Several years ago, I was in a seminar with a man who had been divorced from the mother of his two children for several years. He blamed his ex wife for all the problems in the marriage. It was a terrible strain on him when he had to talk to her about something related to the children.

The seminar leader encouraged the man, in the interest of removing the stress he was experiencing, to apologize to his ex wife for the way he had been in the marriage. The man protested that he had nothing to apologize for. After some intense coaching, the man realized that he had provoked many of the arguments for which he had been blaming his ex wife.

The following day, the man returned to the seminar smiling and looking younger, as though a burden had been lifted.

He told us that he had called his ex wife the night before and apologized for his share of the problems they had had in the marriage.

He reported that, after a long pause, his ex wife said, “I was prepared to hate you for the rest of my life. What am I going to do now?”

The man said that, for the first time in years, the two of them had a conversation without acrimony or recriminations.

The November, 2005 Southwest Airlines Spirit magazine, contains a story of Sandy Reynolds whose father died when the hospital made a mistake in the dosage of his “heparin,” a blood thinner. She was ready to “go hunting” until she was paid a visit by officials from the Lexington VA Medical Center who said, “We’re the ones responsible for your dad’s death.” Reynolds said she cried so hard she had to “get up and leave the room.”

According to the story, “VA officials in Lexington crunched that facility’s first seven years of data and discovered that their liability payments have been moderate compared with similarly sized VA facilities.”

In the same story, it was noted that, “at the University of Michigan Health System, instituting a disclosure policy since 2001 has resulted in a one third decline in average legal expenses (fees, settlements and judgments combined).”

According to Doug Wojcieszak, who founded “Sorry Works! Coalition,” “People understand that doctors are human. What makes people angry and makes them file a lawsuit is when they think there has been a cover-up.”

Could apologizing help to improve your relationships? Most conflicts occur because everyone involved in the conflict believes, “I’m right and you’re wrong.” If apologizing can make a difference in cases of divorce and death, might it not also make a difference in your situation?

On the other hand, you could take the tack of Tim Kreider who wrote, in the New York Times on June 2nd 2009 (“Happy Days”), “The main thing I seem to have learned it that I am capable of learning nothing from almost any experience.”

QUESTIONS? COMMENTS? LJBARKAN@THEPIVOTALFACTOR.COM

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Reprinted by permission of the author, Larry Barkan: http://www.conflictresolutiontraining.net