Out of The Doghouse
Why saying sorry isn’t weakness
Most of us were never taught how to apologize well—and it shows up everywhere that trust matters.
How to Apologize Correctly
There are a lot of things most of our dads taught us—some directly, some by example, some by omission. How to throw a ball. How to show up on time. How to keep your word. How to be a ‘man’.
But one lesson most of us had to learn the hard way was how to apologize correctly. And it’s a lesson that is so important in life, because the necessity to apologize repeats itself throughout our lives. Never goes away. Ever.
It seems obvious that we all screw up and that our actions affect other people. No big reveal there. The surprise is how poorly prepared many of us were to deal with those moments once they showed up in real life—marriage, work, friendships, parenting. Especially men.
You’d think apologizing comes naturally. It doesn’t. Especially if you grow up in an environment where saying “I’m sorry,” taking responsibility, or admitting you caused harm is treated like weakness.
We absorb what we see. We internalize it as normal, we self-justify our actions—even when it’s wrong.
We Repeat What We See.
Growing up, I rarely remember seeing my dad apologize outright or take responsibility for being, let’s say, inflexible. He wasn’t a bad man. He cared, in his own way. But softness—the kind that apologizing requires—didn’t come easily. He mellowed later in life, but that version arrived after decades of habits had already set.
Men, in general, struggle with apologies. They rub against ego, masculinity, and a deeply ingrained belief that apologies are for losers. Or at least for people who don’t “win.”
Tell yourself whatever story you want to justify that behavior. But here’s the hard truth: refusing to apologize isn’t strength. It’s fragility.
I learned that lesson slowly—and repeatedly. At one point, I realized that as a married man, I was spending an awful lot of time “in the doghouse.” Enough time that I started a business called *Out of the Doghouse* to make it easier for people, mostly men to apologize without feeling embarrassed or humiliated. The products, mostly greeting cards, utilized tongue-in-cheek humor to diffuse these difficult situations.
I was trying to recover ‘after’ things blew up instead of owning them cleanly in the moment.
Real Apologies Require Humility
A real apology requires putting your ego so far in the rearview mirror that you can’t see it anymore. It’s not about you. It’s about the other person.
A real apology isn’t an explanation or a defense.
It’s an act of restraint—one that protects the future, even if it doesn’t fully repair the past.
That’s where most apologies go off the rails. We turn them into explanations. Or negotiations. Or subtle attempts to make our own discomfort go away as quickly as possible.
“I’m sorry, but…”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“You have to understand…”
Those aren’t apologies. They’re defenses dressed up in polite language.
There are different kinds of apologies, just like there are different kinds of mistakes. Some are small and transactional. Others cut deeper and leave scar tissue.
Apologizing Requires Reflection
Once a year, on Yom Kippur, Jews are called upon to apologize—to God and to their fellow human beings. For Christians, the period of Lent serves a similar purpose. It’s a deliberate exercise in reflection, asking people to recall specific moments where they caused harm. The idea is a reset. A cleansing.
That reset is aspirational.
Because in real relationships, things don’t always snap back to normal. Sometimes the other person isn’t ready. Sometimes they don’t even know what they’d accept as repair. And sometimes, the apology doesn’t restore what was lost—it simply prevents further damage.
That doesn’t make the apology pointless. It makes it necessary.
This is why dads should teach their kids how to apologize. Not with lectures, but with example. It’s part of the job. Parenting isn’t just about teaching confidence and competence—it’s about teaching accountability and repair.
Knowing how to apologize well won’t keep you out of the doghouse forever. Life guarantees mistakes. But it will shorten your stay. And more importantly, it teaches you how to own your shortcomings without letting them define you.
That’s a lesson worth passing on.