I don't understand apologies or why people need them

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I mean it's nice when people apologize i guess but it doesn't change the fact that someone broke something of yours, all the more so if they aren't going to replace it with something of equal value. When people are satisfied with an apology from me it's really baffling. I get fatalist about the thing in question. I offended in some way. I'd like to repair the relationship but i apology is not something that has meaning to me or rather it just confuses me.

Often i apologize when it's needed just as a social lubricant.

Am I alone in this?

It depends on the way they apologize and if they feel bad about what they did and the thing they did

usually i have a detached and somewhat blank or sad feeling when i've hurt someone i care about. It sounds psychotic but I assure you it's not. It literally feels like a gap in my emotional range.

I'm an insecure person so i really like validation and getting the opposite of that when i've rubbed someone the wrong way is a downer. Or sometimes i think that's what is going on but i'm not sure. Meanwhile making people feel good feels good at least to a point. But my relationship to the whole thing is detached. Maybe this is beyond the scope of aspergers? Maybe it's related to the various ways autism spectrum disorders make one want social interaction less? I don't know.

If I felt I've screwed up, I feel better after I apologize. It also makes me feel good when people accept my apologies. It's because I'm a Sweet Pea that I feel this way.

You're probably a lot like me. I am the same way, I think an apology brigns closure to a situation. I have found that when I have hurt someone, usually unintentionally, they aren't bothered by it anymore even if I would beat myself up over it when i was younger. (I'm much better at forgiving myself now.) And, the times that stick with me till they have the danger of becoming PTSD-like if I'm not careful are the times when someone doesn't apologize.

Mark Twain once said "Never attribute to malice what can be blamed on incompetence." I like to use that at times - I don't expect people to say they had malicious intent, jsut to say they messed up. I'm very accustomed to makign mistakes of my own, so I understand when someone else does. In fact, those times when someone hasn't apologized, I often find myself presuming they were merely incompetent, not malicious, as a way to make myself feel more content and safer, knowing people won't be trying to do mean stuff on purpose.

So, an apology isn't saying you were trying to hurt someone. Sometiems people don't realize that, though, which is why an apology helps, too, so they realize that there was no evil intent and they feel more secure.

(Yeah, I know, so many layers - but that's why we are the way we are, becasue we struggle with all thsoe layers.)

I'll just add that one other time apologies help so much is becasue people like to feel like you understand them, at least in a small way. So, even though I've never lost a spouse, for instance, I can say to a good friend of the family "I'm sorry to hear you lost your husband" and mean it and it helps because to them, it feels like I'm sharing their pain at least a little. (that's somethign I didn't understand at all about apologies when i was little, hence I thought "I'm sorry" was only for when I'd messed up - but it does help people feel like you're commisserating with them.)

Apologizing is mostly about principle. The boss at work yelled at me in a rather unpleasant way the other day, for something she thought I had done but I truly hadn't. I tried to explain that it wasn't me, but she wouldn't believe me. Then I felt rather emotional after that, and I told my colleagues. One of them had actually done the thing I got the blame for (not intentionally), and she went to the boss and told her that it was her fault, not mine. Then she told me that the boss didn't seem apologetic, nor cared that I was upset, and she said that the boss should apologize to me for making me feel that way. But it's two days later and the boss still hasn't apologized to me. All my colleagues think it was unacceptable for the boss to yell at me like that and not even apologize when she realized she had made a mistake, but I suppose because she's the boss people don't like to approach her and force her to apologize to me, which is understand and I'm not expecting them to. And saying ''the boss probably feels too awkward to apologize'' is no excuse either. She's the boss, and so she should deal with these sorts of matters professionally. I know apologizing won't change the fact that she shouted at me for something I didn't do, but it still goes a long way. It's the principle.

It seems so many Aspies don't look at the principle or the emotional/irrational side of things. I tend to look at things the same way NTs do.