When the Contradictions Are Killing You
Restarting the conversation with 'politically-opposed' family members
It takes a lot to reach the end of your rope with family. Especially when they used to be your role models, and still show a lot of good qualities.
My parents and I started out with a close and confiding relationship. No subject was off-limits, and we talked freely about life, religion, and politics. When disagreements happened, they were taken in stride: it was understood that we were all engaging in good faith, and 'on the same team' at the end of it all.
Then, around 2016...something happened. Or had been happening slowly, and started to happen faster.
At some point, I noticed that when we talked, the occasional factual mistake wasn't handled like it used to be. They'd say something that didn't sound right, I'd find proof and bring up how it affected their argument...and then they'd just dismiss the problem. Seemingly frustrated at me for pushing back, and acting like it didn't change anything. I really didn't know what to do with this. My parents had always stressed honesty and accuracy, and I wasn't even trying to disagree with their argument yet. I just wanted to hear the version that didn't have errors.
In other words, I really wasn't trying to "disagree" at all — I just wanted to get our shared facts straight. But 'getting the facts straight' was treated more and more like an unresolvable "difference of opinion" — "let's just agree to disagree". I was still willing to be careful with my arguments, and to take objections seriously. Why were they suddenly not? Add into this: my parents were always very kind people. Why were they unwilling to take care, even when their positions had dangerous implications for others?
I didn't like the growing sense of contradiction — how kind and thoughtful they remained about personal matters, while becoming increasingly callous and careless on "the issues". Our talks became prickly, then heated, then unsustainable. We came to a silent understanding to talk less about politics.
But some things were unavoidable. There were topics that directly affected me, or people that we all cared about. I thought these, at least, would give them pause enough to have real conversations again.
That didn't happen. These were people who’d said they’d do anything for me — but now they wouldn’t even listen, or follow up on any of my concerns themselves. Faced with me telling them I was afraid, and could be directly harmed by things they were supporting, they continued to treat it like a game of differing opinions. I was also, at this point, accused of "disrespect" and insulted with names, which was new. So we agreed explicitly to put politics off-limits.
We continued to go through the same motions of seeing each other and calling, but now I dreaded spending time with them. We 'didn't talk politics', but they would cross the line here and there, in little ways or big ones. They seemed to enjoy my upset sometimes.
Then came the conspiracy theory and extremist talking points.
I could watch a blatantly made-up piece of rhetoric be born in some dark corner of the internet — and then hear it eventually come out of my parents' mouths. (While we 'weren't talking politics'.) This started to happen with such depressing regularity that I could make a game out of guessing which ones, and how long it would take. These were dangerous, and I pushed back. As before, it didn't matter at all. Most times, I couldn't even get a foot in the door to make a case; when I did, they'd listen, say nothing, and then act as if it never happened.
Years passed like this. Things got worse. Everything got tangled, and the more politics affected my life, the less I could talk about my life with them. Which seemed alright to me — it had been ages since I'd gotten comfort from talking with them anyway. I tried, still, to show up for the relationship, and to respect the aspects of them that I still loved and admired. But it got harder and harder to handle the perpetually-escalating division, that contradiction between who they clearly saw themselves as — kind, smart people and devoted parents, same as they'd always been — and who I saw them as. More and more, they seemed like the worst kind of two-faced hypocrites: cheerfully piling on to problems, and then ready to cry crocodile tears when they saw the effects. The entirely predictable effects.
Contempt is the relationship killer. Eventually I hit a point of crisis, and reviewed what I knew.
I had taken care to tell them repeatedly how their beliefs/actions affected me. They routinely dismissed my concerns about anything and everything, even when those concerns stopped being hypothetical and turned into real, past-tense events. What rational conclusion should I take away from all this, except that I mattered less to them than beliefs they refused to question? What else was I supposed to think when they doubled-down on certain things, except that our core values must be fundamentally different? And if so...why was I trying so hard? My life had taken a turn for the difficult at this point, and was only going to get more so — why not just put down all this painful effort, and be done with it?
Well. There was one big problem.
The same contradiction that I hated about them, was also something I couldn't fully explain away. They were constantly promoting horrible things and defending the indefensible — but they were also shirt-off-their-back caring people in most instances. I despised them for their refusal to examine beliefs that would hurt me — in part because I still had so many reasons to believe that they would never hurt me on purpose. Or anyone else, for that matter.
I couldn't keep going on as we had been. But it just didn't make sense.
I'd been stewing on their behavior for years. Now I gave one last shot to totally reframing it — this time, deliberately plugging in the premise that they DO CARE about the truth, and DO CARE whether their beliefs/actions are based in fact. What if all the dismissals of evidence, and thoughtlessly repeated falsehoods, and insistence that certain falsehoods were right while refusing to check (and and and, ad nauseam)...were NOT evidence that they were rejecting the value of truth full-stop. What else would account for this behavior?
The hypothesis for this could be nicknamed 'big truth, little truth'. What if they believe so strongly in some big underlying TRUTH, that the little truths are shoved aside as basically just confusing distractions — NOT BECAUSE THEY DON'T CARE whether these things are true, but because it became so incredibly difficult to know whether any individual thing IS true, AND WHETHER ANY GIVEN THING SHOULD CHANGE THE ARGUMENT? What if it started to feel impossible to chase down every little back-and-forth piece of "evidence" in an increasingly chaotic and rage-soaked information landscape...so they just stuck to what they "knew"? The 'big truths'?
In short, what if their problem was the problem I'd always had — trying to keep a sense of self and reality while reality itself feels so slippy and in-process?
I was still depressed, and exhausted, and furious at them. No matter what explanation I could give, they had still belittled my very real concerns, they had still refused to even hear me out on things that had huge consequences for my life. So it took me about a week to work through my own emotions enough to even care whether our relationship continued. After that, I put together an approach that FULLY allowed room for this hypothesis. It involved a specific type of start, and if the start was successful, specific ways to proceed from there.
So far...it's working.
We're having our first political talks in almost a decade. It feels a lot more like it used to. I'm trying. They're trying. It's high effort, it took a lot of personalization, and it will be ongoing for a long time to come...but it's a good faith effort, and we're 'on the same team'.
It is too early to know how this is all going to play out. We've been at it for weeks now, but it's slow going, and much more time will have to pass before we get real indication of permanent change. Then, success or failure, I'll need some time to think about what happened. So...all of this is to say that a write-up with personal particulars will be a long time coming.
What we will be talking about immediately are some of the background framings used to inform my approach — especially what I tried to believe, and convey, in order to get further than I've ever gotten with this. So subscribe if you want those.
In the meantime, if you have your own holiday gathering coming up with family, and have at least one previously-close relationship you no longer feel alright in —here are my two cents.
If you still care about them or the relationship in some way...don't give up. And don't condemn yourself to rolling over forever.
Use the in-person opportunity to observe your relationship, with as much calm and distance as possible. 1) Try to think about what, at the root of it all, is causing you to feel hurt, or anger, or contempt. What, specifically, is at the heart of your trouble with them? Are there any ways this core issue comes through in their behavior towards you? 2) Look at what you still love and admire about the person, and watch how those things come out in their behavior. Are their good and bad qualities related? Or does what you love/admire feel like a real contradiction with what you hate?
Buy time, and distance, however you can. Don't start anything, and keep redirecting focus to the family gathering if someone else picks a fight. (Keep in mind: you can always follow up later, in many ways, but it's going to be better for you if that response is considered and on your own terms.)
Again, we hope to be able to offer more concrete advice for restarting these conversations as soon as possible. Or, if you think it may help, feel free to reply to this email — no one at On-Kilter is any sort of expert, but if you have something to share or ask, we’re happy to listen.