What should you do when you've hurt someone?

October 17, 2026

Sometimes you will hurt people, or do things that other people do not like. There are a few ways you can learn that you're in such a situation. The hurt party might:

• Explain what it was that you did that hurt them and how it made them feel.
• Ask you to not repeat the action that harmed them.
• Say something over-general and in a sharp tone. This might not explain how you hurt them but instead just be a personal attack.
• Not say anything but visibly be upset.

It's painful to have hurt someone, or have done something that someone doesn't like. Because it's painful, a natural inclination is to look for excuses. You might try to deflect the pain by claiming lack of bad intention, presence of good intention, try to cancel out the harm with other good things you've done (or by doing more good things), try to cancel out the harm with other harms of theirs (in the past or in the current situation), try to directly refute the claim that something is wrong -- and even get angry that they would even say that you were this way. Another natural reaction is to crumple in self-loathing upon realizing your failing (instead of being there for the harmed party).

What should you do instead?#

1. Assume they're right that you have done something wrong. This is almost always true.
2. Be interested in understanding what it is that you've done wrong.
   1. Think about it yourself.
   2. Explain your guess to them, and ask them to correct you.
   3. Ask them questions to fill in the parts you don't understand and more generally to understand how they're feeling.
   4. Do not minimize or call their pain invalid, or think that they're being unreasonable.
3. If they make requests of you, be pretty thoughtful about adhering to the request, especially during the conversation.
4. Start by understanding how they feel. Only bring in ways that you feel once you've adequately listened to them.
5. Do not adopt a blame-frame. Don't try to attribute "how much of the problem was each person". Instead talk about things that each party did to contribute to the problem.
6. Ideally by the end of the conversation you've convinced them that you have thoroughly understood what you did wrong.
7. Once you've explained what you did wrong, problem solving might be in order.
   1. You should explain what steps you'll take to try to prevent the problem from happening in the future.
   2. You should discuss what you can do to remediate the issue.
8. Follow through:
   1. A good follow through involves following up later with another apology and seeing how they feel about it later. (sometimes there is a risk of digging up past harms being bad).
   2. It also involves executing on your plan to make the problem not recur.

tldr version of this:

1. Understand that there is a reason why they are hurting, and be invested in understanding what this reason is.
2. Don't make excuses or tell them to get over it or minimize their pain or try to cancel their pain out with something else.
3. Explain in detail what you did wrong, and explain how you'll avoid repeating this.
4. Follow through.

Self-righteousness#

To close this post, I'll discuss another pernicious trap that I sometimes fall into, beyond the excuses listed at the top of this post: self-righteousness.

• When someone is giving signals that they are upset, perhaps very overtly or perhaps not so overtly, a natural conflict avoidant instinct within me is to ignore this signal. I might think myself kind for not reacting sharply to something that someone else said which I perceived as rude. But this is terrible! The hurt party didn't want me to ignore their signaling that they are upset. They wanted to be acknowledged and understood. It's good to surface if you suspect that someone has been harmed before they mention it, and quite bad to avoid surfacing this. The issue is not usually going to go away if you don't talk about it. When broaching something like this, you should try to be pretty careful, because there are some ways of doing this that might come across as saying "I think you were rude just now, what's up". Which can make the situation worse.
• As mentioned above, doing other nice things for someone is a way that one can feel self-righteous without actually engaging.
• You might appeal to some principle like "fighting is bad", and say that they shouldn't feel hurt because of this principle. And then feel good about yourself for abiding by this (actually bad, but on the surface good; at least resolving harm is good, probably doesn't need to be a fight) principle.

Emotional resetting#

Sometimes in close relationships you and your counterparty will hurt each other. In such cases it may feel like "justice" demands some action from both parties in order to set things right. Both parties might feel like the other person needs to make the first move. Obviously, both parties cannot make the first move. How is one to handle such a situation?

My proposed strategy is to have a cue for emotionally shaking yourself out of the situation a bit. Remembering that you both care about each other, and would like to work together to resolve the situation. Then, both people can simply explain how they feel to each other. One at a time. And the counterparty can simply listen, be curious and try to understand. And then apologize.

Conclusion#

It is painful to stare directly at what you did wrong, to confront and understand it. But, "What's true is already so. Owning up doesn't make it worse. It just makes it so that you actually have a chance of doing something about it."