Whenever I find myself apologizing for something that I don't really think is my fault, I can't help picturing the scene in A Fish Called Wanda when John Cleese is being hung upside-down outside a third story window by Kevin Kline.
Apologizing is a necessary but underdeveloped skill among most people. Not that apologizing always works, but not apologizing is usually a terrible idea. This would seem to set up some inner conflict for someone who thinks they're right. Not so! Apologizing costs nothing and doesn't make you any less right. However, since reasonable and unreasonable people alike are more than capable of disagreeing on something even given the same set of facts, arguments are bound to ensue and there's not better way to lower the temperature of a discussion than to apologize.
A corollary of this is something I often tell my students if I think they've gotten to a point of trusting me, so I apologize to those for whom this is repetitive. It's advice to the guys, really, and it goes like this: If you are a man in a relationship with a woman you will find yourself apologizing and you will have no idea what it is that you are apologizing for. This is an unstable situation which can lead to very bad things. The sooner you learn how to know what you're apologizing for, the happier your life will be.
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