I apologized after over twenty years and it turns out he didn’t notice what I did.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a friend invited himself into a social group of mine. He was a good friend, as were the people in the other group, but at the time I wanted to keep them separate. As it turned out, my initial impulse to keep them separate was baseless. He fit in the group and everyone got along.
Except for one thing. At some of the early times he joined the group, I don’t know how to put it: I resented what I saw as him intruding. Whereas normally when we hung out, I’d speak openly, we’d joke around, and enjoy each other’s company, while out with the other group, I’d communicate less and more perfunctorily.
For a while I looked back with embarrassment. Now I’m old enough that I realize that at that age, young compared to me today, though I felt mature then, I didn’t know any better.
I share all this background because the group, including him, got together for the first time in a while recently. At the get-together, I owned up to my antisocial behavior to my friend. I told him that I came to see that I treated him poorly and owed him an apology. Then I apologized.
He responded that he never noticed I had behaved any differently when we were with the group. The group’s activity was active and fun enough that he didn’t pick up the difference.
For about a quarter century, I’d been carrying a feeling of guilt for a harm I thought I caused but didn’t. I was the only one suffering for my actions.
Lesson learned
Had I apologized in the moment or soon after, I could have avoided decades of needless emotional anguish.
A younger me would say the lesson was not to behave unfriendly in the first place, but I didn’t know any better then. I felt territorial. Besides, everyone makes mistakes. To say “Don’t make mistakes” isn’t practical.
But even then I knew the value of apologizing. The lesson I learned was to apologize as soon as I know someone I harmed deserves the apology.
Retry later