Why Can't Anyone Accept An Apology These Days?
Four theories on why so many today stay angry and withhold forgiveness even after someone apologizes. And - what I believe the antidote is.
Why are so many people today unwilling to accept apologies (or even believe that apologies are genuine) and forgive others?
We live in a time when many people seem to actually WANT to believe that others don’t care about them or are out to get them.
And the kicker is that this happens even when there is evidence to the contrary, like the person in question actually apologizing and saying that they do care and did not mean harm.
I know several people who were very upset by all the online personalities who made fun of Governor Tim Walz’s disabled son during the 2024 election.
The interesting thing is that today, in April 2025, they are still talking about how terrible and disgusting all of those people are.
And, so far as I know - in every case that I have personally researched - those making fun of him actually did not know that he was disabled, and once they found out, they apologized and/or took down their online comments.
Like - immediately.
Now - should they have looked into the situation more before opening their mouths? Yeah, of course.
But they acknowledged their mistake and apologized - and did what they could to make repair (i.e. removing their comments from the internet).
What more does anyone want?
Why keep continuing to rage and condemn them when they did everything possible to rectify their mistake?
Why not forgive them and move on?
(And just to review - “forgive” means we release anger and resentment and stop holding something against someone. It doesn’t mean that we are saying what was done was okay or didn’t cause some type of harm. It doesn’t even necessarily mean that we want a relationship with the person in question.)
I lost a relationship once when I had a misunderstanding with someone. They were convinced that a certain oversight on my part was intentional - when in reality, from my perspective, it was a miscommunication about expectations.
I apologized to the person and said, “I’m sorry; I didn't know that you wanted X.”
But they interrupted me and said, “You knew. How could you not know?” …and they began to list off all the reasons why they believed I DID know what they wanted, why they believed their communication was perfectly clear, and why they believed my actions were, in fact, intended to hurt them.
They did not accept my apology or my explanation. The conversation (of course) ended on an awkward inconclusive note, and we barely spoke after that.
I mean - when you say your intentions were good, and share the reasons for your actions from your perspective, yet the other person won’t accept what you say - where can you go from there?
I have a friend whose family members snubbed her because she did not vote the way that they believed she should have in the 2024 election.
They even made it personal, suggesting that she did it to hurt them, because (from their perspective) the candidate in question promoted policies that they believed would be harmful to them personally.
Although their comments to her were incredibly aggressive, she responded with kindness, explaining that her decision had zero to do with wanting to hurt them, that she still loved them and always would. She was even willing to hear them out as to what policies they were worried about (as they’d never provided specifics before).
But they would not accept the apology, would not discuss specifics, and kept raging about how she definitely meant to hurt them and should have known how to vote if she cared about them.
She, too, didn’t know where to go from there.
Those relationships are now on very thin ice, though they’re still speaking occasionally.
I also found it interesting that a couple of people recently said they were offended by a post that I made on Facebook, even though the post didn’t attack or condemn anyone.
I apologized to them and said that I did not intend to offend them with my post.
Neither accepted the apology, and both replied saying that my good intentions meant nothing. They continued to maintain that I should have worded my post differently, and that they were personally offended that I did not. (By the way, I didn’t know either of them - they were strangers to me.)
And the changes they were suggesting were not about the tone of what I said, but rather - that I should have included additional information in my post (information that, by the way, I didn’t know and was not qualified to speak about - and actually wasn’t even relevant to the point I was making!).
What I found most interesting was that one person even said, “I can tell you mean well, but I’m still so offended.”
Not sure how that works, but okay.
I offered to continue the conversation offline to reassure both people. Neither accepted; one ghosted the conversation.
Also, the past 10 years or so are full of examples of public figures who were canceled or harshly criticized for some comment they made that offended someone, and the criticism and cancellation continued even after they publicly apologized.
Sooo… what gives?
Why are people these days so often attuned to the worst possible interpretation of others’ actions?
And why do they continue to maintain that interpretation even when the person in question tries to explain, apologize, and/or reassure them?
I have a few theories about this: