The Five Languages of Apology: How to Experience Healing in All Your Relationships

The Five Languages of Apology: How to Experience Healing in All Your Relationships

Just as you have a different love language, you also hear and express the words and gestures of apology in a different language. New York Times best-selling author Gary Chapman teamed with counselor Jennifer Thomas on this groundbreaking study of the way we apologize, discovering that it’s not just a matter of will–it’s a matter of how. By helping people identify the languages of apology, this book clears the way toward healing and sustaining vital relationships. The authors detail proven techniques for giving and receiving effective apologies.

You’ll learn the five languages of apology:

  • Expressing regret
  • Accepting responsibility
  • Making restitution
  • Genuinely repenting
  • Requesting forgiveness

 

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Chapman, author of the bestselling The Five Love Languages, teams up with psychologist Thomas for thoughtful dissection of another tricky subject. Chapman and Thomas choose to tackle the apology because, as with love, understanding it is essential for developing, maintaining and repairing relationships. Apology, however, covers a much broader scope, applying to all varieties of relationships, from the deeply personal connection between intimate partners to the formal relationships between nations. Chapman and Thomas’s basic observation that we don’t all agree on what constitutes a sincere apology is perhaps not surprising, but it may, as they show, help couples who can’t resolve arguments because their apologies aren’t accepted. The authors stress that you need to learn the “language” of the person you are apologizing to: for one person, it may be expressing regret, while for another it’s accepting responsibility or making restitution. Especially useful is the chapter that helps readers learn which language of apology feels most sincere to them. Chapman and Thomas are most apt when they seek to repair relationships not with large ideas but with simple basics that are too often taken for granted. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From the Inside Flap

When our granddaughter Davy Grace was five years old, her mother and father allowed her to spend a special week with her grandparents. Karolyn and I were elated. The week was great fun. But one experience is indelibly printed in my memory. Karolyn has a special drawer where she keeps “stickers” for the grandchildren. Davy Grace, of course, knew about this special drawer and asked her grandmother if she could have some stickers. Karolyn told her that she could have three; any three she chose.

An hour or two later, we began to see stickers all over the house. Davy Grace had taken the entire sheet of stickers and placed them randomly. Karolyn said to her, “I thought I told you to take only three stickers, but you have taken the whole sheet.”

Davy Grace stood in silence as her grandmother continued. “You disobeyed Grandmother.”

Tears cascaded down Davy Grace’s face as she said, “I need somebody to forgive me.”

I shall never forget those words nor the pain which I saw in her young face. My tears joined her tears as I embraced her and said, “Honey, all of us need somebody to forgive us.”

—From The Five Languages of Apology

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