Let me start with a spilled cocktail.
You’re making your way through a crowded club and you bump into someone. Half their drink ends up on their outfit. Quick: what do you say?
There are three classic options. The first is the counterattack: “Well, you were standing in the middle of the way! And who wears white to Kit Kat anyway?” The second is the collapse: “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, I’m such an idiot, I’ve ruined your outfit, your evening, probably your entire weekend, please tell me you don’t hate me!” And the third: “Oh, shit, sorry! Are you okay? Can I get you a tissue? Or another drink? Preferably one I won’t spill on you.”
We all know the third answer is the right one. Nobody needs a workshop for that. And yet, add a bit of alcohol, a bit of embarrassment, or a partner who is already upset with us, and a surprising number of perfectly intelligent adults start improvising A or B.
I’d like to talk about why. And about what we could do instead, particularly in places where the opportunities for things to go wrong are generous, and where the road to hell is paved, as ever, with good intentions.
A quick note on scope: I’m not talking about deliberate abuse, coercion or serious violence. Those situations call for protection, intervention and consequences that go far beyond interpersonal repair. I’m talking about the enormous, ordinary territory of humans who make mistakes, misunderstand each other, or react badly when something doesn’t go their way. Which is, as far as I can tell, all of us, most weekends.
The judge in our heads
Most of us like to think of ourselves as decent people. We care about others, we try to behave responsibly. Then we do something that hurts someone, and we face an uncomfortable little syllogism: I’m a good person. Good people don’t hurt people. So what does that make me?
Shame answers that question very quickly, usually in the voice of an inner judge who needs a culprit by the end of the day. Sometimes the judge looks outward: They should have watched where they were going. This club is too crowded. Sometimes it turns on us: I’m so clumsy, I ruin everything.
The second version is the sneaky one, because it looks a lot like accountability. I feel terrible, I’m punishing myself, surely that means I’m taking responsibility? Not necessarily. Self-flagellation can be a way of getting a bit of control back when we don’t know how to fix things or what the other person will do next. And sometimes, if we’re honest, there’s a hidden hope in it: if I punish myself enough, you won’t have to.
Notice what happens between the two people. If I get defensive, you start defending yourself, and soon we’re having an argument about who is responsible for the cocktail. If I start explaining what a terrible person I am, you end up reassuring me (“No, no, it’s fine, don’t feel bad!”) and now you’re comforting me while still wearing your drink.
Either way, we’ve drifted away from the three things that actually matter: understanding what happened, taking responsibility for our part, and doing what we can to make it right.
Feeling bad, but not that bad
Many of us grew up with the idea that if you do something wrong, you deserve to be punished, and that the worse you feel, the better you’ll learn your lesson. I’d invite you to check that against your own experience. Does making someone feel terrible, ourselves included, actually help them understand what went wrong and behave differently next time? In my experience it mostly teaches people to hide things better.
I like therapist Terry Real’s definition of healthy self-esteem: being able to feel appropriately bad about our bad behaviour while still holding ourselves in high regard as flawed human beings. Guilt says I did something wrong. Shame says there is something wrong with me. Guilt can be worked with. Shame mostly wants to leave the room.
If making a mistake proves I’m stupid, selfish or simply bad, then admitting it is a threat to my whole identity, and of course I’ll defend myself. If I’m a flawed human who is capable of learning, I can look at what I did without having to put my entire personality on trial.
The same goes for conflict. If every disagreement is a sign that something is wrong with the relationship, we will try to avoid it or win it. But a lot of conflict is just misunderstanding, different expectations, or things we didn’t know about each other yet. Working through it can bring us closer.
This is not, I should say, an invitation to go out and make mistakes as a personal development programme. Some harm can’t be undone, and other people shouldn’t have to get hurt so that we can grow.
Making room for a pause
Understanding all this is lovely, and absolutely useless at 2 a.m. when we’re angry, ashamed or afraid. We need a bit of space between the impulse and what we do with it.
My favourite way to create that space is through the senses, because it works anywhere, including on a very loud dance floor, and nobody has to know. Touch something near you: your sleeve, the couch, your own arm. Is it soft, rough, warm, cold? Then find something with a different texture. Then one more. That’s it. It won’t make the shame or the anger disappear, but it gives your attention something specific to hold, and that can interrupt the automatic reaction for long enough to notice what’s going on. Am I getting defensive? Am I judging myself, or them? Am I trying to escape this conversation?
One caveat: if someone is being hurt or a boundary is being crossed, we stop what’s happening first. We do not leave a person in distress while we get intimately acquainted with the texture of our underwear.
Two people, two versions
Before we apologise, it helps to know what we’re apologising for, and two people can experience the same moment very differently.
Say you’re watching two friends play, and one of them looks at you and smiles. At Kit Kat that smile can mean anything from “Hello, nice to see you” to “Please come and do unspeakable things to me.” There are, regrettably, no subtitles. You take it as welcome, step a little closer, and keep watching. Later one of them says: “You know I don’t like being watched like that. It felt like you were deliberately intruding.”
From where you stood, you were enjoying the scene and had every reason to think you were welcome. From where they stood, the smile was just a friendly acknowledgement, they didn’t want to interrupt the scene to ask you to move, and since you’re friends, surely you should have known.
The first instinct is to correct everything we disagree with. But you smiled at me! And people watch each other here! A perfectly valid argument, if the goal is to win a debate about club etiquette.
Aikido has a useful idea here: rather than meeting resistance with more resistance, you look for where you can move together. In conflict, that means skipping the hunt for everything the other person got wrong, and looking for the part you can honestly acknowledge. “I understand that having me so close made you uncomfortable, and I’m sorry I didn’t check. I genuinely thought I was welcome.” That is empathy for their experience and responsibility for my assumption, without pretending I ignored their boundaries on purpose. Understanding someone’s experience doesn’t mean signing up to their whole interpretation.
Two caveats. Different perspectives do not mean equal responsibility: sometimes we simply misunderstand each other, and sometimes one person clearly crosses a line, and good intentions don’t change that. And the question to keep in your pocket is this one: what part of what they’re saying can I genuinely acknowledge?
Why owning it is a good deal
I’d like to convince you that accountability is actually a bargain. It can rebuild trust, stop a conflict escalating and sometimes even strengthen a relationship. We get to learn something, and with luck not repeat it.
But my favourite benefit is self-respect. Think about how you feel after you’ve been defensive, made excuses, or blamed someone else. Even when we win the argument, do we feel good afterwards? Compare that with: “Yes, I got that wrong. I’m sorry. Let me see what I can do about it.” We might still feel guilty or embarrassed, and the other person might still be upset, but we’ve behaved in a way we can respect. And someone who trusts themselves to notice a mistake, have the uncomfortable conversation and not fall apart in the process is a lot less afraid of getting things wrong.
There is a catch. Accountability doesn’t give me control over what happens next. I can apologise and change my behaviour, but I can’t make anyone forgive me, trust me again, or even talk to me. That’s the hardest part, and it’s where we start fishing for reassurance: Are you still angry? Have you forgiven me? Can we please sort this out now? So here’s the question I try to ask myself: am I trying to repair the harm, or am I trying to get rid of my own discomfort?
The actual repair
Entire books have been written on repair, so let me stick to four things worth remembering in a club or at a party.
Match the response to the mistake. Stepped on a foot? Apologise, check they’re okay, move on. No reconciliation ceremony required. Crossed someone’s boundary while flirting or playing? Stop, check in, and if they want to talk, find somewhere you can actually hear each other. Ask what happened, listen without interrupting, apologise for your part, ask what they need. And don’t assume that an apology means you can pick up where you left off. Ask. They might want to continue, change something, or end the interaction.
Sometimes the best time is not now. You’re upset, your partner is upset, someone has been drinking, the music is loud. How brilliant will this conversation be by the pool? If there’s no immediate safety concern, deal with what needs attention tonight and agree a specific time to talk, ideally within 24 hours. If you’re the one asking for the break, you’re the one who follows up. And if it’s someone you’ve just met, offer the possibility and let them decide whether and how to stay in contact. Please don’t turn a repair attempt into a creative way of getting someone’s phone number.
Repair mid-argument. You don’t have to wait until the fight is over. “That came out wrong. Can I try again?” “I’m getting defensive. Give me a moment.” “I think we’re making this worse. Can we slow down?” Small changes in how we talk can change where the conversation goes.
Know what happens next. Are you taking space, ending the interaction, meeting later, leaving together? Does someone need support before you part? Our phones are at the cloakroom, and “I’ll find you later” is not much of a plan in a club with several floors and hundreds of naked people.
And when you’re the one who got hurt
How we respond when we’re on the receiving end matters too. If someone makes a joke about your body and you’re not amused, you could say, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Or you could say, “That joke about my body made me uncomfortable. I don’t find it funny and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t do it again.” The second one describes what happened, how it landed, and what you’d like to change. It gives the other person something to work with. And if you want to work things out, stay open to their reply: when someone says “I’ve been an ass,” a “thank you for acknowledging it” gets you much further than “you always do this!”
Then there’s the harder case, where both people are hurt. Your partner forgot an agreement to check in while playing with someone else. You felt forgotten, found them, and called them a selfish asshole. Now they’re hurt by what you said, and you’re still hurt about the agreement. “You hurt me!” “Well, you hurt me too!” Congratulations, two hurt people and nobody listening. Try instead: “I know I said something hurtful, and I’m sorry. I’m still upset about our agreement, and I need us to talk about that too.” Both hurts deserve attention. That doesn’t make both people equally responsible: breaking an agreement and responding with an insult are two different things to own, and one doesn’t cancel the other.
A word of care here. Accepting an apology, forgiving someone and trusting them again are three different things, and you can do one without the others. The person who was hurt is never responsible for making the other person behave better, and owes nobody a gentle explanation, a quick forgiveness or another chance. But when both want to work it out, both can make the conversation easier, even when the responsibility isn’t equal. And if the same boundary keeps getting crossed despite repeated, heartfelt apologies, it may be time to stop discussing better apologies and start making decisions about boundaries. You can give someone a chance to repair without giving them unlimited chances to hurt you.
The rest of us
There’s one more group we haven’t mentioned: everyone else. When something goes wrong at a party, there are usually other people nearby, including, occasionally, someone who has no idea what happened and already has strong opinions about it.
A friend comes to you upset after an argument. You care about them, you want to protect them, and suddenly you’re ready to march across the club and give the other person a piece of your mind. Hang on. Do you know what happened? Did your friend ask for that? Before appointing yourself judge, bodyguard and head of the emergency relationship committee, try a simpler question: “Do you need company, help, or some space?” Maybe they want someone to listen. Maybe they want help with a conversation, in which case check that both people want you involved. Maybe they just need a hug and to get back to their evening.
If someone is in danger, being harassed or having boundaries violated, safety comes first: intervene appropriately or get staff involved. But with ordinary disagreements, we rarely know the whole story, and being a good friend doesn’t mean taking sides or spreading the story around the club. We can support someone without taking over their conflict. The question to ask: am I helping this person deal with what happened, or deciding for them what should happen next?
The culture we make
All these small choices, how we handle our own mistakes and how we respond to other people’s, add up to the culture of a place. How comfortable people feel speaking up, how seriously boundaries are taken, how willing we are to say “I got that wrong,” and how far we trust each other to respond decently when something goes wrong. We come to places like Kit Kat for freedom, pleasure, connection and exploration, and occasionally to do things our grandmothers would prefer not to hear about. With that many people, desires and boundaries in one building, things will go wrong. What matters is what we do next.
So here’s a small experiment for your next night out. Catch yourself before you get defensive. Check one assumption. Ask someone what they need. Or find the courage to acknowledge something you got wrong.
And a question to take with you: what would change in the way you connect with people if you trusted yourself to handle difficult moments, even when you don’t get everything right?