Let me present a couple of theoretical situations:
NE decides that after she has her first child, the nature of our relationship would need to change.
OR
NE decides that the best place for her is the west coast and that she needs to move to California.
—
She has the right to make either of these decisions. Not only does she have the right, it may even be in her best interest to do one or both.
But that wouldn’t isolate me from feeling upset about the decision. And not just upset – uncertain, unhappy, even angry. So despite it being her right to make the decision, despite perhaps being the right decision to make, you have these emotions to deal with.
This is the position I have placed NE in. Where I am right, but she isn’t necessarily, wrong.
I can’t apologize for it; to say I am sorry for doing the right thing would be a lie and would only add confusion to an already complex set of emotions. The trouble is that while I should not apologize for the decision itself, that does not mean I shouldn’t apologize when I make a mistake in the handling of the decision. And no matter how hard you try to handle a situation correctly, some situations simply don’t have a right answer.