Colleen Crawford Being in the dog house is no fun – just ask any dog. Unfortunately though second only to dogs, it’s men who spend the most amount of time in there and who are often grovelling for forgiveness often without knowing why. If you’re in a relationship then you’ve probably been there a few times lately, the question is, how do you go about getting out of there and getting a girl to forgive and forget? Here is some handy advice for getting your name rubbed out of the bad book and pencilled back into the good one.
What Not to Do
One of the big problems when trying to get a girl to forgive you is that a lot of guys tend to unwittingly do just the wrong thing and unwittingly make matters worse rather than better. Things that you might think are the right thing to do can often be misconstrued – for example buying flowers. While it might be hard to see how buying flowers could be seen as anything other than a white flag, it can often cheapen their grievance, feel a little too convenient and easy and even come across as somewhat sexist (women love flowers right? That’ll fix anything). It’s unfortunate but trying to win a girl over with something material can suggest you don’t want to engage with the real problem.
Whatever you do, do not blame her rage on her being a woman. This is a highly upsetting thing to do as it again cheapens their gripe by suggesting it’s ‘just hormones’ and it’s also highly arrogant and ignorant. Think it, don’t say it.
What You Can Do
Instead then the better option is to start with a genuine and heartfelt apology. This is a mature way to behave and a great peace token. It takes guts to apologise outright and a girl will likely respect this even if they don’t accept the apology.
Many guys will feel loathe to apologise however if they feel they did nothing wrong – sometimes it can feel like it’s always the guy who is apologising and you may be justified in feeling this way. However you have to ask yourself whether you’re frustrated enough to end the relationship, because if you’re not then you may as well try to apologise and patch things up. Bear in mind that you don’t have to apologise for your actions if you don’t feel you should – you can instead just apologise for making her feel the way she does and for the situation, and this sympathy and admittance of at least partial blame can really go a long way to helping to patch things up.
Depending on the scale of the argument you may be able to ‘pester’ your way back into her good books. If she is mad at you for something petty then she will likely be unable to hold out too long if you keep nagging at her and stay vigilant and cute. Send her lots of texts, or if you’re living together keep hugging her and smiling at her. Eventually she will likely drop her defences – particularly as a lot of the time she will be teaching you a lesson but already have forgiven you.
If the argument is more serious (you slept with her sister) then she will probably need some time away from you to cheer up. Give her some alone time to mull things over and to get her space and then approach tentatively with a genuine apology. Make her believe it and again try to stay cute so that she feels mean in being mad with you.