What exactly is up with it feeling so awful to be the person to apologize first, when you think the other person has aggrieved you more (but you realize you also aggrieved them).
I do get some naive implementation of “I don’t want to be a doormat”, or “I want to make sure that the Thing I’m Protecting gets protected.” But… even so, in most situations, the amount of resistance people have about this feels often out-of-proportion.
Possibly this is no longer the case (apologising first is often seen as a sign of maturity) but I can certainly see this being the case in the ancestral environment.
This would match my experience that apologising is feels awful even when it is entirely my fault.
I guess if the other person has already apologised then me also apologising just puts our status back roughly where we started which is why going second feels much easier.
In the case where the aggriving is very proportionate it is somewhat easy.
In the case where it is not proportionate you would probably be willing to do it for the symmetric part and not do it for the “remainder part”. If the remainder part is greater than the symmetric part you are more angry than peaceable.
One can take the most inconvenient case, you step on the toes of a unconvicted murderer. With one logic your faults, even minor don’t have anything to do the faults of others, you should apologise for stepping on peoples shoes. On the other hand, “there is kicking to be done” and apologising for stepping on toes and then chopping their head off would seem like 1 step forward and 100 steps back. Why not just go 98 steps backwards?
I think it comes from a feeling that proportion of blame needs to add to one, and by apologizing first you’re putting more of the blame on your actions. You often can’t say “I apologize for the 25% of this mess I’m responsible for.”
I think the general mindset of apportioning blame (as well as looking for a single blame-target) is a dangerous one. There’s a whole world of things that contribute to every conflict outside of the two people having it.
A thing I am legit confused about:
What exactly is up with it feeling so awful to be the person to apologize first, when you think the other person has aggrieved you more (but you realize you also aggrieved them).
I do get some naive implementation of “I don’t want to be a doormat”, or “I want to make sure that the Thing I’m Protecting gets protected.” But… even so, in most situations, the amount of resistance people have about this feels often out-of-proportion.
My hypothesis—Apologising is low status.
Possibly this is no longer the case (apologising first is often seen as a sign of maturity) but I can certainly see this being the case in the ancestral environment.
This would match my experience that apologising is feels awful even when it is entirely my fault.
I guess if the other person has already apologised then me also apologising just puts our status back roughly where we started which is why going second feels much easier.
In the case where the aggriving is very proportionate it is somewhat easy.
In the case where it is not proportionate you would probably be willing to do it for the symmetric part and not do it for the “remainder part”. If the remainder part is greater than the symmetric part you are more angry than peaceable.
One can take the most inconvenient case, you step on the toes of a unconvicted murderer. With one logic your faults, even minor don’t have anything to do the faults of others, you should apologise for stepping on peoples shoes. On the other hand, “there is kicking to be done” and apologising for stepping on toes and then chopping their head off would seem like 1 step forward and 100 steps back. Why not just go 98 steps backwards?
I think it comes from a feeling that proportion of blame needs to add to one, and by apologizing first you’re putting more of the blame on your actions. You often can’t say “I apologize for the 25% of this mess I’m responsible for.”
I think the general mindset of apportioning blame (as well as looking for a single blame-target) is a dangerous one. There’s a whole world of things that contribute to every conflict outside of the two people having it.