Hey there.
It's Clay from modernlove.life, where things are getting a little bit weird here.
So I just moved my setup from my office back home, because as some of you may know, I live
in Seattle, Washington, which happens to be the whole epicenter of this outbreak thing
that seems to be happening here, at least in the United States, anyway.
And so they're asking us to work from home for a while if we can, so I can, and so here
I am.
So the background looks a little bit different.
I put up a little screen to kind of block out some of the stuff that you might see in
my bedroom, and it's nothing weird, but you know, just like dressers and clothes and things
like that.
But it can be distracting, so I put that up.
But yeah, I'm going to be working from home until this whole thing blows over, hopefully
sooner rather than later.
Honestly, things are getting kind of weird here.
I mean, life is going on as normal, but I saw on the news that they had to close down
my old high school because one of the students there had the virus, and they closed down
the high school to deep clean it or something.
So that's weird.
That's weird.
My high school.
And then of course my mom lives not far from there, so I'm kind of worried about her.
But yeah.
Yeah.
I'm just hoping this whole thing is short-lived.
I hope it blows over, and I hope that we can all go back to life as normal soon.
I know that there's definitely a lot of opinions, a lot of thoughts on this topic.
It's obviously not the topic of this channel, but I just wanted to let you know what's going
on, and that yes, I am going to be working from home for a little while.
So with that being said, I wanted to make this video about apologizing to your ex.
Before we get into that, though, I wanted to ask a bit of a favor from you.
All the usual stuff, like, subscribe, all that cool stuff.
But additionally, I wanted to ask you to vote on the name of a thing that I'm planning on
putting together soon.
You guys may not know this, but I'm pretty terrible at naming things, actually.
I'm not very good at it.
So I thought I'd actually turn this over to you and get some crowdsourced opinions on
what a good name would be.
So I want you to pretend that you're like at a bookstore, and you're just walking down
the aisle and you happen to see books with different names, and then just vote, pick
which one you'd rather have, you'd rather pick up and flip through and read.
So there's going to be a link down below in the description for this video, and also in
the comment section, I'm going to pin a comment to a poll and I just want you to take a look
at the poll and vote on which name, if it were the name of a book, you'd pick up and
just flip through.
I'm thinking about putting together a little thing about some of the best templates and
conversation strategies that we've managed to come up with over the years for communicating
with your ex, and I just wanted to think about what we might name that thing.
So go ahead and vote on that.
That would really help me out a lot.
Okay.
So with all of that stuff out of the way, let's go ahead and get into the topic today,
which is how to apologize to your ex.
So apologies can be a tricky thing.
We're used to apologizing for things in our lives when things go wrong, and we're used
to just being able to say, "Hey, I'm sorry that that didn't go the way that we wanted
it to."
Or, "I'm sorry I hurt your feelings," or something.
And most of the time, friends, family, coworkers and stuff like that, they'll just say, "Okay,
yeah, no worries.
We'll just let that roll off our back and we'll go ahead and move forward."
But when it comes to relationships, a simple apology often is not enough.
A simple apology, kind of like how you would do in other situations.
Apologizing towards your ex is more difficult, because there are, of course, many more emotions
wrapped up in the whole situation.
Of course you and your ex were in a relationship.
Of course your emotions are a whole lot different because you tend to open up to people in a
much bigger way in a romantic relationship, and so it's often more easy to get hurt, and
also more easy to get hurt more deeply.
So what's important is that you really understand your ex's emotional world.
You can't just apologize for the sake of apologizing.
You have to let it impact you how your actions, or how what you did, or how what you said
affected your ex.
And not just like intellectually get it, like, "Oh, they're upset," or, "They're mad," or
whatever, but actually understand like, "Oh, wow, they are feeling betrayed.
They are feeling devastated.
They're feeling hurt."
And yes, I know that there are two sides to every story and that from your perspective
you probably did nothing wrong, or you have your own reasons for doing what you did, but
you have to kind of put that aside for now and just see things from your ex's point of
view in order to really allow your apology to kind of penetrate through their ... What
would you call it?
Their shell, in order to get inside and to allow them to let go of the pain, the hurt,
the resentment, the whatever they're feeling that's keeping them from actually being able
to open up and talk about something more deeply.
So you really need to have that empathic stance to be able to feel through the situation and
to connect with them beyond the pain and the hurt and all of that stuff.
So that's what you need to do, and that's what you need to think about when you are
apologizing.
You also want to, of course, make sure that you tell your side of the story too.
I mean, they're probably accustomed to saying that, but oftentimes if you just say that
without first acknowledging how they feel, it can come across as defensiveness, like
you're trying to prove them wrong, you're trying to make them wrong for feeling hurt,
for feeling upset, for feeling sad, for feeling whatever.
But if you start by first connecting with them on an emotional level, understanding
where they're at, and then you can go ahead and explain, "Yeah, I know that you feel hurt
right now.
At the time I was just so caught up in," whatever it was, "work," "my own drama," "worrying
what other people think of me," whatever it is, that I totally lost touch with how these
actions would affect you.
And then you can just sort of like talk about your experience, how it affected you, and
all of that.
And then of course you can segue that into the proper apology.
So there's really a few different components to this.
You definitely first and foremost want to acknowledge how your ex is feeling.
Take that empathic stance.
Then you get the opportunity to share what was motivating you, how you felt at that time,
and then of course you can segue that into an apology.
And that tends to work a whole lot better than just saying like, "I'm sorry.
I don't know what I'm apologizing for, but I'm sorry."
You definitely don't want to be in that position because that's not going to go well.
I've never seen that sort of apology go well.
You want to definitely just start with that empathic stance and then move forward from
there.
So that's really what's at the key of apologizing.
Also, just understand that apologizing isn't going to do the whole job of getting you back
together.
It's just going to open the door.
I think that many times people also expect too much from little things, whether that's
an apology, or a text message, or an email, or a letter that they write, or whatever.
They expect the individual thing to do the whole job of getting back together, and typically
that's not going to happen.
I mean, sure, maybe in some rare instances it can go that way, but most of the time it's
just going to open the door for you to take a step forward, and then you're going to have
to take another step forward, and then you're going to have to take another step forward,
and you're going to have to go on this journey over several steps and really inspire your
ex to believe that there's a future together with you, and you're typically not going to
be able to do that with just one move.
So just let it be okay that the apology allows your ex to let go of the pain, let go of the
hurt, and then from there, the two of you can actually start interacting in a meaningful
way that will start to build up a better emotional connection between the two of you, okay?
So don't think that the apology alone is going to do the whole thing.
It's just going to get the ball rolling.
And then of course there's an entire other game beyond that, of connecting on a deeper
level, inspiring trust, showing them that the two of you have a future, showing them
that they're not walking back into the same relationship that they walked out of in the
first place, and handling all of the other things, rebound relationships, long distance,
all of that stuff that may be considerations as well too.
But again, first and foremost, just understand where they're at emotionally, because they're
not going to be able to be open to any of that stuff until what they're currently feeling
right now is acknowledged and heard in an empathic way.
So definitely, definitely, definitely make sure that you do all of that, okay?
So yeah, I'm here at home for now, and we're just going to have to hope that this situation
gets better, that it's temporary, that this doesn't get any worse.
Yeah.
I'm still trying to get everything set up here appropriately.
Our place is kind of really narrow and long, and we have our wifi thing on one end, and
I'm here on the opposite end, so I need to somehow figure out how to get better reception
back here.
Once I'm able to do that, I think I'll be able to start live streaming from home.
So that will maybe happen next week.
We'll have to see.
I have a whole weekend to kind of fiddle around with it and make sure that all works out.
But I hope you all are safe, I hope you all are healthy, and I hope that this whole situation
doesn't get any worse.
Take care.
Have a great weekend, and I'll talk to you soon.
Oh, and of course, be sure to thumbs up this video, subscribe, and go down to the description
and give me your opinion on the poll for what I should name my communication thing that
I'm intending to make in the near future.
That would really help me, because as somebody who is not very good at naming things, I'd
like a little bit of help.
Take care.
I'll talk to you next week, and I hope everything is a lot better by then.