Stop engaging on the subject

Casadena · February 14

Dear Prudence,

How do you get peace around family and politics? I live in Europe and I know Americans are familiar with this problem. I’m 37 and nonbinary. I am estranged from a lot of my family after abuse by my mother. I am in contact with my father (who is divorced) and my aunt, I love them both dearly and they have helped me a great deal in my life. They both vocally refuse to vote left even as a means to block the far right. When I try to understand/explain, I am told we should not discuss politics because it makes people angry. I try to remain calm, but they become defensive and shout at me. I try to ask questions, to explain my point of view, but there is a wall on the other side.

I feel completely abandoned. I’m queer, I’m autistic, and my wife is a teacher and an immigrant. They think politics is this theoretical thing we shouldn’t care about too much. But it changes my life in big ways. Every time the subject comes up, I have a knot in my stomach for days. I have arguments with them in my head for hours and I can’t sleep. I am losing respect for the people I love, even though I know they are not directly to blame. How do I find peace? Do I let go of the possibility of peace ever existing again?

banana468 · February 14

Stop talking about it. It's the only way I can have a functional relationship with my ILs.

levioosa · February 14

banana468 said:

Stop talking about it. It's the only way I can have a functional relationship with my ILs.

Yeah, if I think about it too much with mine I become filled with rage. We've gotten to the point where we don't talk about it and if they say something too egregious I calmly tell them why they're wrong, FIL goes "huh," and then the conversation moves on. H has started becoming more aggressive with his parents trying to get them to see the other side, but that's not my place. I can call out stuff in the moment, but bringing up topics and trying to argue them directly is going to be a non-starter. And then with my family, I don't have the time or energy to try and engage with a bunch of MAGA narcissists so I've just cut them out completely.

banana468 · February 14

@levioosa we really try to not engage too much. And now after the IL's moved and DH was really vocal with how he felt they were making a really poor financial decision they've shut up near him. Every now and then if things are brought up DH picks and chooses his battles.

My dad is a Trump supporter but generally quiet about it and also not totally cognizant of a lot so I'm inclined to cut him a lot more slack as a guy who is a blue state voter and now not taken as seriously because of his sad mental decline. My mom is way left leaning to the point that I've also defended the opposing view point to her at times (like, when restaurants decided to buck local regulation they did it because their options were do it or get zero income!). But it's super hard and right now if my ILs brought up anything that they thought was great I'd be hard pressed not to call out the malignant eugenicist at the helm of DOGE.

MyNameIsNot · February 14

banana468 said:

Stop talking about it. It's the only way I can have a functional relationship with my ILs.

This is where I am with my parents. I am ashamed of them and can't see them as the caring people that I used to think they were, but I still love them and want a relationship with them. So we just don't talk about it. It's... ok.

banana468 · February 14

MyNameIsNot said:

banana468 said:

Stop talking about it. It's the only way I can have a functional relationship with my ILs.

This is where I am with my parents. I am ashamed of them and can't see them as the caring people that I used to think they were, but I still love them and want a relationship with them. So we just don't talk about it. It's... ok.

It's hard because my FIL has been a champion of causes, donated to the charity related to Chiquita's autoimmune disease and had voluntarily donated blood for years....but does not connect how he's voting against people he's helping. It's sad.

MyNameIsNot · February 14

banana468 said:

MyNameIsNot said:

banana468 said:

Stop talking about it. It's the only way I can have a functional relationship with my ILs.

This is where I am with my parents. I am ashamed of them and can't see them as the caring people that I used to think they were, but I still love them and want a relationship with them. So we just don't talk about it. It's... ok.

It's hard because my FIL has been a champion of causes, donated to the charity related to Chiquita's autoimmune disease and had voluntarily donated blood for years....but does not connect how he's voting against people he's helping. It's sad.

Same! My parents go out and take sandwiches to homeless people on the street, while actively voting for local politicians who are criminalizing homelessness and supporting police efforts to "clean up" homeless camps, which have resulted in at least one death already this year. I do not understand the cognitive dissonance.

Well, I do. It's their church that drums into them that abortion is the only thing that matters.

short+sassy · February 15

banana468 said:

MyNameIsNot said:

banana468 said:

Stop talking about it. It's the only way I can have a functional relationship with my ILs.

This is where I am with my parents. I am ashamed of them and can't see them as the caring people that I used to think they were, but I still love them and want a relationship with them. So we just don't talk about it. It's... ok.

It's hard because my FIL has been a champion of causes, donated to the charity related to Chiquita's autoimmune disease and had voluntarily donated blood for years....but does not connect how he's voting against people he's helping. It's sad.

My mom and I aren't very close anyway. But I was SO ANGRY with her on Sunday. It was also the conversation where she had told me her mom/my grandma had died, so I didn't feel I could lay into her with the things I wanted to say.

She wanted a conversation to distract her and started innocuously enough with her asking about our plans to move to Cincy.

I explained that since Trump is going to bash down the ACA or at the very least remove the subsidies, that now my H or I need to have a remote or in-person job there first. Which is now a MAJOR OBSTACLE, right when we were ready to finally pull the trigger on listing on our house in the Spring.

She talks about why the ACA is bad. Yes, I agree mom. The ACA isn't great. A single payer system like every other first world country has would be much better. But the Democrats needed to work with the Republicans and all the Americans who didn't want that because they would rather people died than maybe have their taxes raised a scooch vs all the money they would save by not paying for insurance and other medical costs. So the ACA is the compromise we have.

So then she talks about the one Canadian friend she has who came to the US to get surgery because it was a 2-year wait in Canada.

Then crazy enough, talks about how worried she had been when my father passed away and how she was going to pay for my medical expenses. Y'all, she was immediately able to put me on her own insurance. Maybe that raised her portion. Maybe that had higher OOP costs.

I understand, mom. It was incredibly stressful during the 14 years when I sometimes couldn't buy any kind of insurance for any price, not even major medical that excluded my pre-existing, before the ACA. It was just through the grace of God and pure luck that nothing bad happened during those times. Then I would get a new job and my diabetes would be excluded for the first 12 months, but at least I was covered if I broke my leg or needed my appendix removed.

Now that will be happening to me again. (I KNOW you fucking remember what that was like for me and voted for Trump anyway)...is what I wanted to scream to her and didn't.

"Oh! Well. I'm really hoping Trump keeps the good parts of the ACA, like no more exclusions for pre-existing conditions, But I know we disagree and I don't want to talk about it anymore."

"Okay, I'll drop it after saying one more thing. He's not keeping any of it. He doesn't care about the American people so there is no reason he would. He only cares about himself and his billionaire sycophants."

I also really wanted to remind her about all the times he tried to remove it in his first term and had NOTHING waiting to replace it. But I told her I would drop it and had probably already said too much, so I let it go.

Not sure why illegal immigration that doesn't affect her at all, other than being a net expense to the US budget, is more important than her daughter's health care. But here we are. Super, super important to round up all those illegals and send them back to their countries /s.

I understand the frustration you have with your ILs so well, @banan468. WHY can't people like my mom and your ILs SEE the obvious dangers they are putting the people they are supposed to love the most in.

Thanks you all for letting me rant to you, all the things I WISH I could say to my mother.

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