Why I’m no longer interested in your excuses

It might be a neurodivergent trait, but I have always loved to ask why.

I can ask it to levels of beligerance that have got me into trouble at school (“Julia, stop being so obtuse”) and in the workplace.

In some settings asking why is useful, and in many ways I’m proud of not accepting superficial answers. Asking why made me a great journalist, because sometimes you just have to peer behind the curtain.

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realised knowing why doesn’t gain me – or you – an awful lot.

I’ve written before about how I’m not really the person people show-up for. I’ve accepted that, and I’m cool with it now. When people would let me down, 20-odd years ago, I’d wait for the excuse, or I’d demand to know why. But what I found out was that knowing why didn’t make me feel any better. I was let down by how the action landed, not what caused it.

When social media first came about, people would get caught out – they would make excuses for not attending an event, and then they’d be tagged on Facebook at an event elsewhere at the same time. That happened to me and it stung. As I grew up and had more friends with children, I heard the ‘my child is sick, we can’t come over,” excuse so many times I realised it was a dud.

It didn’t matter if the reason given was a truth or a lie, it still hurt that something – whatever it was – took priority over me.

After I left a manipulative and abusive relationship in my 30s, I spent countless therapy hours picking the bones and trying to work out why I was abused and manipulated. I genuinely believed that if I could work out why, I could stop it ever happening again. I believed that closure lay in the answer to the question, why?

It was a friend, not a therapist who told me, you might never know why – and that’s ok. Some men pick naive and vulnerable women to manipulate because they are easy prey. Some men pick accomplished and clever women to manipulate because the fall is bigger and they love to see it. Was I naive, or was I smart? I’ll never know. The point is that I was emotionally abused and manipulated. Knowing why doesn’t buy me ten years of my life back, but being absolutely clear about how behaviour lands, how something makes me feel, would help me identify it sooner.

People’s behaviour is often terrible. Sometimes they claim incompetence – I knew a girl at university whose entire personality was her incompetence, just like Boris Johnson during Covid. She got away with so much stuff on the grounds of being ‘ditzy’. But I’m fairly sure now that this was a deliberate act to get her out of sticky situations. And I’ll never know for sure. But what I am certain of is that when she let me down that time in 2001, it hurt like hell – malice or not.

I see a lot of memes that say things like ‘pay attention to how he treats you’ and these are so important. When we embark on a new relationship, we want to believe that the person we are with is amazing. We excuse and forgive them so much. My ex-husband showed up to one birthday of mine in our entire ten years together, but Goddamn if I didn’t excuse the first seven times he did that to me.

“Oh he’s really busy with work.”

“He has a lot on at the moment.”

“It’s ok because I wanted to go out with the girls anyway!”

Yknow what? He just didn’t want to be at my birthday. And it hurt the first time, and everytime. But I forgave him – when I should have seen it for the red flag it was: not prioritising me.

Of course asking why can help move the world along. We need inquests and investigations to help us come to terms with psychopaths and the collective actions or inaction of society. But you are not The Hague. You are not a detective or a lawyer, you have no budget, no mandate, and no investigatory powers. On a personal level you need to pay attention to how something lands, not why it was fired.

And if you really, really need to know why: make something up. I created a whole narrative to explain my ex’s behaviour. I invented an entire story. I might be right, I’m probably wrong, but crucially I will never, ever know. Even if I asked him, could I be sure he was telling the truth? So what is the point wasting your life on trying to determine the indeterminable?

Accept someone’s behaviour for what it is. Pay attention to how it makes you feel. But ignore the excuses and explanations.