‘I’m Sorry:’ the Rupture/Repair Signpost

A recent Hello, Love article about apologies in relationships reminded me of the ideas of mid-Century philosopher J. L. Austin. Austin might not have approved of turning his hard-working philosophical endeavor to the arena of romance. But, on the other hand, is there any part of life more tied up with ordinary, but ineffable, things? I think he’d appreciate that.

Austin’s most enduring legacy is the idea of performative utterances, or speech acts: that saying something is doing something — or can be, at any rate. Apologies are a type of speech act.

Imagine you’ve broken your person’s favorite coffee cup. You internalize and genuinely recognize the emotional difficulty this presents for them. You are horrified and say, “I’m so sorry!”

The apology holds all these ideas in a marvelous way. It shows not only that you are aware of breaking the cup and the significance of breaking the cup, but that you want to empathize about breaking the cup. The speech act, in short, is a window into your feelings about the relationship.

Austin would call this a felicitous speech act in the sense that it makes the best of a bad situation. Rupture and repair (breaking the cup and apologizing, etc.) is a critical aspect of all relationships; but is especially so in romance (at least, when it’s healthy). A relationship is strengthened by overcoming something that has stressed or compromised it.

But a speech act can also go poorly, too. Imagine you harbor a resentment — for whatever reason — toward this cup. So you break it. You then apologize for something you did on purpose. Something is wrong here. Or, and I don’t condone this at all, imagine you hold malice towards your partner, wish to cause pain. So you break the cup, and apologize. But you don’t mean it — or mean it only to increase their anguish. In these cases, the apology is infelicitous. It actively doesn’t accomplish what it is supposed to.

But there’s a third way things could go wrong, besides a contextual/situational problem or malice on the part of the speaker. There could be a problem for the hearer. Philosophers sometimes call this perlocutionary uptake but, thankfully, we don’t have to. This could be a mechanical issue — if the person you’re apologizing to is wearing ear buds, for instance. They could also not recognize the words, or speak a different language. These things would interfere with the completion of the apology.

Someone could also become desensitized to the apologies of their partner, as Christine explores. Unlike the infelicity of crying “wolf,” where “wolf” has become nothing more than noise. “I’m sorry” can become a placeholder for “I don’t care enough to fix this,” or similar.

The desensitization, in this case, the inability of one partner to internalize the others’ apology is the result of the combined experiences and behavior of the couple. It doesn’t just fail because one partner doesn’t mean it, or because the other doesn’t believe it. It fails for both reasons — and neither reason may be altogether separable from the other.

It is as though the meaning of “I’m sorry” can erode with overuse. Christine’s title asks, “What happens when ‘I’m sorry’ is no longer enough?” But I think she could have taken it further. She could have asked,

Is ‘I’m sorry’ ever enough?

The speech act of apology could be seen as a desire to accept a rupture, or potential rupture, and initiate a necessary repair. A signpost. It is the beginning, and perhaps the endpoint of the process of repair. But without something more substantial in between, the power and felicity of “I’m sorry” will be lost (though I’m bound to qualify this: there are instances where it is enough; as, in a restaurant, when they’ve run out of the dish you want).

Reading Christine’s piece, it occurred to me how much a conscious awareness and integration of speech acts could contribute to relationships. Since saying something is almost always doing something in relationships. In relationships, words can inspire warmth and love, or fear.

It is well worth remembering that we say pretty much everything for reasons, with aims or motives. The theory of speech acts explores the mechanics on which our comments both effect and affect those around us. The performative aspect of language is what makes this so. The closer the relationship, the stronger the affects of our reasons, aims and motives. Apologies are especially performative, but fit into a fabric of the things we say that determine, or over- or under-determine, our feelings toward our significant others.

Is apology alone ever enough? In a relationship, I think probably not. If it lacks consistency with the actions of the person doing the apologizing? Probably never. This is a reflection of the fact that, unlike other speech, performative utterances are neither true nor false as such. They are happy or unhappy — in many ways just like us.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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