I’ve seen and considered this advice before, but when I am doing perhaps too much apologizing, the reason is usually that I actually am trying to get signal on whether/how much I’ve upset the other person.
Even if they only say “it’s okay” out of obligation, I can usually tell from tone and word choice and so on whether that’s what’s going on. There’s a big difference between a terse “it’s fine” and a warm “what? No, it’s totally fine, you have nothing to apologize for”. It’s not perfect, of course, since people are sometimes intentionally deceptive here, but it’s at least a decent chance of decent signal.
Thanking the person does not generally achieve this. In a sufficiently close relationship with sufficiently direct communication norms, I can sometimes just ask directly, but it would still be pretty weird to ask for every minor thing.
I’ve seen and considered this advice before, but when I am doing perhaps too much apologizing, the reason is usually that I actually am trying to get signal on whether/how much I’ve upset the other person.
Even if they only say “it’s okay” out of obligation, I can usually tell from tone and word choice and so on whether that’s what’s going on. There’s a big difference between a terse “it’s fine” and a warm “what? No, it’s totally fine, you have nothing to apologize for”. It’s not perfect, of course, since people are sometimes intentionally deceptive here, but it’s at least a decent chance of decent signal.
Thanking the person does not generally achieve this. In a sufficiently close relationship with sufficiently direct communication norms, I can sometimes just ask directly, but it would still be pretty weird to ask for every minor thing.