A couple of months ago, my brother-in-law was very abusive towards me and both he and my sister are very narcissistic. I decided to break the relationship with them as they display a pattern of antisocial behaviour.
Yesterday, I received a message from my brother-in-law apologising for his behaviour which I believe is insincere for the following reasons.
1) he is apologising for his behaviour being out of line but is not sorry for consequences of his actions or acknowledging the impact on me or my family
2) there has been no attempt to convey empathy and it feels like a “tick the box” apology
3) there has been no support or empathy from my sister. She has declined to contact me and people have told me she bad mouthed me after the incident.
I don’t want to accept the apology but I at least want to acknowledge it. Personally, I don’t care if don’t see either of them again for the rest of my life as I’m sick of their manipulative abusive behaviour.
I was planning to write something like the below:
“Thank you for offering your apology. I would really like to forgive this, but unfortunately I cannot — what you did was very hurtful, and I don’t believe you have fully understood the consequences of you actions”
Is this reply appropriate and are there any changes I could make to ensure I’m getting my message across?
TL;DR – don’t want to accept an insincere apology from my brother-in-law but want to be acknowledge and respond in an honest way.
10 comments
Personally I wouldn’t even bother to reply. Or I might be super passive aggressive and just reply “Okay”.
That is a reasonable reply in your situation, although you have typo where you put “you” and meant “your”.
The fact that he did it via text and not in person or over the phone makes me think that the apology is bullshit.
You’re basically the oxygen supply to them, narcissists hate being ignored because they lose power, no matter what block them and ignore spon they’ll get nasty but ignore they will do anything to get you to react, speak or cry just don’t react, if they show up close the door say nothing they will eventually find a new supply of oxygen.
Do not reply they don’t care they upset you, you reply you let them in you HAVE to cut the tube to the oxygen tank.
If you really want to cease all future contact , the only response to a non-apology sent by text is “k”.
What you wrote is actually fine, but know that it’s for you and not for him.
“While I can appreciate you taking the time to reach out to me, I want to be clear that I don’t wish to have a relationship with you at this time.”
I wouldn’t even give him the benefit of knowing that you don’t forgive him. Don’t give him any ammunition to use against you or anything that he can hook into to try to manipulate his way back into your life. “Thank you for your apology.” Full stop.
The best response is no response at all. You’ll just feed their egos and sense of importance. If you really don’t want to see them, you owe them no response.
I would actually reply “thanks, I appreciate you reaching out.”
Then he has no text to fwd to others to drum up support or make you look like the unstable or unforgiving one.
Then ignore or 1 word reply all other future texts. Let the relationship die naturally w/o a big show or line drawn in the sand.
If you need closure, you’re not going to find it with him. So why bother with a well thought out text? It’ll just add flames to the shit show fire.
I would tell them that I accept the apology but I’m not confident a similar event won’t happen in the future so I’ll be continuing to keep my distance. Accepting the apology doesn’t mean what they did was ok or that you have to continue the relationship.