What's the appropriate response to an apology?

You can say, “I accept your apology, thank you, but I still need some time to distance myself from what happened.” If it is a friend or family you can reassure them you care about the friendship, or something similar.

I usually just say, “Thanks, but I’m still pissed off. Give me a while.”

you can forgive the person for his or her screwup if the apology is sincere.

that’s a separate matter from dealing with the effects of the misdeed, and of course that can take a while. i do think you have to try to let your anger go, but i don’t think there’s anything wrong with keeping a cautious distance for a while.

It completely depends upon what the person did, how awful it was, and if they did it on purpose, on accident or if they did it because they are kind of stupid (and just didn’t know any better) or they’re comletely ignorant (and don’t even know exactly what they did, or the repercussions that it caused and are just apologizing to apologize to make you feel better) or if they did it because they thought you would never find out. There are a lot of variables that need to be specified. I would likely have different kinds of reactions to each of the above scenarios.

I’ve had friends and acquaintences who have done some terrible things and then either did, or attempted to apologize. Some of the things were done out of jealousy, some out of lack of understanding about the possible outcome of their actions, some out of pure stupidity (and a simple lack of understanding about most things) or some because they simply didn’t think the thing that they were doing was bad in their opinion (although it was horrific to me). Some people are mean, some people are stupid and some people are ignorant and some people do things that they know are wrong, but at the time they are under a great deal of stress or anxiety or intoxication and later they realize how wrong they were.

In short (and I know that I rarely am) you have to weigh all of the circumstances surrounding the screwup.

You can accept their apology, but tell them that you still have to cool off, and to let you alone for awhile.

Then when you think about what happened, realize that it happened and you can’t change it as this point. That should help you let go of your anger.

When you reach a point of being able to forgive them, be sure and tell them. That thing that happened? I’m over it now. I forgive you.

Are they taking any restorative steps? I find it easier to forgive if the person is inconvenienced in some way from fixing their mistake.

It’s often not enough to apologize if you don’t take action to fix your mistakes or continue to reiterate what you’ve learned from making the mistake.

@Jeruba is on target with what I teach my children, and what I try to do, in my life.

The hardest part can be getting over the pain or anger. Allow yourself to work through the feelings, but try not to cling onto those emotions.

It is totally your choice in the matter if you want to forgive then do so but you do not have too. Also when you forgive you do not have to forget. But I have found if you don’t let it go and forgive it really only eats at you and causes you grief.

You have a right to be pissed off for as long as it takes you.
You also do not have to accept an apology just because it is given.

With that being said, what I have experienced and try to practice is to work through the pissed off and pain with the person in the right time and space.
If you can’t work through it with that person, then you may have to accept that it just isn’t going to happen. Like the lyric in Heart of the Matter says “If you carry it too long, it can eat you up inside”
Acceptance and/or forgiveness on your own can be as healing as accepting the apology.
Realize that heartfelt apologies should feel like gifts to you. Also the apology should fit the offense. Heartfelt or remorse depending on what occured. Eitherway, it should not just be a causual apology. Some people think that just because they say they are sorry should do it.
I hope you work through it….

@blueiiznh That brought back an awful memory about something a boyfriend said to me when I was young. He did something terrible, then later, after I told him how much this thing hurt me, he said this, “I’m sorry you feel that way.” instead of saying, “I’m sorry I did that to you and I’m sorry that I hurt you.” He basically shifted the blame to me, like it was my fault that I felt bad, even though it was he that did the dirty deed. Some apologies are better than others and some are completely worthless.

@Kardamom I do understand how some people try to shift blame. I am sorry this happened to you.
I also truly apologize if my note stirred up that old pain for you.

@Kardamom That is one thing that cannot be faked. When you get an appology from someone if they are not being honest it will show.

It depends on what the transgression was.

My response could be anything from, “Thanks for acknowledging my feelings about this.”, to “See you in court!”, to “You are now my WEF!”.

Thanks all. It wasn’t a particularly horrible thing (not pulling one’s own weight in a work context) but I feel like it revealed a lot about this person’s character. I care about her a lot and consider her a friend, but now I also feel like she has revealed herself to be lazy and irresponsible and really difficult to work with. And I have been trying to help and defend her for a while now against similar accusations. She feels bad, but I doubt she’ll change, and this kind of thing is just going to happen again.

In order to be forgiveable oursleves we have to extend forgiveness, that’s a fact.

What’s also a fact is he biggest error people make in their thoughts about apologies and forgiveness is that they somehow have to smile and fully accept the person back with open arms.

Nope.
You can accept an apology or give forgiveness but it doesn’t mean you have to continue to be around the person if you choose not to.

It may sound overly optimistic, but can you turn it into a chance to fix the problem for next time?

They’ve admitted they caused trouble for the others in the group, and were at least partially to blame, sometimes that’s the hardest part of confronting a coworker. If you can turn that into some areas they could work on, or steps to help the group as a whole, that seems to take the focus off of them screwing up and putting it on making sure it doesn’t happen again.

So maybe just go back to her some time when it would make sense and say something along the lines of “I was thinking about what you said and we all probably could have avoided the <bad consequences> if we had just <steps here>”...

Steps might be things like asking her to get her portion done early next time, or helping her define some milestones between start and finish that she should hit so it’ll be done as it should be (you didn’t mention if the work was late, just not done, or low quality).

No one wants to take extra steps and “babysit” their peers, but it’s usually so much easier than scrambling at the end and covering for them when it’s unexpected.

@nikipedia, if it work related, and it isn’t your manager, then your recourse is candor. If it’s someone that reports to you, put the person on performance review. If it’s a co-worker, when you are asked to work with the person, ask to work with someone else, and explain why.

You cannot care more about the situation than the person themself; if this is a persistent problem, then you are not doing them a favor by picking up their slack. They need to either pull their weight, move to a different role or work elsewhere.