Have you ever used this phrase in a conflict or when faced with someone who is offended or hurting? Or, have you ever been on the receiving end of these words, and felt invalidated and unheard?

Let’s talk about that.

This phrase is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. From the outside, it might seem nice and fluffy – it’s helpful to explain your intentions, and it should help solidify your relationship and make the other person feel better! – but on the inside, this phrase has teeth, ripping into your relationship with a lack of accountability, a lack of empathy, and the invalidation of the other person’s experience.

We are responsible for the impact we have on others, regardless of our intention. 

I’ll use the analogy of a hammer and nails. 

Let’s say you’re building a house, and you’ve just put a board into place. You line up a nail, and BAM! – you hammer the nail in. But, instead of a nice clean hit, your angle was off, and the nail bent.

You may have intended for the nail to be driven in perfectly straight, but instead you made a mistake and you’re left with the consequences. Now you have to bend the nail back into alignment, or remove the nail entirely and start anew. 

There are plenty of analogies like this, but the bottom line is the same – whether or not you are well-intentioned, you are still capable of causing other people pain.

Repairing that damage requires accountability for how your actions (well-intended or not) affect others, and empathy – a focus and validation of someone else’s experience. 

When someone comes forward expressing their pain, it’s important to acknowledge how you played a role in causing that pain.

“I’m sorry that my actions created or contributed to this outcome, and caused you pain.” It’s also important to offer empathy, “I understand why you feel the way you feel,” “If the same thing happened to me under the same circumstances, I would feel similarly.”

This combination of accountability and empathy allows the injured party to feel understood, and opens up a dialogue as to how that pain could be avoided in the future.

“That wasn’t my intention” focuses on the self, rather than the injured party.

The phrase, “that wasn’t my intention,” slips past what the other person is experiencing, and instead brings the attention back to you and your experience.

It makes sense why we’d do this – we’re human, and we don’t want to be accused, mislabeled, or taken for granted. When faced with someone else’s pain, it’s easy to lead with this phrase for a number of possible reasons:

• • You believe that you need only be accountable for mistakes that were made with malicious intent. “That wasn’t my intention” → “I didn’t intend on harming you, so I’m not at fault.” 

• • We believe that people shouldn’t feel negative emotions if they had a negative experience but our intentions were good. “That wasn’t my intention” → “I intended something good, so you shouldn’t feel negatively.” 

• • We disagree with someone’s experience (or the ‘facts’ that lead to the experience). This is a failure of empathy, “That wasn’t my intention” → “You shouldn’t feel that way.”

• • We fear the consequences. If we acknowledge that our actions were the cause of someone else’s pain, that might lead to some tough decisions that need to be made. “That wasn’t my intention” → “I fear where we are headed.”

• • We equate making a mistake as a failure of character, rather than a failure of action. “That wasn’t my intention” → “I’m not a bad person.”

• • You fear judgement or vulnerability. If you acknowledge that your actions were the cause of someone’s pain, that might open you up to criticism or ridicule. This can be especially hard if you have a history of being taken advantage of or have been abused physically or verbally in moments of vulnerability. “That wasn’t my intention” → “I don’t want to be taken advantage of.”

Now, it’s possible you’re thinking “Hey, I’m totally accountable – but, I use this phrase because…”

Fill in the blank. Is the reason stemming from how you’re viewed, or your reputation? Is it a non-apology? or perhaps you want to communicate that you didn’t mean to cause someone pain? 

If, perhaps, the reason has anything to do with the intensity of the injured party’s reaction, then it might come down to only being willing to be held accountable for part of their experience.

But, it’s not about you. Impact is about the other person – it’s all a bent nail – well-intentioned or not.

We don’t get to claim we did nothing wrong when we were too emotionally lazy to do something right. That’s a form of interpersonal negligence.

~ Lauren Bear

When is the phrase “That wasn’t my intention” helpful? 

Just about never, really.

Even without all the self-centered and hurtful messages this phrase brings, talking about what your intentions weren’t doesn’t offer clarity to most conversations. However, it can be useful – even critical – to talk about what your intentions were – if the injured party asks.

Healthy prerequisites for this conversation are when you’ve already taken responsibility for the impact you had on the other person, and when you’ve held space for their pain.

The reason for having this discussion about intention is that when we speak about someone’s intention, we’re talking about someone’s character. If your character is in question, the conversation can change from focusing on the immediate hurt, to focusing on viability of a long-term relationship of any kind.

However, you might not be asked what your intentions were. After all, when someone voices their pain and seeks reparation within a relationship, they don’t look to repair a relationship with someone whom they believe to have bad intentions.

Even in severe cases of abuse, people will stick around after being treated horribly because they believe deep down that the other person is good and has – at most – selfish intentions, not outwardly malicious intentions.

It’s not a requirement that the injured party asks about your intentions. In some cases, they may not want to know.

However, it’s also true that the injured party needs to take responsibility for their own assumptions of intention; their pain is valid, but if action is taken on assumed intention, it can lead to a world of unnecessary hurt.

When it comes to the phrase “That wasn’t my intention,” I’ve flipped both sides of the coin – feeling hurt and unseen as the injured party, but also wanting to explain myself as the person who caused the hurt.

Understanding how this phrase actually does more damage than repair has improved my relationships, and has pushed me to be more vulnerable, accept my mistakes, and then grow from them.

As for human intention, I think for the most part we aren’t against each other, but we are often for ourselves. Growing beyond that to care for others is our task.