To the woman who says sorry, and means it, every time

The letter, in short

She shouts at her husband. Not often, but when she does, she says cruel things. Last week she was sure he had forgotten something important, and she told him she couldn’t rely on him for anything. He hadn’t forgotten. She had.

She apologised, and promised never to speak to him like that again. He said, “You said that last time.”

Now she lies awake hating herself, and she asks: why doesn’t feeling this terrible change anything?

My reply

I’ll give you my answer first, because it sounds a bit odd.

I don’t think feeling terrible is the first step towards changing. I think it is what most of us do in place of changing. And I think the promise is part of the same thing.

Why hating yourself doesn’t work

You wrote that afterwards you don’t recognise yourself. I think that one line holds most of it.

When we have hurt someone we love, we do something quick and rather clever. We split in two. There is the one who shouted, and there is the one who is appalled by her. The appalled one gets to say: that’s not me, I’m the calm one.

It hurts. It is also a comfort, because it keeps the shouting one at arm’s length. She turns up, does the damage, gets hated all night, and is sent away until next time. Nobody ever asks her anything.

There is a simpler reason too. Hating yourself is tiring. All the energy goes on the feeling, and none is left for being curious.

The bad room

I have a private name for where you are on those nights. The bad room. It is where we land the minute we see that it was us, and not them.

It is a hard place to stay in, because all it says is “I’m bad”. So we try to fight our way out. We hit the other person: “Well, you could have reminded me.” We hit ourselves, which is the lying awake. Or we hit life in general: “I’m exhausted, work is too much.”

You caught yourself doing that last one, and asked how any of it was his fault. I thought that was the wisest line in your letter.

None of the three gets us out. Even hitting ourselves doesn’t, although it looks so much like being sorry. I think the way out is to put all of them down.

What is outside

It is quiet out there, and a little flat. Nobody is guilty and nobody is being punished. What is left is a plain question. “How could I?” is only another slap. The useful one is “Why do I?”

We all have answers that are ready before the question arrives. A friend doesn’t reply to a text. One person thinks “she’s busy”. Another thinks “she’s gone off me”.

I wonder if yours is in your letter. Something goes wrong, and before you have thought at all, you know whose fault it is. I don’t know where that comes from, and I won’t guess. But that is the spot I would be curious about.

Your husband has seen it from the other side. “You said that last time.” Until we understand how we work, we are more predictable than we would like. We do have some freedom. It is real, and it is smaller than we think. It grows when we can see what we are doing while we are doing it.

Why I would stop promising

“Never again” is a way of fixing it tonight. He softens, and you both sleep. I understand wanting that. But it is the quick way out of the bad room, and it skips the looking.

The people I have seen change were not the ones who promised hardest. They were the ones who could wait and watch. “There. I did it again on Thursday. What was going on just before?”

So what can you say to him? I have never met either of you, so take this lightly. I would leave the promise out and tell him the truth: “You’re right. I did say that last time. I don’t know yet why I do it. I’m going to find out.”

It is less than he has been offered before. It may be the first thing he can believe.

And be a little kinder to the one who shouts. She isn’t right. But she is the only one who knows why.