Mending Fractured Relationships
What politics is doing to our relationships and what you can do about it
Welcome to Mending Fractured Relationships by me, Karen Tibbals. Fractured relationships are those that are broken or frozen or where you walk on eggshells. I am specifically referring to relationships that get fractured when politics intrudes into our personal lives.
Examples of this are neighbors who no longer talk, people who block old friends of theirs on facebook because they get so upset when they read their posts, and relatives who are difficult to face at Thanksgiving dinner. Some relationships are totally broken, like the mother and daughter I read about on facebook who aren’t talking at all, after the daughter asked the mother to not vote for President Trump. The mother ridiculed the daughter’s reasoning and cut off all contact and got “support” for that from the facebook group. Then, there are the parents who don’t know what to do because they want their kids to be with the grandparents, but the grandparents aren’t being as careful about COVID-19 as the parents desire.
The key to these relationship breakdowns is that we don’t know what to do. We’ve used the normal tools and they don’t work. The typical advice isn’t helpful. We need new tools, new ideas.
Each newsletter will tell the story of a fractured relationship and include suggestions on how the relationship might be healed. It will also explain some of the ideas behind the suggestions. Those suggestions have been created by me, Karen Tibbals, based on the latest political psychology. Until now, the research results haven’t been used in interpersonal conflicts.
I am looking for stories. I won’t include identifying details, so don’t worry. But if you send in a story, you might get a solution that works!
Sign up now so you don’t miss any issues! And tell me your stories, they don’t have to dramatic, just real. Use this link to leave your story in my contact page on my website.
If you just started and wanted to catch up, I suggest you start reading here.