Who’s Sorry Now?

5 minute read

In season seven of The Good Wife, shrewd lawyer Louis Canning, played brilliantly by Michael J Fox, tells fellow lawyer Alicia Florrick a story, and a home truth: “Two people bump into each other on a sidewalk, and it’s nobody’s fault. One person succinctly says, ‘I’m sorry’. And the other says, ‘Watch it’. You’re the apologiser.” I too am the apologiser, and according to a 2015 article in The New York Times, so are most women. The article cites a 2010 study published by the University of Waterloo in Canada which found that significant gender differences exist in apology behaviour.

Have you ever noticed how many women confuse the phrase “Excuse me” with “Sorry”, myself included? These words are not interchangeable. One does not mean the other. Yet how often have you heard a woman hail a waiter in a restaurant and say, “Sorry, could I have a napkin please?” How frequently have you stood beside a peer in a clothes shop and listened as she began, “Sorry, do you have this sweater in a size 12?” Or heard a colleague sneeze and afterwards say “Sorry” instead of “Excuse me”?

Traditionally, women – like children– were encouraged to be seen and not heard. In fact, in the middle ages, women who were thought to be riotous, troublesome or gossips could be forced to wear a ‘scold’s bridle’, an inhuman contraption made of iron that effectively served as a muzzle. The headpiece had a metal plate attached to it, which was slid into the mouth and pressed down on the tongue to prevent the wearer from speaking or eating in fact. If you need a visual, think of the young Willy Wonka in the 2005 remake of the film, sitting in his father’s dentist chair wearing a mouth brace that looked more like a medieval torture device.

Psychologist Rachel Green, from The Emotional Intelligence Institute, explained in an interview with Australia’s national broadcaster ABC, “Non-verbally, we have had this [attitude] passed down from one generation to another.” She describes how women “cushion” their actions with an apology because they have always been taught to comply rather than complain, to listen rather than to express.

I used to be the worst offender, prefixing almost everything I said with the word sorry as a sort of plea for permission to speak. It was akin to a verbal tik.

Women with money, power and influence fall foul of this ‘sorry’ snare too. In the Netflix documentary Taylor Swift: Ms Americana, the singer-songwriter speaks passionately about her struggle to “deprogram the misogyny in her brain”. Immediately afterwards, she cries, “Sorry, that was a real soap box” before chastising herself with, “Why did I say sorry? Ugh!” Even worldwide fame doesn’t free women from the burden of continuously seeking a pardon.

In her TED talk, ‘How Apologies Kill our Confidence’, Canadian sociologist Maja Jovanovic reveals the commonality of this experience among women around the world. While attending an international conference in 2015, four women on one particular panel, who were all academics and experts in their fields, took the microphone one at a time to introduce themselves, and each in turn – with a profoundly apologetic tone – minimised their experience by saying things like, “I thought they sent the email to the wrong person. I’m just so humbled to be here.” In contrast, during the week-long conference of 25-panel discussions, not one single man discounted, queried or apologised for his presence there.

Coincidentally, I had a similar experience to those panellists only yesterday. A former colleague and friend asked me to be part of an IGTV series she’s planning on Instagram with successful women who have covetable careers. My first reaction was, “Are you sure I make the grade?” All I could think of at that moment was everything I haven’t achieved, like writing a book, penning a column, winning an award, attracting 10,000 followers on Instagram! I was frustrated with myself immediately afterwards – why not me, after all? I have more than 20 years’ experience writing and editing for respected publications. If not me, then who?

Despite this disheartening slip-up, I’ve noticed fewer and fewer sorrys peppering my language in recent years, and a much less apologetic manner about my person – I have always had a tendency to shrink back from others, to make myself small by wrapping my legs around myself and folding my hands submissively on my lap; it was a therapist who drew my attention to this several years ago and her observation has never left me.

While midlife may be marred by mum tums, fine lines and tired eyes, it’s also marked by an increased self-assurance and a lower propensity for neurosis and for me, this has equated to a greater understanding of the true meaning of too many sorrys.

Brené Brown would call it shame, “...the feeling that washes over us, making us feel small, flawed, and never good enough.” With the benefit of hindsight and the experience of midlife, I can see now how so many sorrys must have diminished me in others’ eyes. But, like many of my peers, as a young woman, I managed to conflate apologising with politeness.

This, combined with being a born pleaser and pacifier, left me bent over backwards in my younger years ensuring everyone else’s wants, needs, likes and dislikes were accommodated before my own.

Emotional liberty is the gift that midlife gives, but rather than resulting in recklessness, as it might when we’re younger and our perspectives narrower, it’s balanced with the meditativeness and empathy that’s also enhanced in these middle years. By apologising less, I have not turned into an obnoxious, uncaring, self-obsessed horror, I’ve simply stopped overdoing it by being more mindful of when and why I use the S word. And that’s how I refer to it now – as the S word; an expletive, a curse, a swear word, because when used excessively and inappropriately, it’s just as damaging to your character and psyche as any obscenity you might whip yourself with.