I once had an English professor insist that no experience was truly universal. She was right to caution us against alienating readers with hyperbole, but if there were a universal human experience, it would be a perfectly imperfect existence.

The human condition requires that we make mistakes. Statistics ensure we make them most often with those we spend the majority of our time with. If we are lucky, we are loved through them and trusted to do better next time. But being worthy of that trust requires awareness and a desire to do better. Aye, there’s the rub . . . 

It’s easy to make mistakes when you don’t have a clear path. Walk your living space in broad daylight and your route is simple to discern: your spatial awareness, balance and all your future moves can be processed and mapped out before you take the first step. Walk that same path with no light and it’s another experience entirely: each move you make carries with it the possibility of ruin, or at least a stubbed toe. This is what it can be like to navigate non-traditional relationship structures. Without millennia of approved examples to refer to, we’re left to make it up as we go – or, you know, muck it up as we go.

Mistakes come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes you just don’t know any better. Sometimes you do . . . and you do it anyway, only to wish you hadn’t. Oh, and sometimes you don’t realize you’ve messed up until much, much later.

I’ve been on both sides of Mistake Lake. I’ve been the person rowing us out to the middle, and the person being dragged behind the boat. Neither position is particularly pleasurable; both have roles and responsibilities in relationships focused on continuous improvement.

If there were achievements to unlock in this regard, you could consider me an expert-level mistaker. It’s like I’m on a lifelong quest to locate all the ‘Oh, Shit’ easter eggs on this plane of existence. Sometimes I make the same damn mistakes over and over, even as I watch myself do it. 

OH MY GOD HOW DOES ANYONE LOVE ME?!?!?

My mistakes generally happen in the form of words that come out of my most prominent face-hole. It would stand to reason that a writer would gravitate towards that particular mechanism of dumbassery, yes? Words: they are my blessing and my curse. But words, contextualized with motivation, are behavior indeed. Speech is an act – never doubt it. Whether unkind, unnecessary, untrue, or unhelpful, there are all manner of reasons to need to reconsider one’s words. And I’m aware of all of them.

My weapon of choice? Passive-aggression.

Because of COURSE I choose the sword I hate the most from my own collection. After all, it’s forged in the fires of plausible deniability and is therefore nearly invincible. The only defense against it is a higher moral standard, but one cut alone is often enough to exsanguinate my victims of their moral lifeblood: emotional maturity.

Perhaps I’m being too hard on myself, but folks, there are days when I feel like such an imposter and Bad Poly Person that it’s hard to imagine ever fully coming back from my missteps when they happen.

But I do. We all do, if we want to.

Regardless of your weapon of choice, I carry a nifty tool in my relationship toolbox you might find helpful. It’s called an amends. The way it works is pretty simple: when you realize you’ve done something you wish you hadn’t, you acknowledge the error in an apology, ask if there’s anything you can do to right the wrong, do that thing if it’s in your power to do, and then resolve to do better next time. Also? Forgive yourself. You’re not in control of whether or not anyone else does, but believe in your own desire to be a good person and be gentle with your self-talk. Beating yourself up will accomplish nothing.

And if you’re on the other side of this ritual? Try as best you can to extend the grace you’d hope for if it were you. This is how we love each other through the bullshit when we have to build our support networks from the ground up. Holding onto resentment when someone is making an effort to repair their wrongs is usually an inefficient use of emotional energy and does little to incentivize folks to do better next time.

One caveat though: if these missteps become a pattern of behavior someone always apologizes for but never shows up differently in? You just might be dealing with someone it would be best to distance yourself from. Leveraging false grace to continue to be an asshole is some next-level shit. Recovering from mistakes requires effort, progress, and change – don’t accept less than that.

Once upon a time, I became an ordained minister of an internet church so I could perform services for my eldest child and my now daughter-in-law. In that, I was gifted the opportunity to write their vows. The only one I wrote was a promise that they continue to be sweet one another.

And really, that’s all this boils down to. The human condition guarantees we will grind some undeserved salt on our loved ones from time to time. I implore you to use your grown-up tools to find the sweetness you truly intend, and the vulnerability to give, and accept it, in kind.