Why women apologize more than men
Social life, that which we share with others, brings with it innumerable advantages, but it is not without problems. However, when these small frictions appear with others, not everyone shows the same propensity to apologize.
In fact, it is not even necessary to classify people according to the details of their personality traits to know if it is more or less possible to say "forgive": just go to the most basic division of all: men and women. The former are significantly more reluctant to apologize . But why?
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Why many women ask for forgiveness for everything
It has been proven that women tend to apologize more than men, but the differences between sexes in this issue do not end there. Women also tend to report having committed more offenses or breaches. Is this because the female sex tends more to cross the limit of the morally correct? Not really.
The difference is in what each one considers to be crossing that line. In other words, Women are more sensitive to those behaviors of their own that can be considered a reason to apologize , while this threshold is higher in men, making a greater number of these faults go unnoticed as such. Having committed the same attack, the woman will be more prone to apologize while the man, in many cases, will not even consider the option of doing so for not believing that he has done something wrong.
It is easy to conclude that this is because men are insensitive to the suffering they cause at times, perhaps as a consequence of their somewhat more aggressive nature. However, there is no reason to think that this is the explanation for this phenomenon. It is possible that the cause is, in fact, that many women apologize when they have no real reasons to do so.
A problem linked to gender?
Many gender studies agree that traditionally, and even today in most countries, the role of women has been explicitly linked to the care of the home and to the attention of the domestic needs of the rest of the family. Thus, beyond the husband's work obligations, it is assumed that the woman is responsible for everything else.
In this sense, any problem that occurs with any member of the family and that has to do with domestic tasks will always be recognized as a lack of responsibility on the part of the woman.
If one day the husband is about to go to work and realizes that he has not prepared a snack to take to the office, the wife will instantly recognize that he has made a mistake ... even when in fact he is not committing it. Normally this type of detail is not the result of negotiation, but the result of the automatic assignment of gender roles . If the custom is for the woman to prepare something for the husband to eat, the day when this is not fulfilled there is a reason to ask for forgiveness.
The significant of this, however, is that this custom becomes so internalized by women that they can apply it to all areas of their life that are beyond the domestic. That is why it is possible to find very young women, even single women and living in a flat for them alone, that they are more inclined to ask for forgiveness even before people whom they have seen for the first time. The reason is that they have inherited the culture of "in the face of doubt, apologize."
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Remorse that parasitizes
The problem that many women apologize in excess goes beyond reinforcing the idea that they have more reasons to apologize by doing the same thing as men. In addition to this, they are accustomed to assume the faults of facts for those who do not have to assume responsibilities , and seeing life through this prism is something very bitter.
On the one hand, very few people around have any reason to point out this error, since receiving undeserved apologies places them in a situation of power; It is easier not to contradict the version of the one who asks for forgiveness. On the other, getting used to asking for forgiveness for everything makes us, little by little, convince ourselves that we do not deserve anything.
The fact of being aware many times a week that we have reasons to apologize, whether true or not, undermines one's self-esteem and perpetuates this vicious circle. With a low self-esteem, it is easier to suppose that in an ambiguous situation, if someone should ask for forgiveness, it is oneself or, in this case, the same.
So, to break with this self-destructive dynamic of asking for permission even to breathe, we must question gender roles, first, and cultivate self-esteem, afterwards. For the former, it takes a lot of work, and seek the solidarity of the person in a similar situation. For the second, a good start is simply to look back and reflect on those situations in which we pronounce a "sorry" in vain.
