So you went and stuck your foot in your mouth, now what?

[goddess_nemesis]

I thought of this after a conversation I had with TT member in the chatroom.

He approached me asking me if I were friends with another female who was also in the chatroom. He told me that he had pissed her off because he immediately jumped into cybering and she wasn't interested. He had asked me what he could do to make amends for that. He knew that he handled it wrong when he approached her.

I asked him if he had apologized and he had; he said she didn't care. He still wanted to make amends. I suggested that he try getting to know her first. Maybe send an occasional PM, saying 'hello, how are you?' in a way to show her that he wasn't a creeper who just wanted to cyber and that he wanted to get to know her.

I'm sure there have been other people who have done the same, either here on TMF or on TT. Approached someone and ended up sticking their foot in the mouth. What are some of your suggestions for someone who sticks their foot in their mouth and wants to make amends for that?

 

[Bugman]

He made a mistake,understands that and offered an apology.Said apology it seems was not excepted.I don't know about the pm thing.Might work,might not.She might not even read it if she was that upset.I imagine this has happened to her before.He might just have to chalk this up in the live and learn column,and move on.

 

[Skipadeedoodah]

I'm a professional foot-in-mouth-sticker, and I have no magical solution. I just try to be as sincere and apologetic as possible...and being a girl doesn't hurt - throw on sheepish face and bat your eyelashes a little and that usually helps LOL

 

[vladtickleman22]

Learn from it and move on. Eventually she might come around and realize he is actually sorry. I've learned certain women are best left alone for a while instead of jumping right in with the apologizing. Because that just makes them more pissed off.

 

[sasaxrah]

Apologize. If it's not accepted, move on. Apologizing ten different ways only makes the offended person more annoyed and potentially further creeped out. Sometimes you mess up and you can't make it better because you can't force someone to accept an apology. C'est la vie.

 

[Deleted member 66627]

The best thing has already been mentioned a few times in this thread; Learn from it and don't do it again. 🙂

 

[Capnmad]

He did something foolhardy. Fine. A simple "Sorry" should suffice, and then you just bop along with the convo... If she gets all hung up on it, pity, but it's just words.

This reminds me of discussions about "breaking your fetish to someone" and "talking to your kids about sex" discussions. The moment you amp the thing to some level of importance, a person will take it as such...

When you say you have a "fetish", or preface telling them about your interest by saying, "I know this is totally weird", you're already giving them cues about how to think -- that person's weird.

When you get all awkward when talking to your kids about sex, you'd best believe they're going to feel awkward, because you're giving off all the cues that indicate it's awkward and they should feel how you feel about it.

After a verbal gaffe, if you say "sorry" and keep going, it's all good. If she doesn't want to talk after that, peace out, find someone else, live and learn. There's a billion women out there -- Hell, more than three billion. Time will tell the rest. If you feel the need to make a full blown apology, you're giving cues to the person that you've done something truly offensive (when in fact you probably just made a small tactical error), and odds are, they'll agree with your cueing that it was serious, and not forgive you.

 

[steph]

Mph, tough call babe.
Some guys are just tools and some chicks are just bitches. You and I know some of both round these parts, yes? 😉 Maybe someone here really hurt her or maybe he came off like a total jackass, who knows? I think what some of the guys here need to get is that you have to approach a gal CAREFULLY if you want it to transition into something more eventually. We've all made mistakes, said things we wish we could take back, blah, blah, blah...Maya Angelou taught me that "when you know better, you do better." My spidey sense tells me that he's prob blown it big time with this one and he should use it as a learning lesson and move on.
XOXO

I'm sure there have been other people who have done the same, either here on TMF or on TT. Approached someone and ended up sticking their foot in the mouth. What are some of your suggestions for someone who sticks their foot in their mouth and wants to make amends for that?

 

[Flatfoot]

The whole, "jumping directly into cyber" will probably leave a bad taste in the mouths of many, and I don't know of many people masochistic enough to continue tasting things that taste bad.

As far as the PM thing, I'm gonna disagree, though some would argue with me on the boldness issue. Many women think a man should be bold, and bold approaches can appear confident, which I agree with. However, boldly approaching a person in an attempted private conversation on the internet isn't an accurate display of actual boldness, and can still appear threatening to the person they approach. I feel that the best approach in "foot-in-mouth" syndrome is preventative maintenance. As far as internet chat, it's best to start speaking PUBLICLY in the room, allowing the general population to get to know you a little bit BEFORE attempting to get to know a random stranger on a more intimate, private level. Basically, sell yourself a little beyond the whole fetish thing, because we're ALL on THAT boat. What sets YOU apart?

Perhaps this seems to stray a bit from the question of putting your foot in your mouth, but it addresses it through ways to avoid it. Once people get to know you better, putting your foot in your mouth isn't so bad, because people become more comfortable around you. I once put my foot in my mouth at work when I complained to a coworker about how bad Kentucky drivers were, and he was from Kentucky. Fortunately, we had known each other to where it merely results in a non-serious argument about which drivers are worse, Kentucky drivers or Ohio drivers, as we pointed out examples on the road.

 

[Artoo]

<snip>

What this guy said. All you can do is apologise and move on - if they don't take well to it...well, that's their perogative, innit?