Offsetting our thoughts on Apologies: How to Not Apologize

I typically do not talk this much about celebrities and their own inner (or what should be their inner) business, however, recent events have led to some very teachable moments. Incidents such as Cardi's set on Rolling Loud. Cardi is the first woman ever to headline the Rolling Loud Music festival, another major achievement to an already incredible list of achievements for her.

However, instead of discussing her historic performance, we are again thrust into the selfishness spiral of her estranged and strange husband, rapper Offset. Offset, in an attempt to absolve himself from his own repeated and frequent and public infidelities during their very young marriage, crashed Cardi's history-making set with hundreds of roses spelling out the message "Take me back, Cardi".

Again, Cardi's socials were inundated with calls to take Offset back. And I am at a boiling point with it all.

First and foremost, this is the most inappropriate and quite frankly selfish display of faux apology This was not sweet. This is not romantic. This is manipulation. This is weaponizing an audience to force Cardi back into a relationship that no longer serves her.

An apology is simply an admission of error:
When you wrong someone and you know you have wronged them, whether you intended to or not, you apologize. We were taught that at a very young age. If you hurt someone or offend someone, you apologize. it's just what we do in polite society.

An apology does not erase the responsibility of your actions:
When you do someone wrong, you did what you did, whatever it was, and it caused harm to a person. When you apologize for that wrong, you acknowledge the wrong you did. That person whom you have wronged can either accept or reject your apology.

But whatever the offended party chooses to do, your apology does not absolve you're enduring the consequences of your own hurtful actions. If a person was very hurt, it could take them some time to heal. There could have been trauma. And an apology will not remove the consequences one must face from that infraction. In the same way that a person can go on a crime spree, get caught, and come and apologize to the people he/she stole from cannot expect their apology to absolve the consequences of them going to jail for their crime is the same way an apology of hurting someone does not mean that consequences vanish.

An apology does not demand to be forgiven:
All an apology really does is allows you as the offending party to acknowledge your own fault. An apology is literally just that, seeing your own wrongdoing and saying that you are sorry. You cannot then, after saying that you feel remorse for what you have done and in that same breath demand absolution. You don't have that right. Forgiveness is in the hands of the offended. By demanding that you be forgiven, you take the focus on how you have hurt the other person and put the attention on your own wanting to feel good about yourself again.

Just because you say you are sorry does not mean you are restored:
Forgiveness and restoration are two very different things. If the offended person chooses to forgive you, that forgiveness isn't even really about you. Forgiveness frees the offended from carrying the burden of the offense. However, there is nothing in forgiveness that demands that the relationship is restored. Just because a person let's go of the offense, it does not entitle the offender to be tossed back into the life or even vicinity of the offended. 

A real apology is changed behavior:
Words are pretty, but they mean very little without some action to back them up. A real apology is changing behavior. If you are truly sorry, you don't show it with thousands of roses or Instagram videos, you show it by listening to the offended person, by hearing how you hurt them and then fixing that behavior.

I hope this helps us all offset our own thoughts and practices on apologies.