Apology But No Changed Behavior?

I’m so sorry.  I will never do that again.  I mean it.  How many times have we heard those words before?  Sometimes, people will hurt a person over and over that they claim to love, that they claim is their everything, their world, their best friend, and so on.  However, their apology is often followed up weeks or months later with them exhibiting the same behavior that upset the other person in the first place.  Their apology was not followed by changed behavior. 

We have all been in situations where we may have intentionally or unintentionally hurt someone’s feelings, through our words or behavior, or perhaps we were on the receiving end of these hurtful words or behavior.  We spoke about, acknowledged it and let the other person know that we were hurt, why we were hurt, and so on, and of course they follow that with an apology.  They promise to do better next time, or to be cognizant to not do that thing again since they know that it upset us, and they actually meant it.  In other words, their apology was followed by action.

But then you have those other situations where someone continues to hurt or upset you and is constantly apologizing for their words or behavior in certain situations, yet their behavior never changes.  An apology needs to come with changed behavior.  To me, that is an apology that you absolutely meant.  If you continue to do the same thing that you know upsets me, that’s a done deal for me, because you have proven that your apologies mean absolutely nothing.  They are instead just empty rhetoric. 

This is similar to someone who constantly speaks about their goals and dreams, but they never work towards them.  They don’t put in any kind of work, effort, or consistency towards achieving those goals.  That’s simply just a dream and a hope; they hope to accomplish something but you can hope all you want.  What steps are you putting in towards accomplishing that goal?  Until you put in the work to work towards that goal, it’s just empty words.

The same is true with apologies without changed behavior.  It means absolutely nothing.  If that is the case, just save your apology because you clearly do not mean it.  Apologies need to come with changed behavior.