Apologizing first isn’t losing. It’s being the one brave enough to end the cold war.

Silence can feel like a draw, as though nobody is losing while nobody moves. Both of you are paying, in the small dread of every shared room and in the thing you have stopped being able to say to each other. Going first looks like conceding the argument, but it is really the only move either of you has that ends the cost. The scoreboard is imaginary; the expense is not.

Send something short today. One sentence about missing them or being sorry for how it went, with no case attached to it. Resist adding the part where you explain yourself.