If You Offend SomEone And Then Say Sorry, Does It Repair The Situation

[Ventus]

Well? I have beenin wonderous if the situation is repaired.

Example: I said that I hate blacks. Someone was offended. I said I was sorry immediately afterwards. What happens then? If you recognize your fault and the offended party does not accept your apologies, what is your obligation then?

 

[RegalBryant]

You give up. It's their problem now.

 

[Snow Queen]

You give up. It's their problem now.

This just got real

 

[Jonny]

It is never really a clear cut issue on when sorry is enough. It depends on how near to each other you where or are, what the transgression was and simply if you believe the person. If someone was very rude to me that I knew to be usually an okay person and then came to me later to say sorry and that they where having a really bad day and shouldn't have allowed themselves to act out against me. I would see that as a genuine attempt to say sorry and depending on how ride they had been I would take the apology and move on or be at least open to forgiving them based on how the continue to behave.

But sorry is not a magic word, it is simply a statement or how you now feel about your actions and possibly your intentions to fix what damage you have caused. If say you damaged something of a friends by misusing it or carelessness and don't offer to either fix or pay for it then you count expect a single word to be a reasonable replacement.

As to someone making an offensive racist statement, it would depend on context. Where they trying to be funny? Fine day sorry and don't do it again. Was it a genuine statement of belief? If it wasn't a person I knew very well then I would take it as a red flag to stay away from them, even with a sorry. If I did know therm and it seemed an out of place statement then I might take it that they had just need idiotic and where indeed sorry then I could let it go, as long as they didn't continue with it.

Basically context is everything, but even with the best context it is not a magic word.

 

[misskitten]

Actually, saying sorry only mean something if the person truly is sorry. Without genuine intention the word has no value. And it may not actually repair the situation at all, it depends on the damage the original words caused. But even if it doesn't repair the situation, a genuine apology will always be a helpful first step.

 

[Clank]

If someone says they are sorry and means it, then it's up to the other person to forgive them. Repairing the situation is a two person (or more) process, it requires both the offender (to say sorry and mean it) and the "victim" (to forgive them). It can't happen without both of those.

 

[SinkingBadges]

What comes to mind, in basic person-to-person terms, is that it's easy to tell when it's sincere if the people in question know each other well enough. Sometimes more internally it goes unexpectedly though, like the way lots of people have a tendency to take their own mistakes really personally, others have trust issues, etc... pretty complicated in that sense I guess.

 

[Farore's Chosen]

One only if you mean it and Two if the person is willing to accept your apology. It depends on the people involved and the reason

 

[Vanessa28]

It has been said already and I agree with it. It depends if the person is really sorry. If I look at your example given the person could say sorry because of offending you but also say sorry as a habit to realize he or she is not funny at all. So it depends. I have been in situations people said horrible things to me and never appologized. They are still talking and doing everything they can to avoid the situation from being brought up. Like Elton John once sang: Sorry seems to be the hardest word.