Aw, even apologies can cause offence?

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I'll keep details as vague as possible since I don't wish to reveal too much about myself.

I bumped into A outside a shopping mall recently. She is an ex-classmate. When she saw me, she started frowning. She kept typing away on her phone while stealing glances at me--maybe she wanted to see my reaction? To cut a long story short, I approached her. I tried to make some small talk but she just kept on frowning and frowning when she answered me. So I blurted out that I'm sorry that I used to offend her all the time in the past.

She frowned. "How did you offend me?"

I went on to apologize about some incident that happened three years ago. It's just a minor incident, so no need to reveal what it is here.

She either sounded angry or frightened or both when she snapped, "I think you've got the wrong person, really." She then ran off. (Yes, she really ran.)

I told B about my encounter with A, B said if she were A, she would find my apology offensive too. She said that NTs hate people who either apologize too much or apologize about incidents that happened years ago. She said that when I apologized, I was implying that A had been nursing a grudge against me for years. She said that my apology was an insult to A. Well, I don't understand what B means. Can anyone explain why people might perceive apologies as insults? Thanks.

I think the real issue is that neurotypicals tend to forget about stuff like that and have no idea what you're talking about even if it happened.

all i know is that when you apologize, it's best to keep it simple - "i'm sorry i hurt your feelings" - without dredging up the complete offense, which can re-injure the person you're apologizing to. if they don't seem to understand the simple version, resist the temptation to go into detail. accept that they don't think whatever happenned is that important or just don't want to deal with it. sometimes it's hard to let things go, but it can be best.

I used to apologize to people all the time, but in a lot of instances they didn't even know what I was talking about, and after awhile I realized that my apologies were annoying them more than whatever I thought I'd done to offend them in the first place. A lot of people just don't want to be bothered with listening to, and responding to, an apology. It requires more interaction then maybe they want to have with someone if they don't know them very well. At least that's my theory.

It reminds me of a time I was letting off steam in the office at 1 a.m., dropping the F bomb real loud. I assumed no one else could possibly be in the office, but sure enough, there WAS someone else there. She didn't know who I was and she was scared and ran out of the office. My first thought was to run after her and apologize, but then I realized that what SHE needed at that moment was to be left alone, and that my apology, although it would make ME feel better, would only scare the crap out of her even more.

That's why I don't post apologies here on WP, anymore. Everybody seems to take offense or they tell me not to open myself up for personal attacks for apologizing for my meltdowns. My, how the world has changed. I try to be polite by apologizing and people are rude to me and they try to toughen me up.

The problem here is that people who apologise for nothing tend to get annoying after a while.

Ok I sometimes get messages on here and on other sites from people saying "sorry for bla bla" and I don't know who they are, what they posted/said or why they're apologising.

Most of the time: It's nothing to do with you or what you've done. 99.99999999999999999999999999% of the time the person is apologising for something I didn't even notice or wasn't offended by.

This applies to most other people, too.

Perhaps instead of apologising you should have asked her why she was frowning at you.

It may also be that she didn't remember you; you may have seemed familiar, but she may not have recognized you, hence the frowning. I know that I probably couldn't remember any of my classmates. If she couldn't remember you well, she might not have remembered you offending her when you were classmates. Then having someone who might or might not be a stranger, from her point of view, suddenly apologize, may have startled her and she was rude to you.

Apologizing to her may not have been the problem; her not recognizing you may have been the actual problem. If it's someone you haven't talked to in awhile it sometimes best to stick to polite pleasantries, i.e. "Hi, I'm icyfire4w5, we went to school together at xxxx. How are you?" It may seem trite, but it reintroduces you to the person and puts him/her at ease. Leave the apologizing to old classmates for when you've spent more time with them recently or let them bring up the incidents. If they don't bring up any negative incidents, then it may not have been that impotant to them.

It must be hard living in a world where so many people are beneath you.

yeah it depends on the person, some accept some don't.

To shebakoby: Yup, I don't remember every single incident either. Recently, someone asked me, "Remember those death threats that you wrote but later threw away?" Till now, I don't remember writing any death threat in school. Oops.
To cathylynn: Thank you. If I apologize next time, I won't bring up details. Yup, thanks for letting me know that details sometimes hurt.
To scarter: Hmm, I appreciate your theory. You remind me of what someone once said, "When in doubt, stay silent."
To hale_bopp: Yeah, I understand what you're trying to say. Once, I apologized to a classmate for being too emo in class. She said she didn't even notice my emo-ness. (She later told me that she was offended by something else that I did, not emo-ness.)
To sedjat: I think that your theory works in most cases, but um, most people can recognize me within seconds because I dare say that my appearance is quite one-of- a-kind. Some people say that they can forget my name but not my appearance. But I agree with you that my apology must have startled A. Thanks for advising me to begin with polite pleasantries next time.

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Yes but in that case it was different, she was offended by you for some reason. A lot of the time people who apologise for stuff aren't even part of the actual problem.

I have actually had people apologize to me online and I had no idea what they were talking about. I was confused at first so I decided to read their posts first to see what is going on. It would turn out they were apologizing for something they said to me and I never took notice to it.

So people can assume they had offended me when they hadn't because I never noticed. I just didn't understand what they wrote it why so how could I take offense?


But I just accept it anyway. It's good to apologize so why discourage it?

I don't really apologize anymore all that much either. I would apologize and the other person would still be mad at me and not move on so why even bother you know? I don't even bother apologizing if I have offended someone because they won't get over it. They will still carry on and hold it against me so why bother?


I feel apologies are useless.