An Apology Isn’t Enough This Time

An apology made sense the first time around. You made a mistake. You felt horrible about it. You apologized.

I chose to forgive you under the assumption you were going to make amends. I chose to forgive you because you promised me it was never going to happen again. I chose to forgive you because I thought we would be able to put the mistake in the past and move onto the future.

An apology makes less and less sense the more times you have to make it. If you learned your lesson the first time – like you said you did – then you wouldn’t have made the same mistake a second time. History wouldn’t have repeated itself. We wouldn’t be in this situation right now.

An apology doesn’t make sense at this point in time. You might think I’m going to forgive you again since that’s what happened the first time, but unlike you, I don’t make the same errors twice in a row. I fix my mistakes. I change my behaviors. And this time, the behavior I have to change is associating with you.

I’m not calling your apology a fraud. I’m not claiming you’re lying when you say you wish you never hurt me. I’m simply pointing out the fact that you’ve said all of this before and it didn’t stop you from hurting me all over again.

I consider myself a forgiving person – but I will never be a gullible person. I will never stay in a situation that is unhealthy for me. I will never stay with someone who has proven they can hurt me, time and time again, despite the promises they have made me.

I’m glad you’re taking responsibly for your actions. I’m glad you’re admitting you messed up. But an apology isn’t going to work this time around. An apology isn’t going to take away what you put me through. It’s not going to erase the nights I cried deep into my pillowcase. It’s not going to erase the scars left on my heart. It’s not going to do a damn thing for me. All it’s going to do is make you feel better about yourself.

Now that you’ve apologized, you probably feel like you’ve done all you can do. You probably feel like I’m the bad guy for choosing to walk away. You probably feel like you’re the one getting the bad end of the deal because you said you were sorry. You said all of the ‘right things’.

But I don’t know what good an apology is when there’s a high chance you’re going to repeat the same mistake over and over again. Words aren’t enough to convince me to stay. You need to back up your apologies with your actions. You need to make a change to your behavior. If your apologies mean nothing, then there’s no reason for me to stay. I refuse to get my heart broken a third time. I refuse to lower my standards when I deserve so much more than this.