From Sudy:
I tend to view apologies as the beginning, not the end. So, if apologies are true and heartfelt, you’ll forgive me for not weeping with joy and instead, again, borrowing this popular term, “Prove it.”
Not to me, but to those who you say you love and have hurt. Prove it to them.
Truer words are rarely spoken.
isn’t an authentic apology an authentic recognition of the other? if we mean what we say an apology is an explicit YES, not a new promise but a revision of a past circumstance.
RE
VISE
and CONsent
I agree that an authentic apology is an authentic recognition of the other, but I question whether one can be a revision of a past circumstance. Rather it is a recognition of a past circumstance coupled with authentic remorse. Implicit in that remorse should be the promise to not revisit the past circumstance.
And we really do need to hook up. As soon as I get my shit together, we need to make plans to do that.
gary – no. i remember once pointing out to you on the old pulp list that abusers often say they’re sorry. they abuse the other, then they say they’re sorry, do all kinds of stuff to ‘prove it’ and then abuse the other person again. if i were going to get object relations freudian theory on it, i’d say that people who perform that sort of an apology are mired in guilt — but not shame.
i posted an excerpt about it once, http://blog.pulpculture.org/2005/11/01/its-a-shame/
not that anyone is an abuser in any of this, but that, according to freudian theory, extreme cases illuminate what all of us go through on a less extreme level.