Five minutes with Bob · Posted by Bob · October 23, 2026

Is Explaining Ourselves an Attempt to Avoid Responsibility?

I have a confession to make. Last Friday, I hurt someone I love. For the first twenty minutes afterwards, I was convinced I deserved an apology. It began with a phone call from my sister, Martha. She had been trying to reach me all week. Our aunt, who stays with her, had been unwell, and Martha had been managing the doctor's appointments, the medicines, the sleepless nights, and the thousand little worries that come with watching someone you love grow older. I had promised to visit on Friday evening. I didn't go. Martha had called three times. I called her back. But instead of apologizing, I started explaining. "The meeting ran over. And then the client called. You know how things are at work. I couldn't exactly walk out in the middle of everything. I was going to call, but…" "She kept looking at the door," Martha said. I wish I could tell you that those words stopped me. They didn't. I was too busy defending myself. "Well, you know I wouldn't miss it deliberately. I have responsibilities too, Martha. It's not as though I'm sitting around doing nothing all day." There was a pause. Then she said something that has stayed with me ever since. "I'm not asking you to explain why you weren't here, Bob. I'm telling you what it felt like to be here without you." She hung up. And I sat there, surrounded by all the perfectly reasonable explanations I had prepared, wondering why none of them made me feel any better. The strange thing about explanations is that they can be entirely true and still be terribly unfair. My meeting really had run late. But somewhere between describing what happened and defending why it happened, I had quietly changed the subject. She was talking about a feeling. I was presenting evidence. And somehow, I had made her feel as though she was the unreasonable one for being hurt. I have noticed this tendency in myself before. I have a reason for almost everything. Some of my reasons are even good ones. But I wonder whether having a reason has sometimes become my way of asking people not to feel the consequences of what I did. A few days later, I visited them. She was sitting by the window, folding an old tablecloth. I sat beside her and told her I was sorry. Then, almost automatically, I began explaining the meeting. Aunt listened patiently. When I finished, she put the tablecloth in her lap and looked at me. "Your father used to do that," she said. "Do what?" "Explain." She smiled a little. "When he forgot something important, he could give you a wonderful account of everything that had prevented him from remembering. Traffic. Work. A broken watch.” For a moment, we were both laughing about a man who had been gone for seven years. Then Aunt’s smile softened. "Your father had reasons, Bob. We all do. I didn't need to know why you were late. I just wanted to know that you understood I had been waiting." She reached over and touched my hand. "People can forgive a lot of things, darling. It's harder when they feel they have to prove they were hurt." I looked at her. She wasn't accusing me. That made it worse, somehow. There was no argument to win, no misunderstanding to correct, no defense to construct. Just my Aunt, holding my hand, reminding me of something I had spent a lifetime overlooking. The people we love are not always asking us to explain the past. Sometimes, they're asking whether their feelings have a place in our version of it. I called Martha that evening. This time, I didn't mention the meeting. I told her I had been thinking about what she said. I told her I was sorry she had to manage everything alone that Friday, and that Aunt had waited for me. I didn't ask her to understand my reasons. I simply said, "I let you both down." Then she said, "I know you didn't mean to." I felt the familiar urge to explain again. But I stopped. Because I finally understood that, she hadn't been questioning my intentions. She had been living with the consequences. "I'm sorry, Martha," I said. This time, the words felt different. Not because they were more eloquent, but because I wasn't using them to get out of the uncomfortable feeling of being wrong. We talked for another twenty minutes. We even laughed. We were simply a brother and a sister who had hurt each other, and who still loved each other. Perhaps explaining ourselves becomes an attempt to avoid responsibility at the precise moment we become more concerned with being understood than with understanding the person we have hurt. We want to be the dependable brother, the thoughtful friend, the loving partner. And when our actions contradict that picture, we rush to explain the contradiction away. There are times when explanations matter. They can clear up misunderstandings, reveal circumstances, and help people see one another more generously. And perhaps, before I begin telling my side of the story, I will pause long enough to ask myself a different question. Not, how can I make them understand why I did it? But have I really understood what it was like for them? When someone you love tells you that you've hurt them, what comes first for you? The need to explain your intentions, or the willingness to understand their experience? Until tomorrow, Bob