LadyGang - LG QUICKIE: How to Apologize with Lux Alptraum

Episode Date: October 7, 2021

After reading her articles in The New York Times and Cosmopolitan, the ladies started thinking a lot about apologies. Why they’re generally bad, but why they’re still important and what w...e all need to know about them. Lux Alptraum shares her advice on giving an apology and on the other side, how to accept them and begin to forgive. Check out our amazing sponsors!!! ThirdLove: Get 20% off your first order at ThirdLove.com/ladygang  Daily Harvest: Go to DailyHarvest.com/lady to get up to $40 off your first box! Stamps.com: Use code LADYGANG at Stamps.com to get a special offer that includes a 4-week trial PLUS free postage and a digital shipping scale! Chinet: Visit MyChinet.com to find out more! Scream For Ice Cream: Sweeten up your sex life at screamforicecreamagain.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 So the other day, Zach and I had some friends over. The weather's getting cooler. We grilled out. We sat outside. It was so lovely. And we used our favorite brand, Chinette. That's right. We love this brand so much. It makes entertaining so easy. They have a bunch of different collections that we love. The Chinette Classic is so durable for those messy ribs. No bends or leaks. Microwave safe. Made with at least 80% recycled materials, which we love. Made in the USA. They have the Chinette Crystal, which is so elegant looking, but it's also like no shatter and guests aren't too afraid to touch it. Unique Swirl Design, which is very pretty. The Chinette Comfort built-in sleeve that keeps drinks hot and hands happy. Snap-on lid, 12 ounce or 16 ounce for
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Starting point is 00:01:14 in your city at TheLadyGang.com. We're so excited you're here. Enjoy the show. it's time for a quickie podcast one presents the lady gang the hollywood girl posse with lady gang quickie here's kelty knight becca tobin and jack vanek let's make this quick hello hello hello welcome to the lady gang quickie we are here today with a very special guest we've been trying to get her in for many months but she's the busiest woman on podcasting except for us. And, um, we're very excited to have her Kelty take it away. Our guest today is a writer, journalist, and hosts a very interesting podcast on audible that you all need to listen to that the whole world needs to listen to at this point called
Starting point is 00:01:56 say you're sorry. And this podcast got us thinking about apologies, why they're generally bad, why they're still important, what we need to know about them. She is the author of faking it. The lies women tell about sex and the truth they reveal and of course the podcast say you're sorry so please welcome to the lady gang for this little quickie on how the to say you're sorry lux up trap hi i i love the canadian in your voice by the way oh my god yeah lux is here yeah sorry like how appropriate that a canadian is introducing you right now and that she was five minutes late for the podcast because her wi-fi isn't working and then she's like sorry and i was like, this is, you know, this is very fitting. It's a, it's a really thing. So I love this
Starting point is 00:02:45 because actually I wanted to start this episode by playing the first minute of the Say Your Sorry trailer to our listeners. So just beep, beep, beep. It seems like every day there's a new apology in the news. Tonight on Capitol Hill, no sign of Al Franken. Today, he apologized. Academy Award winning actor Morgan Freeman has apologized. Degenerous apologizing to more than 200 staffers in a video conference call, according to Variety. And a lot of us like to gawk at these often really bad apologies. I mean, it's kind of fun. But it's also weird to constantly see adults struggle
Starting point is 00:03:21 to do something we teach to kindergartners. It seems like apologies aren't actually as easy as we think. I'm Lux Alptrom. And I'm Suna Petros. And we've gotten obsessed with apologies. Like, deeply obsessed. And we want to take you on a journey through some of the public apologies we can't stop thinking about.
Starting point is 00:03:42 The United States of America offers a sincere apology. I know I've let you on down because I let myself down. I got an anonymous letter. Can you help us? I saw this notification where it was like, Ariana Grande has sent you a message. And I was like, am I high? Oh my God, it was serendipity. It's like a schoolyard fight breaking out.
Starting point is 00:04:02 Everybody was sued. And my dad came into my room and he said, Lacey, they're going to ruin you. I'm sorry, it might just be two words, but once you start digging, you realize that there is so much going on underneath the surface. Okay. So this is a global, I mean, everyone is having to apologize, whether it's cancel culture or whether we're just sorry to our moms or our friends and everyone's doing a terrible job. Yes. Is that, is that what inspired this podcast? Yeah. So it's funny. So as you probably know, like projects, you're pitching them,
Starting point is 00:04:38 you're thinking about them for years before like they actually end up live. And so this one, this started in spring 2019. I was in Boulder, Colorado for a conference and I was out to dinner with my speaking agent who just happens to live in Boulder. And we were just talking like, what were some talks that I could give? Because we had been thinking like, oh, that like me too might be something that I could give talks around. But I was like, I don't really want to give the same talk that everybody is giving. And we somehow, I don't remember exactly what sparked it, but we were kind of mulling over things in that area. And I was like, you know, I'm really interested in apologies. And I'm really interested in the fact that people don't apologize well.
Starting point is 00:05:24 that a lot of times like a simple apology could just dramatically fix things and people instead just like double down on denial. And obviously with me too, we saw a lot of like really bad apologies. And I was like, what if I taught people to apologize better? And so that was just in my head as like a general topic. And then that speaking agent ended up connecting me to somebody who will remain anonymous, who had given a bad apology. And he was like, oh, maybe you could speak to this person and like talk to them and kind of like help them figure out what they need to do. And so I was just like randomly talking to a friend of mine who is in podcasts. And I was like, Oh yeah, I'm going to speak to redacted. I think I'm going to like teach him how to apologize.
Starting point is 00:06:08 And she was like, you know, teaching people how to apologize. That would be a really interesting podcast. And so from there, we just started crafting a pitch and it went through a bunch different stages and evolved and got to the show that we have now, which is really focused on telling the story of eight public apologies and one private apology and looking at, you know, the pitfalls, the successes, like, um, my favorite, one of my favorites is that we found a YouTube apology that was actually good and successful. Like that is a unicorn, but we found one. And I think looking at how like an apology that you would expect to be stupid and bad and fail actually succeeded.
Starting point is 00:06:49 And then looking at, you know, how all of these apologies where you're like, it should be so easy for you to do it right. And people just completely face plant. And yeah. Um, so that's, that's where the show came from. What was the YouTube apology? Like a YouTuber apologizing? Yes.
Starting point is 00:07:06 It was, uh, Gabriel Zamora, who is a beauty YouTuber. it took place in August, 2018. It was for the YouTubers to, for the YouTube fans, it was drama get in, um, which was very complicated beauty YouTuber drama that I don't really feel like going into all the details of, but basically, uh, Gabriel made some stupid comments online and he pissed off, uh, Jeffrey star, who is a very, very big beauty YouTuber. And then Jeffrey stars fans were angry at Gabriel and they dug up dirt on Gabriel and his friends and what's interesting about Gabriel's apology being good is that two of his friends who were also dragged into it Manny MUA and Laura Lee the apologies that they ended up giving are like routinely rated like worst
Starting point is 00:07:57 apologies ever like Laura Lee fake cries in her apology and like it constantly makes the list of like, don't do this. Whereas Gabriel like had his apology. It went over well. He not that this is a metric by which you measure apologies, but he gained like 300,000 followers, like people, he won people over. And it's interesting. And so it's like, you look at that. It's like, what did Gabriel do that other YouTubers don't? I mean, number one, oh, it sounds counterintuitive. He kind of benefited from not having a PR team because when people have publicists, a lot of times the publicists are kind of taking you away from your own emotional core um right not to get like too woo but like they kind of are because they're crafting a statement for you or they're
Starting point is 00:08:43 managing you and they're creating something manufactured um one of the apology experts that we spoke to said like art shouldn't smell of a work of the workshop and like when you have a publicist crafting your apology you can smell the workshop so Gabriel didn't have a publicist and he was just getting slammed by all this hate. And as a result, you know, he had to really think like, okay, what am I going to say? How can I speak from the heart? Like he, he also is a person who cares about apologies, understands, you know, you have to be really sorry. And in his case, they had dug up a tweet that he had made years ago where he had used the N word in a, what he thought was an acceptable joking manner. When that happened, he was told it was wrong and he
Starting point is 00:09:31 took it down, but people still found it. So in apologizing for that, like that was something he had already learned his lesson. He wasn't defensive. He was like, I get it. And I have already learned why that's wrong. He had done all the processing already. So it wasn't like in the moment caught with his pants down, having to be like, uh, uh, well, what, what makes an apology so difficult? Like why can we not seem, is it the ego that's involved in like, we don't want to be wrong? I think that's a big part of it. I think there's the, it depends on the different, it depends on the person obviously. But I think the ego is a huge part of it because we all feel this, you get told you're wrong and you just feel like this gut punch and this defensiveness.
Starting point is 00:10:15 And you have to go through the whole, like, does this make me a bad person? I don't want to be a bad person and like deal. And so some people just get stuck there where they're like, you're saying I did a bad thing that would make me a bad person. And I'm not a bad person. Therefore you're wrong. There's also, you know, in order to apologize, well, you have to actually understand what you did wrong. And a lot of people don't want to either don't want to take the time to figure that out or aren't given the time to figure that out. Like, I think it's kind of messed up that a lot of times we're like you did this bad thing and now you must immediately apologize and we're not going to give you any time to process like ellie i don't know if you guys remember when like
Starting point is 00:10:57 ellie kemper pictures surfaced of her at this ball and people were like oh it's affiliated with the kkk which was not true and she was silent for like three days and people like where's ellie kemper what's she doing blah blah and then finally when she resurfaced i mean i'm not the injured community. So it's not really for me to say whether it was good or bad, but I thought the statement she released showed somebody who had been like, I took some time to process my emotions. I thought about this. I got past my defensiveness. I'm hearing what you say. And yeah, I think that I made X, Y, Z mistake. And you know, a lot of times we don't give people that time and then we're like angry. No. And you see people have to do a first apology and then a second
Starting point is 00:11:41 apology later. Do you know what I mean? Because we are in this instant and in Hollywood and in life, I would say just like, you know, our days are when you're going through something are painfully long, like three days in Hollywood silence or three days, not talking to your friend that you pissed off or your husband or your coworker. Like these are endless days. It feels like you want to fix it up really quickly. And I love that advice that it's like, you need to sit in it and just have a moment to really think about all the different areas. And I think one thing I have to apologize a lot. So this is like really in an area that I've gotten quite talented at, but I think something else that has helped me and my apologies is that
Starting point is 00:12:27 I often will send the apology to someone, not a publicist, obviously, but like a friend or someone else that I think has like a moral compass that I maybe am lacking in sometimes. and be like, what do you think? And they'll often pick up a little nuance or something that I'm about to text or write that is gonna just, it isn't needed. I think sometimes we over-speak in an apology because we wanna explain and be like,
Starting point is 00:12:53 well, here's why I did it because, you know, I felt like that, like, nobody cares about your feelings right now. Like, you just need to apologize a little bit, you know? Well, yeah, and one of the other things just about Gabriel that I thought was fascinating was he had two apologies on Twitter that were poorly received. Like one, he just did like a quick notes app one. Then he did another text one. And then when he was recording his YouTube
Starting point is 00:13:18 apology, like the one that actually went on YouTube, he recorded three different versions. And like the first two were like an hour and a half long or something. And he was like, this is just me venting. Like I cannot publish this, but I'm doing it for myself. And then the final one was still long. It was like 48 minutes because a lot of it is him just like, revealing the behind the scenes gossip and maybe like 15 minutes is his, is him apologizing. But I thought it was so interesting that, you know, people also think like, you're just going to have a perfect apology, just emerge. And it's, it's a process. It's not something that like, I mean, it depends on the size of the offense. If you step on somebody's
Starting point is 00:13:56 foot, yes, you should be able to apologize immediately and kind of swiftly. But for these more like thorny emotional things. It takes time. Okay. So what are some of the big mistakes that you have found in all this research and going through the regular and the celebrity parts of this podcast and researching what are like a couple mistakes that you can give our listeners that they can like munch on and be like, Ooh, I do that. That when you're doing an apology that you find are like common core. I think it's the biggest mistake everybody makes is thinking that your intentions matter. Like if you hurt somebody, it doesn't matter if you didn't intend to hurt them. Um, a lot of people are like, I didn't mean, or this is what, and it's like, that doesn't
Starting point is 00:14:38 matter. Stop thinking about yourself. Think about like you hurt that person. Like, and you know, if you accidentally hit somebody, it doesn't matter that you didn't see where they were. You still hurt them. That's like something to take accountability for. I think that's a really huge one um i think another one is people a apologizing too quickly um i think it is really acceptable or it should be more acceptable rather to say like i know that i hurt you i need to take some time to understand what i did i don't want to just knee-jerk apologize let me like take a little bit of time to process this and come back to you but like i know that i hurt you and you have a right to be angry at me like i feel like we should be able to say like at the beginning like
Starting point is 00:15:21 this doesn't have to be okay. Let me take some time. You can still be angry at me, but let me figure this out. Um, also just assuming that if you apologize, well, you should automatically be forgiven because you're not owed forgiveness. You're just not like we, when we talk with one of the things that I think is so weird is when we talk about apologies, especially like celebrity apologies, we're always like, well, can they work again? Can we forgive them? Like what's, should we hate them? Should we like them? And we don't really talk about the people who were hurt. And for me, apologies are so much more about the people that were hurt and about like whether justice has been done, like what's being done to remedy the harm.
Starting point is 00:16:05 I care so much more about that than like, is this person good or bad? Well, this leads me to an excellent question. Okay. So apologizing when you know that someone has done something wrong. Like that's, that's a, but this leads me to how do you apologize when you feel like deep in your core? I know you talked about an intention, but like that you didn't do anything wrong. You know what I mean? Like obligation apologizing. I think that one is really, really hard because I think you, you often have to like, look at the bigger picture, right and it's like you don't feel like you did anything wrong but it's like but what is the situation like who is hurting who why why do people want you to apologize like sometimes right
Starting point is 00:16:54 I think one of the things that's hardest especially for celebrities is sometimes the apology and the situation is not about you like about like systemic racism it will be about the fact that is an unfair system and you happen to get caught up in an unfair system. And I think in those situations, we sometimes have to be like, okay, like, you know, like Ellie Kemper, like, I don't think Ellie Kemper necessarily like is a bad person who went out and was like, I'm racist and I'm doing bad things. Ellie Kemper happened to be caught up in like having grown up in a culture where she was expected to do this debutante ball and maybe didn't understand the full implications of it when she was 18. And as an adult, people were like, this is really messed up and it's
Starting point is 00:17:42 messed up for reasons that are like far, far beyond you. And I think, you know, she, again, like from my perspective, she did a decent job of being like, I get it. I get that this is about something bigger than me and that you guys want me to apologize, not because of me, but because you want me to, you want me to indicate that I understand like we live in an unfair world that I have benefited in this way from an unfair world. So like for a lot of it, I think, you know, you got to take your ego out of it and look at like, okay, what is beyond like, if I'm good or bad, like what is the situation that is causing people pain that I might be a symbol of? And like, how can I interact with that? But here's where I get stuck. Cause I totally understand the
Starting point is 00:18:26 intention. Like, I think that like, I get it. If you hurt somebody, you hurt somebody. It doesn't matter what the intention, but I do get caught up in this whole thing where it's like at a certain point, there is like a scale, a sliding scale of how bad the offense was. And if the intention was not ill, like it was not ill intended. I do think that we have to have more grace for people. I I think that we really like put them in a category of you up, you hurt people and some people have done it intentionally, but others have not. And I think that that's like two very different categories of human. And I think, I mean, I think this kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier.
Starting point is 00:19:09 Like, I think we have to stop focusing on individuals in these questions. And that's the hard part because like, like, again, it's like, we're like, is Louis CK good or bad now? And like, who cares? like he should just not be given a platform he abused it all right is ellie kemper it's like the question of whether or not ellie kemper is a racist is not actually what matters what matters is that we live in an unfair system and i think like we have to stop it's it's so much easier for us to grasp stories about individual people than it is to really think about like all the problems
Starting point is 00:19:44 in our world that are very complicated and feel overwhelming. And so we kind of want to make people into symbols of larger problems when we should be thinking about like, okay, how can we fix these larger problems? And how can we encourage people to be a part of the solution? I recently had to make an apology and I realized like that it was so daunting. The thought of it was so daunting because we're so obsessed with putting people in categories of good or bad. And so you get so hung up on like, I'm now in this category of get, I just need to get out. You're desperate to get out of that, whatever thing. But then I sat with it and I was like, no, I'm just human. I'm I have good days. I have bad days. I do good things. I do bad things. And
Starting point is 00:20:25 if the only thing I can do right now is take accountability. So as soon as I was like accepting myself for all the flaws and all the gaps, it became so easy to just say, I totally up. And I was a, I made a bad choice in this moment. Yeah. And like, it seems it seemed like the most simple way to approach an apology. And it took me 35 years to get there. No, it's crazy. And I will say like the older I get, the more annoyed I am by people who don't have the self-awareness to be able to just apologize well like when we were 20s you were like oh you're just shitty and like this was a half-assed apology but like I forgive you anyway and now when like I see you know friends get into it or even like celebrities and stuff when I'm like you guys just
Starting point is 00:21:17 like need to look at yourselves for because I'm so deep in like looking at myself mode right now where I'm like I'm so aware that I know like what's in my intestine and gut right now like it's too, I'm too aware, but it's like, you know, it's annoying. Like I've looked at friends and been like, I kind of lost respect for you because like, I feel like you're not on this planet with the rest of us, like growing and learning and like being able, I think being able to be self-aware and admit your own flaws is like such a strong character exercise, I guess. I don't know. No, absolutely. I'm, I mean, I think one of the things that sucks is that most of us aren't taught to apologize well right it's like you're taught most of us get told by adults when we're kids
Starting point is 00:22:00 like say you're sorry and we're not really told like can you think about what you did can you think about like how can we avoid this in the future it's just this sort of like rote thing that you're forced to do you often like are too young to even understand what you did and it becomes this like punitive thing and a lot of people never move beyond this idea of apology as this like punitive thing that you're being forced to do because people are mad at you. And they don't think about this larger picture about like, okay, have I hurt people?
Starting point is 00:22:31 What can I do better in the future? Like we're not encouraged. Yeah, society doesn't encourage us to do that work. And a lot of people just don't choose to. For me, this time of year usually means getting into a busier schedule and I'm gonna have some special announcements coming out soon about things I'm working on.
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Starting point is 00:27:08 we're always like overcompensating for things that maybe like society is kind of just like forced it down our throats to do I think what's interesting because I know like a few years ago there was this like women apologize too much women apologize too much and I don't think it's that women necessarily apologize too much I think it's that we apologize for the wrong things like we're taught to treat apology as like you said like to apologize for existing to take up space but like a lot of times when we actually make mistakes we don't apologize well yeah like we're taught to just go to apology as like a way to smooth over a moment but it becomes like knee jerk response to a moment but then it's like when it actually matters we're sort of like uh i don't
Starting point is 00:27:55 know. Right. It's so true. It's so hard. And like, I guess one of the things that I'm I want to ask you about is the forgiveness aspect. Like, I love that we're talking about apologizing and like, OK, we've got this. You got to just be self-aware. You just got to you can't be like, I'm sorry if you felt hurt. Like, go yourself. I felt hurt. Like, just say I'm sorry. But then on the other side, like, is it possible to actually forgive someone once they apologize? Like, can you, do we have the ability to wipe our hands clean and be like, okay, I'm not going to hold this against you for the rest of your life. I think so. Apologies are complicated. I think forgiveness is even more complicated. And I think it's really, really personal because forgiveness
Starting point is 00:28:42 means something different to different people. Like some people are like, I'm going to forgive you. Because for me, for me, forgiveness is just letting go of anger and moving on with my life. Whereas other people hear forgiveness and are like, if I forgive you, that means what you did was not bad. Like, and you know, it means different things to different people. So that's already, it's complicated, but then, you know, I think society like pressures people to forgive. Like I have a background in like working with assault survivors and abuse survivors and abuse survivor myself. And you see like, especially around me too, this idea of like, well, he said he's sorry, you should forgive him. And that I think is incredibly cruel to people who have
Starting point is 00:29:25 suffered like really, really serious harm. Like I think if, if a survivor or a victim feels that forgiving somebody is beneficial for them and their healing, then like go for it, but you don't owe anybody anything. Like, like they should be apologizing to make you feel seen and to validate your hurt. And that doesn't require you to have any feelings towards them at all. Um, yeah, I mean, I, I, it's tricky. Yeah. I like to forgive people when I can, but like, I don't think that I don't think I have the right to tell anybody, oh, you should forgive so-and-so. I think that's a personal thing. But, but yeah, I think it's so much comes down to like, what do you even define forgiveness as? Let me ask you this, because this has happened a lot just in the Hollywood world. And I think
Starting point is 00:30:16 sometimes in family dynamics as well, but we're digging up these things for people's past. So things keep coming to light every single week. Something new comes out about some celebrity is something they did in 1999 or something they did in 2013 and something they may be said or tweeted. And, you know, from my personal opinion, I like to think like the things that 2010 Kelty would say, or 2000 Kelty would say are not her best because we're trying to grow as humans and get better every single year. So I, I'm always a little cringy, but then at the same time, I'm like, well, feelings are feelings and people are upset about it.
Starting point is 00:30:53 But like when something gets drug dragged up from someone's past, um, and like a person they may not be now and they have to live in it in a 2021 world when it might've been a 2000 world situation. Like, what are your thoughts on that? I mean, very complicated. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the Gabriel Zamora situation is an example of that, where it was like, I don't know, a five year old tweet, like that he had learned from immediately in the moment. And people were like, oh, oh, you're a racist. You're this, you're that. Um, I mean, I certainly like, I remember things that i thought a decade or 20 years ago that i don't think now and i think we're also often missing context too like there are just like like i think about this a lot with like
Starting point is 00:31:40 comedy that's not aging well um 20 years ago there were things about like gay representation that felt groundbreaking that if you look now are like offensive and i think especially for young people who are often like the most driven in moral crusades like for good reason because they're waking up and they're like everything is wrong I want to fix it I think they often lack like okay what was it like 20 years ago what was acceptable what were people being told like you know we had a lot of like intentionally offensive humor in the aughts like if you weren't there at the time it's hard to sometimes understand the context so I think i think it's a problem when people strip context from old comments and like you said becca like i
Starting point is 00:32:29 think we should give people a little bit more grace but it's also i think when somebody when somebody surfaces those i think it is actually important to be like okay why did i think it was okay then like have i learned do i understand like you know like i think fat jokes are maybe less common now than they were 20 years ago but that doesn't mean that making fat jokes was okay 20 years ago so it's not like oh it was a different time it was okay it was i didn't understand at the time why this was wrong and i understand now and i'm and like that is something where i think we can still be like i am a different person but people have found this and it hurt them and it made them think that i agree with something that i don't agree and like
Starting point is 00:33:12 I think that's like, again, that's not an apology. Like you're bad and you must fix it. That's like, I'm going to demonstrate that I understand that this situation is bigger than me. And I want people to know that like, I get why they feel hurt and I don't necessarily take it personally. Like apologies kind of have to sometimes be this gesture that's beyond just you and more about like, okay, how do we share our values? How do we talk about the kind of world we want to live in. Well, that's something that has come up a lot with like these things that have come up from the past is like, instead of crucifying the person, it's like, if they make the acknowledgement, like you're saying of like, I didn't know this was wrong at the time. Here's
Starting point is 00:33:57 why I did it. Now I know. And like demonstrating how they know it's, it's wrong. It's like our goal should be for the greater good. And I understand sometimes these things come up so that we can teach everybody around us a lesson. And it's like, yes, this person should not be canceled forever, but this also needed to come up to make an example of let's all learn that this is bad and let's put it on the world stage and let's do this. But like, let's not also make that person into the worst human being, the devil. Let's like cancel them forever. Yeah. I wanted to ask you one more thing before we go about apologizing. This is a situation that happened to me. We're writing our book, Lady Secrets. And this is actually one of the things that I'm
Starting point is 00:34:40 writing about a story that happened to me where I had a sort of frenemy and I wanted, I just got to the point where I was like, you know what? I don't actually feel like I'm wrong here. Like, I don't think I did anything, but I'm just going to be the bigger person because I want this friction to go away. So I'm going to apologize. And I like got ready and I did my apology. I went in brave and I was like, here's all the things that I did wrong. And like, I want to apologize to you. And what I was expecting, what I was expecting was I'm also sorry. Like me too. I'm sorry too. I also was a bad person. I also did this, but what I got was you're absolutely right. Thank you for apologizing because you're a horrible piece of shit. And I want to know,
Starting point is 00:35:20 because I think in the everyday girl that's listening to the lady gang and our family dynamics and our friend dynamics, this is something that probably happens all the time where you go to make good and you're like, I'm not a hundred percent. We're both a little guilty here. And then you don't get the other, no one meets you halfway. What do we do then? So this is also something I struggle with. Um, one of the reasons why I was kind of drawn to this topic is because I have a history of being a compulsive apologizer. And like, I've had many situations where I'm often like, maybe it's a 50, 50 situation, or sometimes it's like, I didn't even do anything wrong. And the other person is the one who really should be
Starting point is 00:36:03 apologizing. And I'll go in and be like, I use, I try not to do this as much anymore, but, but I want to like open the door to them to apologize to you. Or you want to like model behavior where I would be like, I'm going to apologize to you. And then you will realize you should apologize to me. I'm like, Oh, the most memorable thing. Like I had, he's not my friend anymore, but I had this friend who like, we would fight a lot. And finally I realized it wasn't worth it, but it was like the last time i talked to him like he ended up just saying like a bunch of really biphobic stuff and just like really like gross things i was really angry and the next day i texted him and i'm like hey i recognized i did like xyz that maybe upset you but like you said
Starting point is 00:36:45 this and i'm sorry for that but like you said all of this stuff that really i found offensive and it hurt me and like i think you should apologize to me or said something like that and then he was like, I'm sorry that you're so easily triggered, blah, blah, blah. And then I was like, I'm never talking to them. And then I just was like, okay. And I think, you know, it depends on the relationship. It depends on the person in that situation. I was like, okay, this person is just showing me that they don't care about me. And I'm going to walk away. Like sometimes you can't look like a family. You maybe can't do that. Uh, it depends on like how it depends on like, is this an aberration or is this just like how this person always is and for me you kind of have to evaluate
Starting point is 00:37:25 like number one I think if you don't feel like you did anything wrong maybe apologizing to get the other person to apologize is not the best strategy and maybe it's better to be like hey I feel like you hurt me in this way like if I hurt you let me know and I'm sorry but like you did this stuff to hurt me. And I think I want you to know that. And if regardless, like if they can't take accountability, if they can't respond in a way that makes you feel heard and seen, like they might not be somebody who is beneficial for you. It might be somebody that like you need to wind down the relationship with. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's like the thing is if there's no ability to like take the accountability you kind of got to walk away
Starting point is 00:38:14 yeah like that's just not a human that you can you know if you're willing they're not there yet they're not there yet becca and it's like they might get there at some point but they're not there yet and they are not rising up to meet you and it's like okay how how long can you like i remember that happened to me i was just like all right i did my thing and like and i think not everyone needs to like you which is like revolutionary not everybody needs to like you and you're not obligated to keep somebody in your life i mean these are like i think these are especially like hard things for women because oh yeah we know we're taught like be peacemakers do this but it's like you have a right to be like does this person treat me well and do i want them
Starting point is 00:38:56 in my life and if they can't apologize when they've hurt me they're probably not treating me well. And like, I need to think about like, what are they bringing to my life? And are they actually like somebody who is treating me the way I deserve to be treated? Well, Lux, I need you to come back in another six months for a touch up. I hope that all the lady gang really listens to this and take some notes because I'm sure that you could be a better apologizer and you could accept apologies differently um and better and uh please head over um to audible and listen to how to say sorry also it's say you're sorry not how to say sorry say you're sorry sorry her instagram if you want to follow her for all of her projects there's like way more podcasts there's way more like she's
Starting point is 00:39:41 doing a hundred things right now and lux thanks for being here and we weren't here for a long time but we were here for a sorry sorry time thanks for listening the lady gang is produced by alex ingber steve delameter and jared monaco make sure you subscribe rate and review our podcast and if you love it share it with your friends on social media like oh my god i just listened lady gang this episode's so great swipe up to listen and if you really want to which we know you do please follow us on social at kelty at becca at jack vanek and at the lady gang sign up for our newsletter at the lady gang.com and join our secret facebook group it's super fun see you next tuesday
Starting point is 00:40:21 Hi there! I'm Gabby Rapp. And I'm Nina House. We are the hosts of a fantastic new show, Botany in Barrels. If you've ever wanted to learn a bit more about wine, but were intimidated by all the fanciness of it, we got you covered. As a former chef, I'll walk you through how to taste wine like a pro, so you can show up your pretentious co-worker at the next company happy hour, or impress your next date. And if you were ever curious about why Napa is famous, or why Italy is known for bomb wines, as a botanist, I'll walk you through the ins and outs of growing grapes. to drink along with us you can preview the bottles on our insta or twitter at botany and barrels come
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