Dear Serena,
You asked how can you make it up to me. This was my initial response.
In some ways, it feels completely disproportionate to the magnitude of the offense. On another level, it feels entirely accurately proportionate to the magnitude of the impact of the offense.
At the end of the day, this is on me.
You affect me, and you affect me profoundly.
You make me feel painfully good. You make me feel painfully bad.
If I go simply by the magnitude of the offense, the way you could most effectively make it up to me is simply by never doing anything like that again. Unfortunately, I fear know this is unrealistic, so I’m left to struggle with the question of proportionality, of fairness, of reasonableness: is it reasonable for me to demand so much from you for a single instance of poor communication?
Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know.
What I do know is this: My brain tells me I should run from you, that while it’s true you have lots to offer me that I value, whether in your preferred construct of a relationship or mine, whatever you have to offer me comes with a degree of pain and suffering that I simply would prefer not to experience.
My body, though, tells me something else: it says, figure out a way. Make it work. Keep the thing alive. Don’t give up.
And then some other part of me, my heart? my amygdala? I don’t know what part it is, but some part tells me, against all evidence, that if I figure out how to frame what I want from you, I should be able to extract it from you. Minus the pain, with just the goodness. I’m pretty sure I know this is wrong.
But there is this part of me that is convinced, against all evidence, that it’s possible.
How can you make it up to me?
I don’t know.
You can’t meaningfully promise to me that you’ll never do such a thing again. I know that. If you do promise it, I’d be a fool to believe you.
If I proceed with you, I have to do so in full awareness that you will disappoint me again, that you will stand me up again, that you will communicate just where I sit in your priorities again, and that will hurt me. I have to be prepared for that.
My instinct is that if I were a little healthier, I would say, “Make it up to me by stretching with me. That’s all. Stretch with me once. And don’t charge me. Give me one session for nothing.” That seems proportionate to the offense, but not, alas, to the impact.
And this is where my problem lies. I’m unresolved. Honestly, what I really want is for my disproportionate proposal to appeal to you, for you to like the idea of paying a price of this magnitude for the offense, for that to feel reasonable to you.
Maybe we’re not in that world. Or maybe we are. I don’t know.
You’ll have to let me know.