When Kay’s two best friends — a married couple she met at work — told her they weren’t voting for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, she believed them. After all, Kay and her friends share similar values; They all supported issues such as reproductive rights and protections for LGBTQ people But when he was scrolling through social media in July, he saw that they had posted the same image on Instagram: the viral image of Trump with his fists raised, blood pouring from his face, an American flag flying after an assassination attempt on his life. Background
Kay, 27, sent a message asking her friends about it. His friends then admitted that they were voting for Trump because they thought he would improve the economy. Who was shocked: He decided he needed space to reevaluate the relationship and stopped talking to them. “They’re gay,” she says, “but they’re voting for what they think is good for the media they consume.”
Over time, Kay, who declined to share her last name to talk about her friendship, began to miss the couple. It was hard to avoid them: not only did they all work together, they were also neighbors. They were the first best friends Kay made as an adult in their small California town. Although Kay says she has cut other Trump supporters out of her life in the past, she ultimately didn’t want to sacrifice the relationship.
“Losing people like that, it’s hard.”
The trio agreed to avoid discussing politics to maintain friendship and have since reconciled, Kay said. He was willing to overlook what he considered a misguided decision to be close to people he agreed with otherwise. It seemed too painful, too short-sighted to eliminate ourselves based on their voting record, he says.
“When it’s your family or your really close friends or your co-workers, it’s not that easy to cut them off,” Kay said. “You have to think about how it affects you emotionally. It’s hard to lose people like that.”
A lot in the last eight years The Americans moved away From Trump-supporters themselves The Dearborn Harris Poll recently surveyed a representative sample of Americans and found that 42 percent of adults said Politics was the biggest factor Isolation in the family. Ahead of the upcoming holiday season, 38 percent of respondents to an American Psychological Association survey said they planned Avoid family members with whom they disagree politically.
The underlying motivation for this alienation appears to be self-protective: many believe that a loved one who votes for a candidate who supports policies endangers their — and others’ — rights is not Someone worth keeping close. Some cannot reconcile the fact that relatives they thought agreed with such divisive statements. For others, a vote for Trump was the final straw in an already contentious relationship.
While these distractions are still occurring in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election — and with good reason — some are taking an alternative approach. In the midst of an epidemic of loneliness, some may not have the luxury of valuable disconnections. Others recognize that they cannot remotely change their loved one’s opinion. More still that fact is sensible Avoiding differing viewpoints only fuels polarization.
Although we still don’t know for sure whether more people are meeting therapists with their Trump-supporting friends and family. Channel Touch observed this change in his clients. In 2016, Trump’s victory felt like a shocking anomaly, leading people to believe they could be more dismissive of those on the alternative end of the political spectrum. Now, those he advises are bound to engage with these supporters. “It’s not something where I can just remove myself or cut people off,” he says of client sentiment, “because now I’m seeing a much higher percentage of the population favor this candidate than I thought before.”
In his practice, the psychologist Vanessa Scarringi Finds many of her clients — primarily women in their 30s and 40s — more reluctant to turn away aging relatives. Young women who were largely disconnected from relatives in 2016 are now able to have children, Scaringi said, and want conservative family members to be a part of their lives. “I think usually the feeling of missing time is a motivator to maintain those relationships,” she says. Sometimes, those relatives are already an integral part of their lives and even provide childcare, she says.
Mental health professionals emphasize the importance of safety in relationships and encourage people to set boundaries or distance themselves from loved ones who speak hurtfully or endorse disturbing speech. You don’t need to be in a relationship with someone who promotes hatred and bigotry. There are thorny moral and ethical questions; With whom to maintain a relationship – and on what terms – is entirely personal. But enduring discomfort can help build resilience, scaring notes, and overcome isolation and this opportunity for healthy conflict is a default.
If you decide to have a relationship with someone you don’t see eye to eye with and talk politics, avoid making them change their mind. The goal of conflict, Dokun says, is not to solve a problem, but to empathize with the other side despite your differences. To help personalize what can be broad ideas, Docun suggests sharing how you or people close to you have been personally affected — or will be affected — by certain policies or viewpoints. “When you talk to those vulnerable places, especially using language around your emotions, it demystifies those conversations,” she says. “Family members are also able to see you in a new light and it’s much less of an argumentative place.”
In group settings, having an empathetic ally with whom you can subtly share snide comments or roll your eyes also helps defuse tension, says Scaringzi. For Brian, 29, who lives in Florida, the family member is his mother, Donna, 64. (Both use pseudonyms to talk about their families.) Their tight-knit extended family is largely conservative, and over the past eight years, political divisions have strained relations. “Before Trump, I didn’t care who you voted for, it wasn’t an issue in our house,” Donna says. “But because Trump, watching my two siblings fall in love with this guy to the point where my sister says, ‘I love him like an uncle and I’m going to put him on my Thanksgiving table,’ hurts my soul, because everything about him is not. Me.”
Donna and Brian find it difficult to reconcile the reality of their experiences with their family’s beliefs: Brian is trans and his sister is expecting a baby soon in a state with a ban on abortion.
Before Brian came out in 2022, he feared that his family would not accept him based on their conservative views. Although her aunts and cousins have helped with her use of names and pronouns — even assuring her that they’ll find a way to source hormones if they’re unable to seek gender-affirming care — Brian says the same family members still express anti-trans views to her. do
“When you talk about those more vulnerable areas, especially using language around your emotions, it de-escalates those conversations.”
Despite everything, Donna and Brian don’t intend to cut off their family — just yet. Brian doesn’t expect his relatives to change their minds, but he believes offering a trans perspective can give them a chance to learn. “I told myself,” Brian says, “that if something happens where my health care is taken away, whether it’s because I’m on an Affordable Care Act plan or the Affordable Care Act stops providing gender-affirming care, and if in fact If something happens that is a direct result of Trump being elected, then I will definitely reconsider cutting these people off forever.”
Consistently exposing loved ones to alternative viewpoints can help them gradually change their views, Dokun says, though isolation can push them further into ideological silos. However, try not to exhaust yourself while championing your side. This may look like setting clear boundaries such as not watching the news together or limiting conversations to certain topics. “I work with a lot of people who can berate themselves for not being social justice advocates,” Scaringzi says. “I really work with them trying to plant seeds with their families.”
For others, there is no desire to change, only resignation to what has already happened. Although some people close to him voted for Trump, New Jersey resident Morgan, 32, who declined to share his last name to discuss his relationship, believes they did so for economic and global policy reasons. He doesn’t agree with these motivations, he says, but they’re worth listening to.
“Now that he’s no longer a fluke, an error, some national distraction that we can excuse,” he said, “I hope the parties can talk more as the second Trump administration goes on. Because what on earth is the alternative?”
