Don’t Apologize If You’re Not Going To Change

 Brooke Cagle
Brooke Cagle

You don’t apologize by saying sorry and not changing your behavior, you don’t apologize by telling someone that you’re sorry, that you regret everything you’ve done and continue to do the same things that will hurt them.

Apologies don’t mean anything if you don’t plan on changing, if you don’t try to repair the damage.

Apologies are only a waste of words if you’re not truly feeling each word and naturally changing your ways because you know better and you don’t want to lose the person again.

Apologies only count when you’d rather be with someone than lose them, when you know what it’s like to lose someone special.

But you can’t expect forgiveness when you’re still the same and you can’t just count on sorry to fix everything.

Forgiveness comes when you try, when you’re consistent, when you don’t take the person you love for granted and when you appreciate their presence in your life.

Forgiveness comes with effort, with remembering little details and following up, with going out of your way to let someone know you care, with taking some time out of your busy life to be there for them and it comes when you let the person know that you won’t walk away again and you’re not going to repeat the same mistakes because you learned your lesson.

But if you say sorry just to buy yourself some time until you’re ready or say sorry because it’s the right thing to do, then don’t say it — keep it to yourself.

Consider your apology accepted, consider yourself forgiven for all that you’ve done but it’s not going to be the forgiveness that brings you back into someone’s life, it’s going to be the forgiveness that kicks you out of it.

Because apologies are another way of telling the person that you value them and that they mean something to you, they’re not just words, they’re actions, they’re ways to fix things, they’re ways to show you care, they’re text messages, calls and heart to heart conversations.

The best kind of apology is when you try to change your behavior from hurting someone to loving them.

The best kind of apology is when you try to replace everything you’ve done wrong with everything you can do to make it right.

The best kind of apology is not saying sorry, it’s showing how sorry you really are. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

Writing makes me feel alive. Words heal me.

Keep up with Rania on Instagram

More From Thought Catalog