wronged" them.

Nowadays, I see apologies as mostly pointless, and I just try to actually resolve the problems at hand instead. Of course, it also helps that I'm not in public school anymore, and as such I'm not constantly around people I have to worry about offending.

I'd rather hear someone say sincerely "I understand how much I hurt you and I won't do it again" than to apologize. A lot of people say "sorry" meaning they are going to do it again and they just want to know you won't be mad at them for it. An apology is supposed to be about easing the other person's feelings and helping them get over something but it seems like a lot of people do it the other way around, just to make themselves feel better.

So instead of apologizing they should apologize?

A conventional apology is saying sorry, expressing regret, talking about how bad they feel, asking forgiveness, in other words it is all about them and how they feel and making themselves feel better. What I would rather hear is empathy and understanding for my feelings and a promise not to do it again. That is quite different from an apology.

The problem with apologies is that they are often made without verifying a mutual understanding, such that the offended party is left wondering whether the kind of incident in question is likely to reoccur or not.

When someone says "I'm sorry", this is supposed to signal that the person in question understands that an action unintentionally wronged someone else, and that he or she will take great care not to cause a similar situation in the future. That's the social convention.

However, I find only saying or hearing "I'm sorry" quite pointless. This short statement does not provide any evidence that the action was unintentional, nor does it provide reassurance that the situation does not reoccur.

If I'm at the receiving end of "I'm sorry", I'd like to understand why the person acted in a way that caused the situation. There is no need for a long explanation, but hearing about the context from the other perspective in a few sentences allows me to assess whether the situation was (a) really unintended, and whether (b) the person has understood the mechanism that triggered the incident sufficiently to be able to minimise a recurrence. As needed, I can then elaborate how I feel, and how I believe a recurrence can be avoided.

Replacing a proper dialogue to establish mutual understanding by "I'm sorry" doesn't cut it. I usually assume people have good intentions, and I don't need to hear "I'm sorry" to be reassured of that. Instead, I worry about people not bothering with a little root cause analysis to learn from the incident.

If I unintentionally wronged someone, I want to know why and how. In case the root cause is not obvious to me, if I explicitly ask the question, people can interpret this as me disputing that I caused any issue. If I don't ask the question, there is a good chance of me making the same mistake again. Maybe "I am sorry" is what you say to indicate you are caught between a rock and a hard place.

Since mutual understanding between different neurotypes on any topic is very hard to achieve, the topic of apologies is a predictable source of friction.

Never heard anyone do the first thing. Have heard the second thing. When folks do the second thing its called "an apology".

Whatever.

I am one of those people who will rarely forgive without an apology. I do not think that I have ever NOT forgiven anyone who apologized, so long as they acknowledge their lies and deceit to those they have lied about me too, I an in NO CONTACT with most of my family members, All I need to hear is "I am sorry for raping,lying about, setting up, gaslighting, beating, stealing from, spreading lies forced to eat my own vomit and feces., convincing my schizophrenic best friend that I was lying about having cancer[ who convinced others] , whatever, and I will forgive them.

Being that I suspect that the worst of them is Satans personal trainer [ kidding] it is highly unlikely.