We all know the words, “I’m sorry.” Anyone can say them and we’re taught to say them from an early age when it comes to making right someone we’ve wronged. Yet why is it that these words do not always heal our pain? Why is that sometimes when someone apologizes it ends up actually pissing us off more?

How is it that in a partnership, two people can walk away from one conversation feeling so utterly different on the spectrum of connection and shame? Vulnerability and sharing our feelings is supposed to connect us, I mean, therapists (such as myself) push transparency like the new drug that’ll take you places you’ve never been. So how is it then that sharing something so vulnerable, so change-making for one person can take their partner into a shame spiral for days?

And then, one swipe up with a finger pops a picture of an event that many, many of the women I know were at over the weekend. Leaned over my shoulder, my daughter turns her head from my screen and looks at my face. “Mom, were you there?” No, I wasn’t. It’s not that I missed the photo op, it’s that I wasn’t there at all. “I’m sorry. Are you mad?”

There’s really no way around emotion. We all have it, just as we all have thoughts and behaviors. Some of us are wired to think more logically, from our heads and some of us more emotionally, from our hearts. While logic and emotion often end up in conversation with one another, either one of these things can stand on their own. Yet emotion is often questioned, doubted or put aside for fear of logic proving itself to be right.