Emotional Pain

Your Apology Isn’t Enough

(Photo Credit: Conscious Manager)

Although you can genuinely forgive a person, some things people do to you require more than a simple apology. Even if the person accepts your apology, this may not always take away the pain of the wrong you have done. When you do certain wrongs to an individual, you need to work to demonstrate to the person you’re truly sorry. Your goal should be to restore that person’s confidence in you again. It can become quite unsatisfying to allow people to do whatever they please to you and then pretend that an apology heals everything.

If you will be honest, you will admit that an apology does not heal everything someone does to you. Yes, forgive everyone for everything he or she does to you. Don’t try to pretend that forgiveness cures the pain of all wrongdoing, however.

Determine in your mind that you’re not going to do things that cause people constant pain. We all, of course, make mistakes. Unfortunately, we all don’t elect to work tirelessly to repair the damage that our mistakes produce.

You shouldn’t be so self-absorbed that you don’t even realize the harm that you do to others. Wake up and acknowledge the destructive impact of your words and actions. Your actions are not going to improve until your mind experiences a transformation. How you think determines your actions. If you think negatively, then your actions are going to be negative.

Those who have been sincerely hurt by things that people have done have to recognize when people are making efforts to recompense for their transgressions. It’s not healthy for broken people to decide that they’re going to be angry with those who have wronged them for the rest of their lives. When you do this, you share some of the blame for the wrong that was done to you: your unwillingness to make room for healing does not allow change to happen.

Why isn’t an apology always enough, though? The core reason why an apology is often not enough is an apology is frequently just the beginning of the process of your part in helping a person to heal from the pain you have caused. When you accept full responsibility for your wrongs, then you will embrace what needs to be done to restore a person to his or her previous state. You will discover that while you’re helping someone to heal that you can see healing manifest itself in your own life.

Let’s change our mentality that an apology should always be good enough. Let’s change our focus to healing instead just forgiving and apologizing.

Call someone today that you have done wrong and let the person know that you are more than sorry for the wrong that you’ve done to him or her; let him or her know that you plan to participate in his or her healing process. Although you may have originally thought that the person was just being overly sensitive, and he or she may have, the fact is you will be a better person for doing the appropriate things to mend this broken person.

Wouldn’t America and the world truly be better if many broken relationships were repaired?

Dr. Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

“Pain is Love” by Jason “Juice” Williams: A Critical Assessment

One of the most talented independent artists in America is irrefutably Jason “Juice” Williams. Juice’s exceptional talent and oeuvre have been acknowledged by Soul Train, Revolutionary Paideia, and many others. On March 9, 2013 at the Albany James H. Gray, Sr. Civic Center in Albany, Georgia at 9:00 p.m., he will be performing live with Maze featuring Frankie Beverly. The purpose of this article is to provide an assessment of the dominant messages about love and relationships Juice’s “Pain is Love,” which is a single from his album A&J Live (2002), offer.

One recurrent theme in Juice’s full body of work is the notion of love being a nuanced phenomenon that’s never devoid of conflict. Even in his second album, 100% Concentration (2005), one can see how this aforementioned treatment of love is conspicuous. In “Pain is Love,” the artist communicates that problems can emerge even when they are not intentionally created. Those inadvertently engendered problems can cause pain for one or both individuals involved in a relationship. Even if the relationship terminates, Juice exposes the enduring pain often left unresolved.

The artist asks the lady for “just one minute” of her time to articulate how he feels about her and the love they have shared. The song, therefore, advocates for frank communication to be a significant part of the healing process in a relationship impacted by emotional pain. For those involved in relationships, it’s crucial to understand that candid communication is essential to overcoming problems. This candid communication must be guided by love, of course. Too often the lines of communication are shutdown when people are hurting in a relationship. If the lines of communication continue to be shutdown, the relationship is doomed to end inevitably. It will ultimately not be about the pain that caused fissures in the relationship, but it will be more about the failure to communicate that’s the authentic reason why the relationship ceases.

“Pain is Love” informs the listener that when you have real love for someone, you don’t intentionally inflict pain on him or her. This is an important message many people in relationships need to hear and embrace. Too many people, especially men, talk about how much they love the one they’re in a relationship with, but that “love” often is not strong enough to keep them from cheating on their partner. True love keeps you from being deceitful and unfaithful.

The artist longs to be with his lost love but she’s no longer by his side.

How frequent do we think about how our foolish actions can lead to the end of our relationships?

We should think more about how the things we’re doing can result in us losing the one we love and can cause us to experience a lifetime of pain.

The artist discloses that love will turn into pain if you are negligent in your relationship. You should never forget about showing the person you love how much you love him or her. If you abandon your duties in your relationship, you may discover just how much pain is love.

Dr. Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Give People Their Deserved Closure

When you have shared a special intimate relationship with someone, don’t just stop communicating with him or her. An abrupt termination of communication with someone you have been intimate with for a significant period of time can leave him or her feeling more than heartbroken but also confused. The person will be confused because he or she does not have any idea why things were so good when between you and then you just all of sudden stopped communicating with the person. If you no longer want to be intimate with the person and/or don’t see the relationship as special any longer, then let the person know—don’t just have him or her wondering what’s going on with the relationship.

Open and frank communication is key to addressing most (if not all) relationship problems. Have the courage to communicate with the person you have shared an intimate and special relationship with to inform him or her about your feelings. Don’t simply say that “you’ve been so busy” as the reason why you’ve not communicated with him or her. If you have the person’s telephone number and/or connected with the person via various social media platforms, it would not take you but a few minutes to communicate with him or her. Without any communication, you run the risk of making the person think what you shared with him or her was not real. The person can be justified in this line of thinking when all communication from you has ceased.

If the person contacts you through any vehicle, don’t simply ignore his or her effort to reach out to you—respond back to him or her. Why would you simply ignore a call, email, text message, and etc. from someone you have shared an intimate and special relationship with? You owe the person an explanation for not communicating with him or her. The reason you have discontinued communicating with the person may be legitimate. You, however, have a responsibility to inform the person about your reason(s) for no longer communicating with him or her is legitimate.

While you may not be making a conscious choice not to communicate with this person, you never know what he or she is thinking. The person can mistake the absence of communication as sign of betrayal and/or that you simply used him or her. This can be far from the truth but you have to bear the responsibility. You didn’t communicate and this opened up an opportunity for the person to develop inaccurate thoughts.

Whenever sex has been involved in a relationship, it is wise for you to have the decency to at least end the relationship with some form of communication. Hopefully, you’re going to give the person enough details to understand why you’re deciding to end a relationship he or she thought was just fine. Let the person know the significant factors that led to your decision. You might be surprised how well he or she takes your comments and might understand your comments better than you think.

Don’t simply resolve not to say anything to a person you’ve shared a special and intimate relationship with—communicate with him or her. If the intimate relationship you had with the person was truly special and you communicated in the past that it was indeed special, then you have a duty to communicate with the person today. Give people the closure they need today!

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Pain of Knowing You Did the Wrong Thing

When you know that you have done the wrong thing to someone, you should ask for God’s forgiveness and should ask the person for forgiveness. God will forgive you. The person may forgive you too. You should ask the person for forgiveness in person to allow him or her to see that it is a genuine request for forgiveness—if this is at all possible. People will respect you more when you just come out and genuinely apologize for the things that you have done wrong. Don’t try to make excuses for what you have done wrong—just apologize. When you try to make excuses for what you have done wrong or try to engage in a debate about whether or not what you did was really wrong, then you cause even more pain for your victim or victims and run the risk of never getting forgiveness from that person.

Although some people may never forgive you, you should try your best to get their forgiveness because you are the person who caused the pain in the first place. The one thing that you can do in the future to prevent causing people pain is to simply not strive to intentionally hurt people. When you have developed a reputation for being compassionate, then the times where you unintentionally hurt people will be less of a problem because people will automatically excuse you because your compassionate reputation precedes you.

One thing that makes me angry about people who intentionally hurt others is when they try to cover up the hurt that they have caused. When they attempt to make it appear like they had nothing to do with the hurt that they caused, this represents the essence of cowardice. I have a difficult time not going wild on someone who knows that he or she has intentionally inflicted pain on me, but comes around me acting like everything is okay—like nothing has happened.

Let’s be better people and not intentionally hurt people. If we would not intentionally hurt people, we would not have to carry with us the pain of knowing that we have done the wrong thing to somebody, and what a pain that is.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Related Articles

Rate this:

Rate this:

Rate this:

Rate this: