Open Question: Burning Bridges And Offering Apology Many Years After The Fact

21 Responses to “Open Question: Burning Bridges And Offering Apology Many Years After The Fact”

1. ewinbee says on 4/22/08 at 7:30 pm:
   

   I think the exact same thing. “Clean” is a good word for it.

   There’s nothing I appreciate more, or feel more open to, than a clean apology. But the moment anything creeps into it, like, “I’m sorry you’re hurt (implied: because you’re oversensitive or maybe even crazy),” or, “I’m sorry BUT…” or, “I’m sorry because I need something from you,” then it’s a dirty sorry, and that just adds insult to injury.

   I’ve got someone who wants back into my life, and he’s got nothing but dirty sorries for me. It’s just a reminder of all the hell he put me through. It sucks.

2. satori says on 4/22/08 at 7:37 pm:
   

   I have apologized. I felt compelled. I went through a phase where I apologized to a few people, about seven years ago (I wasn’t single). I just made my final apology recently.

   BUT– I don’t care if I ever get apologies from anyone. if I didn’t hunt you down and punch you in the face, well, I’m totally over it.

   scorpio mars, 3rd house. 8th house venus/saturn/chiron.

3. liz says on 4/22/08 at 8:12 pm:
   

   I think it would be mostly mute. Although part of me would appreciate it. It would not make me bring them back in the fold though. Too much time would have passed to really care about something that far back. Unless it really did alter my life in a drastic way.

4. midara says on 4/22/08 at 8:42 pm:
   

   I’d really appreciate it. I have Pluto in Scorpio on the descendant, and I can definitely carry old wounds for longer than they’re worth. However, I’m also very forgiving, and an apology after all those years would be freeing for me.

5. Carielle says on 4/22/08 at 9:12 pm:
   

   I tend to let sleeping dogs lie if an apology hasn’t happened within a short period of time after insult or injury (and by short I mean pretty much immediate). It’s been my experience that one the rare occasion when I did go back a year, two years after an incident and aknowledged and apologized for what I felt I did that hurt someone, they used it as an opportunity to a. try to get back with me and b. try to get back AT me at the same time — very messy, and ultimately hurtful again, a second time, to both parties. Better to have aknowledged it to myself and moved on than to go have gone back. But hindsight is 20/20.

6. Togi says on 4/22/08 at 10:05 pm:
   

   Never wake up a sleeping dog unless you wanna get bit in the arse.

7. isabelle says on 4/23/08 at 1:10 am:
   

   I’d rather move on, tho it can take a while! fixed G square. Some betrayals can be so flagrantly gross, at first they might as well piss into the ocean. On occasions acceptance & compassion have worked wonders for me, but then the process has already taken place without the offender’s participation. Anyway then a clean apology really is more for their own peace, so good for them, and then yeah, it would be nice to hear. But I feel its more important to forgive myself for being a sucker or getting into victim mode then carry spoiling stuff.

   Looking at that burning bridge and monkey carrying a torch, who wants such monkey back into their lives anyway? where is that great picture coming from I wonder what the story is there!

8. SaDiablo says on 4/23/08 at 3:49 am:
   

   I would really love to leave a better comment on this, but I just don’t think I can get my point across. I’ve been trying for the past, oh, fifteen minutes and it’s no good. So I’ll just say no, I wouldn’t like the apology. Especially if the offense is years in the past.

   I have taken up to a month to apologize for something I did, though. I sometimes need the time to go diving and then polish the pearl so I can present it with as little fuss as possible. Otherwise there’s hardly any point to it.

9. seekingzen says on 4/23/08 at 5:49 am:
   

   If it was a clean, genuine apology, then I would like to have it. I could probably even give you a list of people I would want an apology from and what the offenses were, because I remember things like that way. too. well. I get over the angry phase pretty quickly, but the bitter tends to linger. I think it’s probably my busy 8th house and Mars in Cancer.

10. Elsa says on 4/23/08 at 5:56 am:
    

    “I think it would be mostly mute”

    liz - I had to rethink this when I read that and tend to agree with you. There are some people I would really like an apology from - just some kind of acknowledgment but chances are the person who would come forward would be apologizing for something I had forgotten or that never bothered me in the first place.

    This did happened to me in the other direction. An ex boyfriend contacted me to congratulate when he heard through the grapevine I’d had a baby and he saw her picture. I was mortified hearing from him because I always thought I had done something wrong. I wrote him to apologize and he didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. Said, all his memories of me were good one and I just couldn’t believe it.

    What a weight off but I bet it happens this way more often than the other.

11. Jerri says on 4/23/08 at 6:43 am:
    

    A few years back I was writing articles, pro bono, for a local theatre’s newsletter. They would tell me who to write about, and I would interview them. It was time consuming, but rewarding, and I enjoyed doing it. The last article I wrote I was especially proud of, but when it was published the editor had decimated it. She never called me to say she was doing so, and I was furious. I mean it was hacked. It basically caused me to withdraw from volunteering there, because I felt it was unappreciated. Well, a few years later I’m back there doing a Bruce Springsteen show, and I see the editor in the bathroom. I barely acknowledged her presence (I’m A Scorp). She then came up to me, and apologized for the hacking of my article… blah blah blah. It made me feel so good that she owned it. She didnt try to blame it on anyone else, or sugar coat it. (She’s a Cap). I’ll always remember how good it made me feel, and it shined a very bright spotlight for me on owning up to one’s mistakes… esp. my own.

12. Alma says on 4/23/08 at 6:59 am:
    

    I agree with Ewinbee, it has to be a clean apology. But an apology usually has strings attached, so I would be wary of letting someone who has hurt me in the past get close enough to apologize.
    There is someone I should have apologized to years ago, and I am sincerely sorry for hurting him. However, there is absolutely no reason for me to contact him to apologize, because he is happily married now. What would either of us get from an apology. I prefer to think that he knows I am sorry.

13. kashmiri says on 4/23/08 at 7:39 am:
    

    I think an apology has the most genuine potential to acknowledge another human.
    Depending on the circumstances, I’d like one. I like to have my feelings acknowledged. My mum apologized for something recently that I had been carrying for decades. She finally could see what kind of burden I had and to have that acknowledgment was sweet.

    However some circumstances don’t warrant an apology–with certain actions people alter the course of a relationship permanently and there is no re-routing.

14. Foxxy says on 4/23/08 at 7:42 am:
    

    I think for the most part, it’d be worthless to me. Either I’ll have gotten over/around whatever it was, or I still hate you and probably always will.

    Recently my brother added a former classmate of mine ot his facebook, and in grade two she sold me down the river. I got over it(basically the other girls in our small school told her she could be friends with me, or she could be friends with them but not both, and well they had the numbers so I couldn’t fault her), but when I was thinking of adding her as a friend I saw the other kids from my (small) elementary school and realised I didn’t want to be anywhere near them. Not even on the same friends list because I still hate all their guts and if they contacted me in anyway it’d just rip my guts to shreds. Just looking at the names made me want to go home and lie down.

    The ringleader of the debacle apologized to me in grade twelve “Now I see what you went through and I’m sorry” and I just walked away, and that still makes me feel good.

    It takes a lot to burn bridges with me and once its done I hope you rot.

    Moon in virgo 8th or 9th house (pretty sure its the 8th), square venus and neptune (make nice and forget? Don’t think so), Scorpio Uranus in the 11th.

15. goddess says on 4/23/08 at 8:58 am:
    

    interesting question.

    i agree with the no strings requirement. if it’s years after the fact especially, the apology would need to be offered with no expectation of a response, because that is a request for absolution, not offering sincere regret.

    dealing with a similar situation with a family member, actually. there are lots of hurt feelings and she wants to reconcile (meaning pretending it never happened). while a sincere apology wouldn’t just erase all the pain from being used and tossed aside yet again, the absence of one seems to add insult to injury, as if the hurts didn’t exist or were simply not important enough to acknowledge. Doesn’t exactly add much reassurance we wouldn’t be signing on for more of exactly the same treatment.

    Mars in Scorpio, 4th house.

16. Cassi says on 4/23/08 at 9:01 am:
    

    I feel that my forgiving is more healing than having to get an apology. Forgiving and letting go, to me, is the big antioxidant. Forgiving does not mean you have to trust someone who screwed you over, you forgive them you don’t welcome them back into your life to maybe screw you over again. I rarely hold a grudge. I eventually drop it if it is held. How would that show up in my chart? My moon is in Capricorn, my sun is Leo. I don’t know.

17. Lilly says on 4/23/08 at 9:03 am:
    

    I think the acknowledgement (from certain people, for certain wrongs) of wrong doing would be beneficial, but it’s not necessary. For the most part, I get over things very quickly. I don’t ever forget them, but I do get over them. If I genuinely like a person, then I’d just about forgive them anything. There are some hurts however, that could never be forgiven. So, in those cases, an apology would be utterly useless. (I’d attribute that to my Moon in Libra, 8th house. I want to be fair, but don’t screw me over. ha!)

18. Jessica says on 4/23/08 at 12:01 pm:
    

    I think it depends on perspective. What I’ve been through in the last year and a half is so horrible, there is no apologizing for it. And if someone came up now from my childhood and apologized for being mean, or an ex apologized for not loving me, I think all I’d have for them is a stupid stare. Once upon a time, it might have meant something more.

19. shell says on 4/23/08 at 6:49 pm:
    

    Cassi-I also have Sun in Leo and Moon in Capricorn. I don’t hold grudges much either. They’re just a waste of time and energy. I’d rather smile and get on with my life. But my Scorpio ASC won’t ever let me forget a wrongdoing
    I just won’t lose sleep over it.
    An apology is always nice though, as long as it’s genuine.

20. Kingsley says on 4/24/08 at 1:10 am:
    

    I am ok that someone might want to apologise for something twenty years ago however it doesn’t mean much to me. It would seem to mean more for the apologiser because I don’t seem to hold onto grudges or become fixated on how I may have been treated years ago.

    If a person was wanting to apologise for some kind of serious abuse done years ago then that is quite different and not really well accepted. Why would one give that person the luxury of apology?

    kingsley

21. wyrdling says on 4/24/08 at 2:59 am:
    

    i have an apology i’d like to make, but i’d have to find him first. given that, i can at least resolve to not make the same mistake again.
    but, i was 14 and confused….
    mostly i hope he’s happy and doing well.

    as far as… well, there’s someone who apologized to me a year ago. and i’d really rather not talk to him, but he seemed to feel like he needed to and i let him but that’s as far as i was willing to go….

    it just seems like the respectful thing to do. i can’t tell that it made me feel any better, though. nor worse. just kind of confused.

    well, maybe it would have helped if he’d said what he was apologizing for, rather than a blanket “i’m sorry.”

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