My personal story of a fractured relationship

What politics is doing to our relationships and what we can do about it

I’m going to start this newsletter about Mending Fractured Relationships with my own story about my Aunt Dot. Aunt Dot was my childless aunt, who made a priority to be there for me and my cousins. She was always there, every holiday, taking pictures and giving us little gifts. The gifts didn’t matter, it was that she was there. The other thing about her was that she was blunt. If she thought it, she said it. She felt she got a pass because she was Aunt Dot.

She was the last of that generation. One day, she fell and couldn’t live alone anymore. So, Jeannie came to care for her. Jeannie was a Polish immigrant who didn’t speak English very well and she didn’t drive, but she was always nearby. She kept my aunt clean and well fed.

One day, I went to visit my aunt, and something set her off and she started talking negatively about immigration. This was before our current president made such a big deal about it. (Note: this was written in 2020.) I thought about the fact that Jeannie was sitting right there, in the same room, and made a comment about her rudeness. I walked out.

That was the last time I saw her. I never stopped by again, I never called, and she never called me. She died eighteen months years later.

I had severed the relationship, the last link I had to my childhood, with a woman who had loved me my entire life.

How many of you have an Aunt Dot in your life? A relative you can’t talk to anymore.

I wish I had had better tools. I wish I had known how to talk about what I believed while still maintaining the relationship.

That’s what this newsletter is about — the stories and the suggestions I’ve created after studying recent psychology research. A lot of what I’m going to cover uses a theory popularized by Jonathan Haidt in his book, The Righteous Mind. But I’m also going to draw on a theory called moral reframing, created by Robb Willer and Matt Feinberg. You can watch a video about moral reframing here, and my book, Persuade, Don’t Preach, where I go into depth about Haidt’s theory, moral reframing and finding the best way to talk to people you don’t agree with.

Let’s go back to that afternoon with my aunt. What do I wish I had said to her?

First, I would have told her I loved her. I don’t remember saying that to her — and, boy do I wish I had. Second, I would have said something to recognize and name the value underneath her immigration comment. It could have been something as simple as, “I hear you saying that immigration is a problem. Is that because you love this country so much?”

After acknowledging her values, I would have used the reframing technique, using a different moral value to talk about the issue of immigration. Perhaps something like, “I know Jeanie is working hard to enable you to stay here in your own home and not go into a nursing home. I think it’s a good idea for immigrants like Jeanie to come to this country for an opportunity if they’re willing to work hard.” That sentiment uses the moral value of fairness in such a way that I hope she could have heard me. And maybe, just maybe, I would have had those last two years with my aunt — and also felt better about myself.

Approaching communication like this isn’t easy. It takes work and it takes practice. But the research shows that arguments like this can work. At the very least, they change the conversation and preserve the relationship.

And if we can heal our relationships, maybe we can heal our country.

---