An apology is an attempt to repair a damaged relationship. For that repair to happen, both parties have to want it. Getting to that point is half the battle.

Once you're there, somebody has to swallow their pride and admit their injurious actions. Doesn't necessarily have to be the party most at fault - has to be the party that most wants peace. It still might not work.

It's a mistake, I think, lil, to "#2: acknowledge the effect on the other person." Assumptions are often what got you there in the first place. You may have no idea why the other party is pissed off and you're going to get a lot further if you give them a chance to air their grievances than you will if you attempt to fill in the blanks for them. You also open yourself to this: if you figured out why it was such an injury, why did you do it? "Well, I'm an idiot." No you're not, I don't associate with idiots and if I thought you were going to do something idiotic I wouldn't have gotten in league on this in the first place. By attempting to play the idiot card you're throwing my judgment into question as well as pissing me off. #3 and #4 may flow from the conversation that happens, but don't front-load them. Have them in mind.

I ripped thenewgreen a new one for this. I asked to mix it. He asked if he could post it. The answer was "yes" in both cases. From his perspective, it was a cool thing he wanted to share. From my perspective, it's bullshit having your work held up against a standard you are unaware of and invited for scrutiny by people whose opinions you don't value and whose presence you resent.

The problem?

Tagging ghostoffuffle, T-Dog and jonaswildman because I'd like to know what you think..

For TNG, this was "music is great, these people are great, let's share the great." For me, it was "my girlfriend thinks the guitar is too loud. Fix it."

And that phase of my life is over over over. I'm in the credits of Pro Tools. There are plugins with presets organized under my name. My hair is a bird. Your girlfriend's opinion is invalid. I didn't spend three days in the mud on $80k worth of gear to be told "I can hear the plug-in-ishness of the amp sound now, especially in the sustained notes" when I'd replaced some bullshit $150 Line Six plugin with an $2000 chain. My offense was entirely rooted in having my work subjected to critique by people who hadn't earned the right.

TNG, to his credit, bent over backward apologizing. Said many many extremely nice, extremely contrite things. He did, however, misunderstand the source of my anger... and per point #2, attempted to tell me why I was mad, rather than asking. And as a consequence, I stayed mad for a good three weeks.

I've since apologized to TNG for getting so pissed off and, as far as I know, alles gute. However, "Step 2" added many many days of anger to the problem. Steps 3 and 4 never happened and don't need to - "don't do that" is pretty simple.