Why it’s hard to admit you caused harm

As the imperfect people we are, each of us has the inevitable capacity to cause harm—harm in our relationships, harm to the one we love, as well as to those we aren’t as close with. Harm presents itself in many ways and is experienced differently by different people. On top of that, harm in terms of relationship and sexual violence isn’t always an aggressive assault and usually includes more nuanced instances of coercion or convincing someone into something they aren’t ready for or interested in. We may not even know that we’ve hurt someone else if we did so unintentionally, or haven’t taken the time to consider the impact of our actions. 

When we do recognize that we’ve caused harm, the institutions that structure our lives make it almost impossible to admit so. Colleges produce a student body that is afraid to openly talk about harm, for fear of being shamed and rejected in social circles. Students fear they may even get suspended, expelled, or face legal consequences in the case of allegations. We’ve put so much faith into our institutions, including our university offices and the criminal justice system, that we forget there are other ways of addressing and stopping harm in our lives. To us, this starts by having honest conversations about it—the ways we have hurt and been hurt by others. We’d like to imagine a world that puts survivor’s needs first, where people who have caused harm to them could take accountability for their actions, stop that behavior, and in some cases, repair the relationship.