If only more people understood what's described in this article! After a lot of thought in the aftermath of some of my own relationship mistakes, I arrived at basically the same process: apologize, state what happened (i.e. what is being owned up to), and give a short "lessons learned." After all, it's not a sincere apology unless one is taking steps to ensure that it doesn't happen again!

This is the issue with making excuses. I think most people want to say why an error happened, in part to imply "well, I don't usually do this sort of thing." However, the injured party doesn't really care about the offender's ego or pride, just that they won't be subject to the same thing again. With an excuse and without a corrective action, the offender is simply inuring the injured for future offenses.