Would you apologize on your spouse's behalf? Update (Examples) post 20

[LifeOnPluto]

I'm surprised at posters who say that they would never apologise on behalf of their spouse, and they wouldn't get involved in a dispute between their spouse and close friend.

If DF did / said something boorish and hurtful to a good friend of mine, you can bet your last dollar that I'd insist he apologise. And if he refused (for whatever reason) I would apologise to my friend for his actions. I wouldn't want my friend thinking that I condone his behaviour.

Note - this only applies to situations where DF was clearly in the wrong. If there was less-than-stellar behaviour on both sides, or I thought that my friend was overreacting, I wouldn't apologise. Nor would I tell DF to apologise. But at the very least, I'd acknowledge my friend's feelings. I wouldn't just bean dip and blow them off.

[Zilla]

I'm surprised at posters who say that they would never apologise on behalf of their spouse, and they wouldn't get involved in a dispute between their spouse and close friend.

If DF did / said something boorish and hurtful to a good friend of mine, you can bet your last dollar that I'd insist he apologise. And if he refused (for whatever reason) I would apologise to my friend for his actions. I wouldn't want my friend thinking that I condone his behaviour.

Note - this only applies to situations where DF was clearly in the wrong. If there was less-than-stellar behaviour on both sides, or I thought that my friend was overreacting, I wouldn't apologise. Nor would I tell DF to apologise. But at the very least, I'd acknowledge my friend's feelings. I wouldn't just bean dip and blow them off.

I guess what it boils down to me is that if dh did something boorish and clearly in the wrong, he would apologize without any of my having to strongarming him into it.  it might take a very did you know you said/did that?  So most scenarios I am picturing including the examples here, I wouldn't apologize for my dh. But no one said yo blow off or bea bean dip only.

[Winterlight]

In the first scenario, your Uncle should have apologized on his wife's behalf.  They were invited to your wedding as a family, accepted as a family, and when two thirds of the family doesn't show, especially when one has a role in the wedding, then it's the fault of the whole family.  While everyone is different, I can't imagine making a decision not to go to a wedding and pulling my child out at the last minute without consulting my husband.  And even if she did make that decision in a vacuum, the Uncle was representing his family and the least that he could have done is apologized that most of them weren't there.

In the second scenario, I don't think you or your husband owed anyone an apology.  Your husband went along with Bob...it was his party and Betty and Ava needed to take it up with Bob.  Not your DH and certainly not you.  I would not have apologized in that case.

For the third scenario, I really don't see this as an apologizing 'for' anyone situation.  Bob and Betty (and Cameron?) allowed their children to play with something that was prohibited.  Whether or not your stance on your piano is reasonable (and I think it is), doesn't matter.  They were guests in your homes, you have rules, and they violated them.  They owe you an apology.

Agreed.

Scenario one, uncle was also at fault. He should have said something; even if his spouse was the one who vetoed, it was his niece who was inconvenienced by it and he owed her an apology for allowing it to happen.

Scenario two, I think DH could have said he was sorry he'd distressed Ava. He didn't have to offer up a big apology, but a little social lubricant goes a long way.

Scenario three, they broke the house rules, knew they broke the house rules and blamed you for having house rules. They flunk.

[suzieQ]

Scenario one - my first thought was "why would you agree to have this child as a flower girl when you saw she didn't show the last time?" You didn't know why she didn't show, but there were no excuses of "she is sick". That would be the only acceptable excuse in my mind.
AIL sounds like quite a piece of work to *ask* for her child to be a flower girl then to not show because the wedding is during nap time. She should have known what time the wedding was at least three months in advance.
I don't think she ever intended for the child to be in the wedding at all. Perhaps she wanted a flower girl at her wedding, and didn't get one for some reason, so thought she would prevent you and your cousin from having one as well? It just sounds premeditated to me.

[katycoo]

In certain circumstances, yes I would.  Generally speaking I take the position that I am not responsible for his behaviour, so I would leave him to sort his own mess, but if it impacted me, I would.

Eg-A: We are at a work function with DH's company, and DH says something offensive to his bosses wife.  This is likely to impact on his working relationship with Boss, but i have no relationship with Boss at all, so I wouldn't apologise.

Eg-B: We are at a dinner party at my friend's house, and DH gets drunk and gets ill - trashing their bathroom.  I would not only clean the bathroom, i would apologise profusely.  Because even though it isn't my fault, and my friend probably wouldn't blame me, failing to take steps could affect our friendship - for starters we'd probably never be invited to another dinner party.  I'd deal with DH privately at another time.

[Danika]

Scenario one - my first thought was "why would you agree to have this child as a flower girl when you saw she didn't show the last time?" You didn't know why she didn't show, but there were no excuses of "she is sick". That would be the only acceptable excuse in my mind.

True. I thought that since I wasn't privy to the details, maybe there was some other explanation because I was only hearing vague things through the grapevine. I said to AdultCousin then "I thought ChildCousin was going to be your flowergirl" and AdultCousin said "Hmmph" rolled her eyes and beandipped. I had only heard that ChildCousin was going to be flowergirl through my mother so I figured maybe my mother had misunderstood or miscommunicated. Our family grapevine has a tendency to distort things so I didn't want to condemn AIL (and also Uncle, I guess) on stuff that wasn't hard evidence. But I probably should have.

AIL sounds like quite a piece of work to *ask* for her child to be a flower girl then to not show because the wedding is during nap time. She should have known what time the wedding was at least three months in advance.

Yes! AIL and Uncle knew the exact date, time and location of the wedding 10 months in advance. I didn't have any children of my own then but I still didn't think naptimes were so vital that the schedules couldn't be adjusted slightly. Especially for the flowergirl who would have been 6 at the time. Now, I have kids who are 5 and 2. We kept them up til 1:30am this past New Years Eve and they were well-behaved. I never bought the naptime excuse and I don't think AIL meant me to.

I don't think she ever intended for the child to be in the wedding at all. Perhaps she wanted a flower girl at her wedding, and didn't get one for some reason, so thought she would prevent you and your cousin from having one as well? It just sounds premeditated to me.

POD. I always wondered what would motivate AIL to be so mean to AdultCousin and to me. Purposely. It was definitely premeditated. I think you have a very good point. I could never figure out why she'd be so mean.

[katycoo]

Whoops - now seen provided scenarios:

1: If in this situation, my husband was AIL, I would have apologised as I'd want to smooth out the issue with you.  This is of course providing that I was unaware of his actions.  If I had been aware and had allowed it to happen, I'd probably not see the problem so wouldn't see a need to apologise.

2: No I probably wouldn't.  Ava is not my friend, she's my friend's mum. If Betty wasn't mad, or if Ava didn't bring it up herself I wouldn't volunteer an apology on behalf of my DH.

3. I'd be wanting an apology from Betty.  But that is over her transgression, not on behalf of someone elses.  She isn't apologising for the actions of her univited guests, but for bringing them in the first place, and not stopping the children from interfering with your things.

[Cami]

Right in the business transaction she described, she fully expected an apology from the coach and received none so she fired him.
 
In a friend vs spouse situation, discussion is warranted.  I can't see the friend tarring her friend with the same brush as the husband without a discussion happening.  Two different situations.  And furthermore, if the friend immeadiately does tar them both like that, then he or she isn't a true friend.

Well, I guess I was picturing it as, Insulted Friend is trying to have a discussion with Wife about Husband's behavior, and Wife just keeps bean-dipping or says nothing in response. So Insulted Friend might conclude that Wife agrees with Husband on the matter (or doesn't think it's a big deal), and then Insulted Friend is mad at both of them.

I suppose I was picturing something similar with Bethalize--that maybe she said (emailed, etc.) to Coach, "Hey, Business Partner was insulting," and Coach was like, "Huh. Nice weather we're having." Naturally leading Bethalize to think that Coach either agreed with the insult, or didn't care much.

Thus one might conclude that when one's partner has insulted someone, bean-dipping or ignoring is not the way to go, even if you have no intention of actually apologizing on your partner's behalf.

Yes, I think the minimum requirement is an acknowledgement of the insulted person's feelings.

I also don't get the big deal over apologizing for my spouse. If my friend was telling me that her, say, doctor treated her like an idiot, it would be natural for me to say, "I'm so sorry that happened to you!" I can't imagine saying LESS if my own husband treated a friend badly.

[Lynn2000]

One distinction I make in what I imagine happening is that while I might be perfectly willing to say, "That doctor sounds like an idiot! I can't believe he said that to you!" I would be much less willing to show disapproval of my spouse to my friend, especially if I hadn't heard my spouse's version of the story yet. So I don't think I could go as far as saying, "I'm so sorry DH said that to you, it was incredibly rude and he owes you an apology. He can be kind of a jerk sometimes," or something along those lines.

Of course, I can say, "I'm so sorry you're hurt, I didn't hear DH say that and I don't really know what he meant." And you can bet when I got home, I would ask DH what was going on, or tell him that my friend was really hurt by his behavior and see what he had to say about it.

To me, "apologizing for a spouse" (as in, "I'm sorry for what he did, it was bad") can start to get into the realm of "taking sides." And if I'm taking sides with a friend against my DH--well, there's bigger issues involved than just that one specific instance, you know?

And one more thing--for me it would also depend on how DH and I socialized with Friend. If instead of a friend it was my mom, who is a very reasonable person that I'm very close to, I would have much, much more interest in DH and my mom resolving their differences (and it would be more likely that DH had done something truly objectionable anyway). But, if it was DH and a friend that I had known before I met DH, who I could socialize with without DH being there, and whose personality is a bit prone to take offense anyway, I would be much more likely to say, "I'm sorry you're hurt. Maybe we should just get together without DH for a while," and leave it up to him if he wanted to apologize on his own.

[Sharnita]

I think there can be fine nuance here.  I am not sure that saying "I am sorry that happened to you" is exactly apologizing for your spouse.  It is acknowledging that they have been hurt/upset and indicating that you wish things could be different.