When Kay’s two best friends, a couple she met at work, told her they wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, Kay believed them. As it turns out, Kay and her friends shared similar values. They all supported issues such as reproductive rights and protections for LGBTQ people. But while scrolling through social media in July, she noticed the same image posted on Instagram. The photo went viral after a near-fatal assassination attempt, showing Trump with his fist raised in defiance, blood dripping from his face and an American flag flying. background.
Kay, 27, sent a message to a friend asking about it. At the time, her friends admitted they were voting for Trump because they thought he would improve the economy. Kay was shocked. I decided I needed space to reevaluate the relationship and stopped talking to them. “They’re gay, but because of the media they consume, they were voting for what they thought was best,” she says.
As time went on, Kay, who declined to give her last name to discuss their friendship, began to miss the couple. It was difficult to avoid them. Not only were they all working together, they were also neighbors. They were the first best friends Kay made in her small California town as an adult. Kaye says she has cut other Trump supporters out of her life in the past, but ultimately didn’t want to sacrifice that relationship.
“It’s very difficult to lose people like that.”
Kay said the three agreed to avoid discussing politics in order to maintain their friendship and have since reconciled. She was willing to ignore what she considered bad decisions in order to maintain close relationships with people she agreed with. Distancing based on voting records seemed too painful and too short-sighted, she says.
“If it’s a family member, a really close friend, a co-worker, it’s not so easy to isolate from them,” Kay says. “You have to think about how it affects you emotionally. It’s hard to lose people like that.”
Over the past eight years, many Americans have distanced themselves from loved ones who support Trump. The Harris Poll recently surveyed a representative sample of Americans and found that 42 percent of adults say politics is the number one cause of family separation. Ahead of the upcoming holiday season, 38% of respondents to an American Psychological Association survey said they plan to avoid contact with family members with whom they disagree politically.
The underlying motivation for this estrangement appears to be self-protective. Many people have come to believe that a loved one who votes for a candidate who supports policies that endanger their rights or the rights of others is not someone worth keeping around. Some people cannot accept the fact that relatives they thought they knew were buying into such divisive rhetoric. For others, the vote for Trump was the final straw in an already strained relationship.
In the wake of the 2024 presidential election, these discords are still occurring, and for good reason, but some are taking a different approach. At a time when loneliness is widespread, some people may not be able to afford to cut off valuable connections. Some people realize that they cannot change the opinion of a loved one from a distance. More and more people are recognizing the reality that avoiding diverse points of view only increases polarization.
It’s not yet clear whether more people are reconciling with friends and family members who support Trump, but therapist Chanel Dokun has observed this shift among her clients. In 2016, Trump’s victory felt like a shocking anomaly, leading people to believe they might be able to treat those on the other side of the political spectrum with even more disdain. Those receiving her counseling now are forced to confront these advocates head-on. “It’s not something you can just distance yourself from or cut people off,” she says of her customers’ emotions. “Because we now know that a much larger percentage of the population supports this candidate than we previously thought.”
In her practice, psychologist Vanessa Scaringi sees many of her clients, mostly women in their 30s and 40s, reluctant to ignore their elderly relatives. Scaringi said young women who originally isolated themselves from their relatives in 2016 may now have children and want conservative families to be a part of their lives. He says he wants it. “I think in general, the feeling of time being lost is what motivates you to stay in a relationship,” she says. Sometimes those relatives are already an integral part of their lives and can provide childcare, she said.
Mental health professionals emphasize the importance of safety in relationships and encourage people to set boundaries and distance themselves from loved ones who say hurtful things or espouse emotionally charged rhetoric. I recommend it to people. There is no need to maintain a relationship with someone who tolerates hatred and bigotry. There are thorny moral and ethical questions at stake here. The choice of who to maintain a relationship with and on what terms is entirely personal. But Scaringi points out that tolerating discomfort helps build resilience, and alienation by default avoids opportunities for growth and healthy conflict.
If you decide to maintain a relationship with someone you disagree with and politics has come up, avoid the urge to try to change their mind. According to Dokun, the purpose of conflict is not to solve problems, but to empathize with the other person despite their differences. To personalize what can be a broad concept, Dokun asks how you or someone close to you has personally been or will be affected by a particular policy or perspective. I suggest you share. “Talking to people who are more vulnerable, especially using words that relate to your emotions, tends to de-escalate the conversation,” she says. “Your family can see you in a new light, and there is no room for argument.”
In a group setting, Scaringi says having a sympathetic ally with whom you can casually share a mean remark or roll your eyes can also help defuse tensions. For Brian, a 29-year-old Florida resident, that family includes his mother, Donna, 64. (They both use pseudonyms to talk about their families.) Their large, close-knit family is largely conservative, and political divisions have strained relations over the past eight years. “Before Trump, we didn’t care who you voted for. It wasn’t something we talked about in our house,” Donna says. “But since Trump, by the time my sister said, ‘I love him like an uncle, I want to have him at the Thanksgiving table,’ my two brothers have been to this guy. Seeing him fall in love hurts my soul because he’s not all about himself. “
Donna and Brian find it difficult to reconcile their family’s beliefs with the reality of their experiences. Brian is transgender, and his sister wants to have a baby right away in a state where abortion is nearly banned.
Before Brian came out in 2022, he was worried that his family wouldn’t accept him because of their conservative views. Brian’s aunts and cousins have been supportive of using his name and pronouns, and have even assured him that they will find a way to procure hormones if he is unable to receive gender-affirming care. Brian says the same family is still there. Expressing anti-trans opinions in front of him.
“Conversations tend to de-escalate when you talk to people who are more vulnerable, especially when you use language that relates to your emotions.”
Despite everything, Donna and Brian have no intention of separating their family just yet. Brian doesn’t expect his relatives to change their minds, but he believes offering a transgender perspective may give them a chance to learn. “I said to myself,” Brian says. “If something happens and my health care is taken away, whether it’s because I’m a part of the Affordable Care Act program or because the Affordable Care Act stops providing gender-affirming care, , and if something actually happened as a direct result of Trump being elected, I would definitely reconsider cutting these people off permanently.”
Constantly exposing your loved one to other points of view can help slowly change their perspective, but alienation may only push them further into ideological silos, Dokun says. However, try not to get exhausted when defending your side. This might look like setting firm boundaries, like not watching the news together or limiting conversations to certain topics. “I work with a lot of people who can blame themselves for not being good enough social justice advocates,” Scaringi says. “I’m really committed to working with them and planting seeds with their families.”
For others, they have no desire to change and are simply resigned to what has already happened. Although several people close to Mr. Trump voted for him, Morgan, 32, of New Jersey, who declined to give his last name to discuss his relationship with Mr. I believe this was done for the reasons listed above. He said he didn’t agree with these motives, but they were worth listening to.
“He is no longer a fluke or a glitch or a national aberration that we can tolerate,” he says. After all, what the hell is there instead? ”
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