You have typed it 4 times. One version is 2 lines and looks like you do not care. One version is 3 paragraphs and looks like you are asking to be let off.
The wording is not the problem. You are writing an apology for a person in general, and you are sending it to 1 specific person who has his own way of receiving these.
Free to try. We never store your chats.
They are written to be sendable to anybody, and that is exactly what makes an apology read as fake. He is not judging whether the sentence is well built. He is judging whether it sounds like you, about this, today.
There is also no correct length. Some people read a long apology as pressure and go quiet under it. Some people read a short one as you doing the minimum. The same 2 sentences land in opposite directions depending on who opens them — and you already know which one he is. You have just not been thinking about it that way while drafting.
Apologies that hold up over text usually have the same shape. Acknowledge, reflect, release.
1. Acknowledge. Name the thing you actually did, in his terms rather than yours. Not "I am sorry you felt that way." Not "I am sorry for everything." The specific thing: you read his phone, you brought up his family, you walked out in the middle of it. Naming it precisely is what tells him you understood, and it is what makes the rest get read at all.
2. Reflect. Say what it cost him, once, without narrating your own suffering. "I know that put you on the defensive in your own house." Skip it, and the apology sounds like a form. Overdone, it becomes a message about how badly you feel, and now he is the one being asked to do the comforting.
3. Release. End without a request. No "can we talk," no "please just answer me," no question mark at all. This is the step almost everyone drops, and it is the one that decides whether the message reads as an apology or as a demand in an apology costume.
If the last line asks for something back — a reply, a call, forgiveness, tonight — the whole message reads as a transaction, and he will feel that even if he cannot say why.
You can want the relationship back and still send a message that does not ask for it. Those two are not in conflict. The wanting stays in your head. The message goes to him.
Fake is not a tone problem. It is 3 specific tells.
The conditional. "If I hurt you." He knows whether he was hurt. The word "if" tells him you are still arguing.
The attached defense. One clean apology followed by "but you also." Everything before the "but" gets deleted on arrival.
Vocabulary that is not yours. If you have never once said "I want to hold space for your feelings," do not open with it. Borrowed language is the easiest thing in the world to hear, and it makes a sincere apology sound recited.
An apology sent at 1am while your hands are still shaking is not the same message as those exact words sent at 10am. He receives the state you were in, not only the sentences.
Sometimes the honest answer is that today is not the day. That is not disappearing and it is not a tactic — it is not sending something you would rewrite by morning. "Today, sending nothing is the better move" is a real answer.
And if he has asked for space, or asked you not to contact him, that request is the answer. An apology does not overrule it. It can wait until there is a door.
The usual next move is the second message — the one that softens the first, or asks whether he saw it, or apologizes for the apology. That is the message that undoes the work, because it turns an apology into a request for a reply.
Silence after an apology is usually 1 of 3 things: he is still angry and knows it, he does not know what to say yet, or he read it on the train and put the phone down. None of those improve by being asked about within the hour.
If you sent something good, it is already working while you wait. If you sent something that missed, the fix is not a follow-up. It is knowing what specifically missed, which is a different question from "should I text again."
Read the draft once and ask 3 things. Does it name the actual thing. Does it ask for anything. Would he recognise it as you talking.
Then cut the paragraph explaining why you did it. That paragraph is for you, and it is the one that starts the next argument.
Paste the fight, then your draft. It tells you how that apology is likely to read to him specifically — from how he has actually texted in that thread, not from a general idea of men.
Then it writes the version in 3 parts you can edit separately, and it says whether to send it now or sit on it. It says that part first.
Their messages are never stored. Only your own lines are saved — so what comes back sounds like you.
Try it on your conversation