That does sound appropriate, Anita. I never thought of it in that manner. The thing is, both Jerry and her sister have had a tendency of misconstruing my words and since communication via messages is not as good at expressing emotion/tone as a phone conversation (where you can actually hear the person’s tone and other nuances which help you make out their intents and state of mind), I could not be sure whether her sister would take it as I mean or interpret it as cockiness. Either way, if there’s any way I could speak to her in this manner appropriately in the future, I will surely do it.

I agree that it’s not right to quote her sister’s words back at Jerry. Regarding my motivations… before our present convo, I would have said my wish is to make up to Jerry for everything that happened, help her realize that her act of breaking relations was extreme and hope to gradually re-establish our relation. Now, I want to focus on her situation and understand it well. Then, I want to confess to her that I have done my best to understand her perspective now and I’m sorry for not doing it before. I want to empathize with her feelings… and instead of projecting my pre-conceived notions on her, give her a chance to express herself properly, what she had to go through because of me. I’ll accept what she says, I won’t argue. I want to comfort her selflessly, in any appropriate manner. Though I wish to re-establish our relation, I don’t want to put that up on the priority list. I don’t want to act selfishly. I want to do what I failed to do before and genuinely respect her feelings, allow her to express herself, understand her words properly and comfort her, as we discussed now.