They apologised and now they want everything back to how it was straight away. I am not there yet, and somehow I am the difficult one.

“So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him.”

Joseph's brothers come to him after their father dies with a message asking forgiveness for what they did to him decades before, and Joseph weeps when he hears it. The narrative does not treat those tears as weakness or as unfinished business. Reconciliation in that family took years, a famine and several painful conversations. Even a genuine apology does not instantly reset a relationship.

“For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death. For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter.”

Paul writes to a church he had confronted hard, and he is relieved by how they responded. He draws a line between godly sorrow, which produces actual change, and worldly sorrow, which is mostly about relief from discomfort. That distinction is useful when somebody apologises quickly. The question is not whether the words were said, but what has moved since.