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I've noticed that some people would rather spend twenty minutes explaining why they were wrong than spend ten seconds admitting it.
And I find that fascinating.
You can show someone exactly where they made a mistake. You can explain what happened, how it affected another person, and why their version of events doesn't hold up.
And instead of hearing, "You're right. I was wrong," you get a speech.
They were tired.
They were stressed.
They misunderstood.
Someone else started it.
And my personal favorite: "I'm sorry you took it that way."
Excuse me?
You just spent five minutes telling me why you weren't responsible for what happened, and now I'm supposed to accept an apology for having the nerve to be upset?
I don't think so.
Now, I understand that admitting we're wrong isn't always comfortable. Nobody enjoys discovering that they've behaved badly, made a foolish decision, or hurt someone they care about.
I've certainly had moments when I wanted to defend myself before acknowledging that I'd made a mistake.
But there's an important difference between explaining what happened and trying to escape responsibility for it.
And television has given us some wonderful examples of both.
Walter White spent years insisting that everything he did was for his family. Rory Gilmore tried to justify sleeping with a married man because she'd loved him first. And Eleanor Shellstrop on The Good Place discovered that telling the truth about herself could cost her everything she wanted.
Three very different characters.
Three different situations.
But they all raise a question I think most of us could benefit from considering.
When you know you've done something wrong, are you more interested in making things right or convincing everyone that you had a good reason?
Because those aren't necessarily the same thing.
Walter White Had an Explanation for Everything Except His Own Ego
If you've watched Breaking Bad, you know that Walter White, played by Bryan Cranston, is a remarkably intelligent man.
He's a gifted chemist.
He's resourceful.
He can think his way through situations that would leave most people completely overwhelmed.
And he has an extraordinary ability to justify his behavior.
When Walter receives a lung cancer diagnosis, he becomes frightened about his family's financial future.
His wife, Skyler, is pregnant. They have a teenage son. And Walter is worried about what will happen to them if he dies.
Those are understandable concerns.
So when Walter begins manufacturing methamphetamine with his former student Jesse Pinkman, he presents the decision as a desperate attempt to provide for his family.
Now, I can sympathize with a frightened father who wants to make sure his children are financially secure.
But Walter doesn't simply make one bad decision and immediately regret it.
He keeps going.
He lies to Skyler.
He manipulates Jesse.
He becomes increasingly dangerous.
And as the series progresses, protecting his family becomes an explanation he uses even when his own actions are placing that family in danger.
That's what I find so revealing about Walter.
He isn't incapable of understanding right and wrong.
He understands chemistry well enough to build a criminal empire, yet somehow struggles to recognize that his wife might object to living with a drug manufacturer.
Or perhaps he recognizes it perfectly well.
He just doesn't want her objections interfering with his plans.
By the fifth season, Walter has become so accustomed to defending his decisions that his explanations have practically become part of his personality.
In "Say My Name," he expects others to recognize the power and reputation he's acquired.
In "Ozymandias," the disastrous consequences of his decisions finally overwhelm the family he claimed to be protecting.
And in the series finale, "Felina," which aired September 29, 2013, Walter returns to see Skyler one last time.
He begins explaining himself again.
Skyler is exhausted by it.
She's heard enough about his supposedly noble intentions.
And then Walter finally says something he should have acknowledged long before.
"I did it for me."
He admits that he enjoyed what he'd become good at, and that the work made him feel alive.
I think it's one of the most important moments in the entire series.
Because Walter finally separates his original circumstances from the choices he continued making.
Yes, he was diagnosed with cancer.
Yes, he feared leaving his family without money.
But he also enjoyed power, recognition, and being exceptionally good at something.
Those motives existed alongside his concern for his family.
And eventually they helped drive decisions that destroyed the very life he said he wanted to preserve.
I've written more about Walter's pride in my article examining his famous "I am the danger" declaration.
What interests me here is how long it takes him to abandon his favorite excuse.
Walter's cancer explains how he entered the drug business. It doesn't excuse everything he chose to do afterward.
And his final admission doesn't undo the damage.
Hank is dead.
His marriage is destroyed.
His children have suffered.
Jesse has endured terrible abuse and captivity.
Walter doesn't get to erase all that simply because he's finally telling the truth.
Nor does he offer Skyler a complete apology that repairs what he's done.
But for once, he stops expecting her to accept his explanation as a defense.
I wish he'd discovered that kind of honesty several seasons earlier.
So, I suspect, does Skyler.
Rory Gilmore Wasn't Going to Let a Marriage Interfere With Her Explanation
Now let's consider someone considerably less dangerous.
Rory Gilmore.
I recently wrote about Rory's disappointing development from promising student to repeatedly becoming involved with unavailable men.
And one of the reasons her story bothers me is the way she responds when Lorelai confronts her about Dean.
In the fourth-season finale of Gilmore Girls, "Raincoats and Recipes," which aired May 18, 2004, Rory sleeps with her former boyfriend Dean Forester.
There's just one small problem.
Dean is married to Lindsay.
Actually, that's not a small problem.
That's the entire problem.
When Lorelai discovers what happened, she is understandably shocked.
Rory, played by Alexis Bledel, has always been presented as a responsible, intelligent young woman.
She's academically ambitious.
She understands commitments.
She's certainly old enough to know that married people aren't supposed to be sleeping with their former girlfriends.
But instead of admitting that she's made a serious mistake, Rory begins defending the relationship.
She refers to Dean as hers.
She reminds Lorelai of their history.
And she emphasizes that Dean told her his marriage was effectively over.
I can understand why Rory might have believed that Dean was unhappy.
I can even understand why seeing her first love again brought back feelings she hadn't completely resolved.
But none of those explanations changes the fact that Dean was still married.
And Rory knew it.
What troubles me is that Rory seems to believe her history with Dean gives her some special claim to him.
As though being his girlfriend first means Lindsay's marriage is somehow less legitimate.
Really, Rory?
Relationships aren't parking spaces that you can reclaim because you were there before somebody else.
And Dean deserves plenty of criticism, too.
He's the married person.
He has a direct responsibility to honor his commitment to Lindsay.
If his marriage is unhappy, he needs to address that honestly rather than begin another relationship behind his wife's back.
But Dean's responsibility doesn't eliminate Rory's.
Two people can participate in the same wrongdoing without either one being completely responsible for the other's behavior.
What would I have liked to hear from Rory?
Something simple.
"I knew he was married. I wanted to believe what he told me because I still had feelings for him. But I shouldn't have slept with him."
There.
She could still explain her emotions.
She could still acknowledge that Dean had led her to believe his marriage was ending.
But she wouldn't be using those circumstances to pretend she had no responsibility.
I think Lorelai would have found that far easier to respect than Rory's attempts to defend what happened.
And I wouldn't expect Rory to become a terrible person simply because she acknowledged making a terrible decision.
That's another mistake people make.
They imagine that admitting wrongdoing means accepting some permanent negative identity.
If I admit I lied, I'm a liar.
If I admit I behaved selfishly, I'm selfish.
If I admit I cheated, I'm someone nobody can ever trust again.
But people aren't necessarily defined forever by their worst decisions.
They're also defined by what they do afterward.
And the first step toward behaving differently is being willing to describe what happened without rewriting the story to make yourself look better.
Eleanor Shellstrop Finally Stopped Letting Someone Else Take the Blame
I think The Good Place gives us an especially interesting example because Eleanor Shellstrop, played by Kristen Bell, begins the series with a rather obvious problem.
She's in the Good Place.
And she knows she doesn't belong there.
When the series premiered in September 2016, Eleanor discovered that she'd somehow ended up in an afterlife reserved for people who had lived exceptionally good lives.
Unfortunately, the description of the wonderful person she supposedly had been doesn't match the woman she remembers being.
Not even close.
Eleanor wasn't a particularly generous or considerate person during her life.
She frequently put herself first.
She was dishonest.
And she wasn't especially concerned about the consequences of her behavior for other people.
But now she's been offered an extraordinary reward.
And she's determined to keep it.
So she persuades Chidi Anagonye, an ethics professor played by William Jackson Harper, to teach her how to become a better person.
I like that premise.
Because Eleanor isn't simply pretending to be good.
She gradually begins trying to understand what goodness actually requires.
And sometimes the answer is terribly inconvenient.
In the first-season episode "The Eternal Shriek," which aired October 20, 2016, the neighborhood's architect, Michael, believes he's responsible for the strange problems occurring in the Good Place.
He decides that he must retire.
Unfortunately, retirement for someone like Michael involves a horrifying punishment.
Eleanor knows that her presence is connected to the trouble.
And if Michael accepts the blame, she might be able to continue hiding.
From a purely selfish perspective, that's a wonderful arrangement.
Someone else takes responsibility.
She keeps her comfortable afterlife.
Problem solved.
Except Chidi isn't pleased.
He understands that allowing Michael to suffer for something Eleanor has been concealing is morally wrong.
And Eleanor eventually reaches the point where she can no longer continue pretending.
After another disastrous attempt to solve the problem without exposing herself, she publicly admits that she doesn't belong in the Good Place.
Now, I wouldn't pretend Eleanor suddenly becomes a perfect example of moral courage.
She had plenty of opportunities to confess earlier.
And she tried some rather questionable alternatives before finally telling the truth.
But her confession represents a change.
She stops allowing another person to carry responsibility for a situation she's been hiding.
She also accepts the possibility that telling the truth will cost her something she desperately wants.
That's what makes her admission meaningful.
An admission of wrongdoing becomes much more convincing when a person is willing to accept an unpleasant consequence rather than make someone else pay for the mistake.
And I think Eleanor's story offers an important lesson.
You don't have to wait until you've become a wonderful person to begin acting like one.
Sometimes the first decent thing you do is admit that you haven't been very decent.
Why Is It So Hard to Say Three Little Words?
"I was wrong."
Three words.
You'd think we were asking people to donate a kidney.
But I can understand why admitting a mistake feels threatening.
Most of us want to believe we're reasonable, decent people.
We want others to see us that way, too.
So when someone points out that we've behaved badly, we may instinctively try to protect our image.
We explain our intentions.
We describe the circumstances.
We bring up what the other person did.
And before long, the original problem has disappeared beneath a mountain of arguments about why we shouldn't be blamed.
I think this happens frequently in family relationships.
A parent makes an unfair accusation against an adult child.
The child explains why the accusation was wrong.
And rather than acknowledging the mistake, the parent responds that she was only worried.
All right.
Perhaps she was worried.
But being worried doesn't automatically make an accusation fair.
Or consider a husband who speaks disrespectfully to his wife.
When she objects, he explains that he'd had a difficult day at work.
Again, I can sympathize.
A difficult day can leave someone exhausted and irritable.
But the wife didn't cause the problem at work.
And she shouldn't have to accept being treated badly simply because her husband arrived home in a foul mood.
What I'd like to hear is something closer to this:
"I had a terrible day, and I took it out on you. That wasn't fair. I'm sorry."
See the difference?
He hasn't denied having a difficult day.
He hasn't pretended his irritation came out of nowhere.
He's simply accepted that his circumstances didn't give him permission to mistreat someone else.
And that's the distinction I think people need to understand.
An explanation tells us why something happened. An excuse tries to make the responsibility disappear.
The same information can function as either one, depending on how it's being used.
"I was exhausted" can be useful context.
"I was exhausted, so you can't blame me" is something else.
And if we're genuinely trying to make amends, we should be able to recognize the difference.
What Would a Rabbi Say About Admitting You're Wrong?
One of the things I appreciate about Jewish teachings on repentance is that they don't treat an apology as a magical sentence that makes wrongdoing disappear.
Judaism has a concept called teshuvah, commonly translated as repentance or return.
And there's considerably more to it than saying you're sorry.
Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish scholar also known as the Rambam, discusses repentance in his Mishneh Torah.
In Repentance 2:2, he describes the importance of abandoning wrongdoing, regretting it, resolving not to repeat it, and confessing what one has done.
Notice what's missing.
A requirement to produce an impressive explanation for why the behavior was understandable.
Now, that doesn't mean circumstances are irrelevant.
Jewish law recognizes differences between deliberate wrongdoing, mistakes, accidents, and situations in which a person's freedom to choose was limited.
Those distinctions can affect moral responsibility.
But when someone knowingly commits a wrong, explaining the circumstances doesn't eliminate the need to acknowledge it.
And I think there's a valuable lesson in that distinction.
Imagine someone who borrowed money from a friend and failed to repay it.
The borrower explains that finances have been difficult.
Perhaps they have.
Perhaps they've experienced unexpected expenses.
Perhaps there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why repayment was delayed.
But the money is still owed.
The friend's financial loss doesn't vanish because the borrower has a sympathetic story.
In Mishneh Torah, Repentance 2:9, Maimonides explains that when one person wrongs another, repentance requires addressing the harm and seeking the injured person's forgiveness.
Even returning what was taken doesn't automatically complete the process.
The relationship between the people involved also deserves attention.
And that raises a question I wish more people would ask themselves.
If you know you've hurt someone, why are you spending so much energy explaining your intentions instead of finding out what you can do to repair the damage?
I also think of Ben Zoma's teaching in Pirkei Avot 4:1.
He asks who is wise and answers that the wise person learns from everyone.
I love that idea.
Because it challenges something many of us struggle with.
We don't necessarily want to learn from someone younger than we are.
Or someone whose opinions we generally disagree with.
Or someone we've spent years believing we know better than.
Imagine a parent who has been raising children for forty years being corrected by an adult daughter.
The parent might immediately think, "I've been a mother longer than you've been alive."
Well, yes.
But being a mother for forty years doesn't establish that you've been right about everything for forty years.
Experience can make someone wiser.
It can also give someone forty years of practice making the same mistake.
And if the daughter has a reasonable point, dismissing it because she's younger means the parent is choosing authority over learning.
I don't think that's wisdom.
A genuinely wise person should be able to say, "You know something? I hadn't considered that. I think you're right."
Even when those words come from a parent to a child.
Especially then.
An Apology Isn't Supposed to Become Another Argument
There's another habit that I think deserves attention.
Some people begin an apology and then immediately turn it into a complaint about the person they're supposedly apologizing to.
"I'm sorry I yelled, but you wouldn't listen."
"I'm sorry I embarrassed you, but you embarrassed me first."
"I'm sorry I said that, but you know how sensitive I am."
By the time they're finished, the person receiving the apology is practically being asked to apologize for causing it.
What happened here?
The conversation was supposed to be about your behavior.
Now we're discussing why the other person made you behave that way.
And sometimes the person apologizing becomes angry when the explanation isn't accepted.
"I said I was sorry! What more do you want?"
Well, perhaps the other person wants you to acknowledge what you actually did.
Without immediately explaining why they deserved it.
Now, I'm not suggesting that every disagreement has one innocent person and one guilty person.
Sometimes both people behave badly.
Sometimes a person genuinely was provoked.
And sometimes the person demanding an apology has contributed to the problem.
But that doesn't mean responsibility has to be negotiated like a business transaction.
You don't have to wait for someone else to admit their mistake before acknowledging yours.
If you yelled, you can apologize for yelling.
If the other person insulted you, that issue can be addressed separately.
Both conversations can happen.
What I wouldn't recommend is turning an apology into an opportunity to prosecute the other person's behavior.
That's not reconciliation.
That's just an argument with a more polite opening sentence.
How Do You Actually Admit You're Wrong?
I think a good apology begins by identifying what happened.
Not what you meant to happen.
Not what you wish the other person understood.
What you actually did.
Suppose you accused a coworker of failing to complete a task, only to discover that the work had been finished and you simply hadn't checked.
You could say, "Well, nobody told me it was done."
And perhaps that's true.
But you accused someone without verifying the facts.
Why not say that?
"I accused you of not finishing the work without checking first. I was wrong, and I'm sorry."
If you made the accusation in front of other people, you should also consider correcting it in front of those people.
A private apology doesn't necessarily repair a public embarrassment.
Or imagine that you repeatedly interrupted someone who was trying to explain something important.
You later realize that you misunderstood the situation because you hadn't listened.
Don't tell the person that they should have explained themselves more clearly.
Try this instead:
"I kept interrupting you, and I misunderstood what you were saying. I should have listened. I'm sorry."
Then do something that may feel surprisingly difficult.
Stop talking.
Let the other person respond.
Because an apology shouldn't require the injured person to sit through another ten minutes of explanation.
And if that person says they're still upset?
Accept that.
People aren't obligated to feel better the moment you've decided to apologize.
Now, Jewish teachings on forgiveness also place responsibilities on the person who has been wronged. Sincere repentance and reasonable efforts to make amends shouldn't be dismissed casually, and traditional Jewish law takes the obligation to forgive seriously.
But that doesn't turn an apology into a demand for immediate emotional reassurance.
Nor does forgiveness automatically settle every question about rebuilding trust or resuming a close relationship.
You may have apologized sincerely.
The other person may even believe you.
But if you've repeated the same behavior twenty times, don't be surprised if the twenty-first apology receives a less enthusiastic response.
At some point, people want to see something different.
Which brings me to another part of Maimonides' discussion.
In Mishneh Torah, Repentance 2:1, he describes complete repentance through the example of someone who encounters the same opportunity to do wrong again but chooses not to repeat the behavior.
I think that's an excellent standard to consider in everyday life.
If you apologize for interrupting someone, what happens the next time that person speaks?
If you apologize for making an unfair accusation, do you check your facts before accusing them again?
If you apologize for being dishonest, do you tell the truth when another lie would be more convenient?
Because ultimately, people learn whether they can trust your apology by watching what happens afterward.
You can deliver a beautiful speech about your mistakes.
But if your behavior never changes, what exactly was the speech supposed to accomplish?
Admitting You're Wrong Doesn't Mean Accepting Blame for Everything
I also want to make an important distinction.
There's a difference between accepting responsibility for your own mistakes and accepting blame simply to end an argument.
I wouldn't encourage someone to apologize for something they didn't do.
And I certainly wouldn't encourage a person dealing with repeated mistreatment to keep apologizing because the other person refuses to accept any responsibility.
Sometimes people are pressured into admitting wrongdoing because someone else is louder, more intimidating, or unwilling to continue the conversation until they get an apology.
That's not the kind of accountability I'm talking about.
An honest admission has to be honest.
If you're wrong, say so.
If you're not wrong, you don't have to pretend otherwise.
And if you're uncertain, there's nothing shameful about saying, "I may have misunderstood. Let me check."
I actually wish people said that more often.
Imagine how many pointless arguments could be avoided if we were willing to verify something before insisting we're right.
Or if we could acknowledge that someone else's explanation might contain information we hadn't considered.
That's another reason I appreciate Ben Zoma's teaching about learning from everyone.
The ability to reconsider an opinion isn't evidence that a person lacks confidence.
Sometimes it demonstrates enough confidence to admit that being right isn't the most important thing in the room.
Why We Respect People Who Can Admit Their Mistakes
Think about the television characters we've discussed.
Walter White spent years hiding selfish motives beneath claims of family responsibility.
Rory Gilmore defended a relationship she should have known was wrong.
Eleanor Shellstrop wanted to keep a wonderful reward even though she knew she hadn't earned it.
All three had explanations.
And I can understand aspects of those explanations.
Walter was frightened about his family's future.
Rory had unresolved feelings for Dean.
Eleanor was terrified of losing the comfortable afterlife she'd stumbled into.
But understanding their motivations doesn't require approving their choices.
That's something I think we frequently confuse.
We imagine that if someone has a sympathetic reason for behaving badly, then perhaps the behavior isn't really so bad.
Or we assume that if we criticize someone's actions, we're denying the difficulties that led to them.
I don't think either assumption is necessary.
We can understand Walter's fear without excusing his criminal conduct.
We can recognize Rory's feelings without pretending Dean wasn't married.
And we can appreciate Eleanor's predicament while acknowledging that allowing Michael to take the blame was wrong.
In fact, I think people become more interesting when we're willing to evaluate them that way.
They're neither perfect heroes nor irredeemable villains.
They're people making decisions.
Sometimes good ones.
Sometimes terrible ones.
And occasionally, if we're fortunate, they learn something.
The same principle applies outside television.
I don't expect everyone in my life to be right all the time.
That would be a rather unreasonable standard, especially considering that I can't promise to meet it myself.
But I do expect people to be willing to reconsider their behavior when someone brings a legitimate problem to their attention.
And I respect someone who can admit a mistake far more than someone who can invent fifty explanations for it.
Because clever explanations don't necessarily demonstrate good judgment.
Sometimes they simply demonstrate that a person is very good at defending themselves.
Walter White was certainly good at that.
I'd rather take my ethical advice from someone who knows when to stop arguing.
My Verdict: Being Wrong Isn't the Embarrassing Part. Refusing to Admit It Is.
I don't think admitting you're wrong should be treated as some extraordinary act of heroism.
It's something ordinary people should be willing to do.
We misunderstand things.
We make assumptions.
We lose our patience.
We behave selfishly.
And sometimes we make decisions that seemed reasonable at the time but turn out to have been terribly misguided.
That's life.
What troubles me is the person who treats every correction as an attack.
The parent who cannot accept that an adult child knows something she doesn't.
The spouse who interprets every complaint as an accusation that he's a terrible husband.
The friend who would rather defend a hurtful remark than acknowledge that it shouldn't have been made.
Why is being right so important that we're willing to damage a relationship to preserve the appearance of it?
I think about Eleanor finally telling the truth in The Good Place.
She had every incentive to keep quiet.
Confessing could cost her the wonderful existence she'd been enjoying.
But she reached a point where allowing someone else to suffer for her deception became harder to justify than telling the truth.
And that's a form of growth I admire.
I think about Walter finally telling Skyler that his decisions weren't entirely about providing for his family.
His admission arrived far too late to save their marriage or undo the harm he'd caused.
But at least he stopped expecting her to accept an explanation he could no longer honestly believe himself.
And I think about Rory.
Not because her mistake was comparable in scale to Walter's crimes, but because her reaction is so recognizable.
She didn't want to believe she'd become the kind of person who would knowingly participate in an affair.
So she tried to make the circumstances sound different.
I suspect plenty of us have done something similar on a smaller scale.
We've defended a mistake because admitting it would require us to reconsider how we see ourselves.
But I don't believe a good person is someone who never does anything wrong.
I believe a good person is someone who cares enough about right and wrong to acknowledge the difference, even when it's uncomfortable.
And Jewish teachings on teshuvah offer a valuable reminder that recognizing wrongdoing is only the beginning.
We also have to consider the harm, make reasonable efforts to repair it, and change the behavior that caused it.
So the next time someone points out that you've made a mistake, consider whether you really need to deliver an entire defense of your character.
Perhaps you misunderstood.
Perhaps you were tired.
Perhaps someone else contributed to the situation.
You can discuss those circumstances when they're relevant.
But if you know you were wrong, why not begin there?
"You were right. I was wrong. I'm sorry."
Then listen.
Make things right if you can.
And try not to repeat the mistake.
Being a mensch doesn't require winning every argument. Sometimes it requires recognizing that the other person was right all along.
And if you can do that without adding a "but" to the end of your apology, I'd say you're making excellent progress.
Sources and Further Reading
Breaking Bad — “Felina,” Season 5, Episode 16 (final episode screenplay)
Gilmore Girls — Season 4 and Season 5 episode descriptions, TV Guide
The Good Place — “The Eternal Shriek,” episode scene reference, Kinolab
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