How To Navigate Family Relationships When You Have Different Beliefs

Are opposing viewpoints a deal breaker?

Whether it be family members with opposing politic views, partners with core value differences, or friends with polarising beliefs, many of us right now are navigating relationships across real differences that go against our core values. It can feel impossible to stay connected when such powerful and emotional beliefs are being challenged, and indeed it is challenging. Most of us are not taught the necessary skills to handle this type of rupture.

So how do you approach close relationships when your beliefs are worlds apart? As a registered counsellor, I am trained in conflict resolution skills, relationship dynamics, boundary negotiation and compassionate communication. This hasn’t prevented me from losing my own personal relationships with people I deeply cared about.

During times of misunderstanding, conflict or disagreement with another person, it does not matter how ‘perfectly’ you communicate something or how much you want to fix it. Even if you put 100 percent into the relationship, it is still only 50 percent of the responsibility.

To repair or not repair

The first thing to discern is knowing whether to keep working on the relationship or whether to let go. This comes down to a matter of consent. If the person you want to repair with has told you they are not willing to fix your relationship, or they don’t have the capacity needed to try, you do not have their consent to bring them into a space of repair.

In this instance there are two choices, the first is to respect their wishes and walk away from the relationship. The second is to respect their wishes and leave the door open for repair in the future. That can look something like “I accept your decision and I am open to you contacting me in the future to revisit this if you ever change your mind” Both choices are equally valid and should be made from a genuine place of intention and not through a sense of obligation or pressure.

Repair should also not be attempted with someone who cannot communicate with you in a calm, curious and respectful manner. Patterns of emotional abuse such as shouting, blaming, criticising, manipulating, invalidating, coercing or shaming are big indicators that mutual and balanced repair is highly unlikely and potentially unsafe.

Not all ruptures are equal

Sometimes, we just need a little bit of compromise. Imagine your partner is late from work, you have been pacing around the house worried and anxious, when they finally walk through the door you explode with accusations and demand an explanation.

In a compassionate repair space, both of you are able to sit down and explore what happened. Your partner may express that they felt angry and hurt that you don’t trust them. You may express that in a past relationship there was infidelity and it makes you worry. By understanding that your emotions come from the past and are not really about your current relationship, a compromise can be agreed upon. Your partner may agree to text you next time they are late to help you manage your anxiety, you may agree to seek help to work through the feelings of the past betrayal to reduce future triggers.

When there is no middle ground

But what about ruptures that touch our core values, those fundamental differences that cannot be reconciled because they involve opposing worldviews or belief systems. In these situations, we need to redefine what ‘repair’ means. Repair does not mean agreeing, compromising on your values or trying to convince the other person into your way of thinking. Repair in this sense, means working together to restore enough safety to stay in the relationship, without further emotional harm or injury.

Relationships are complex, the closer the relationship the more complicated it becomes. It may be easier to discover you have a fundamental difference with a friend and simply choose not be friends anymore. But what about when it is your own mother, father, sibling? You may have years of shared history, memories, genetics and experiences that still connect you outside of your opposing worldviews and beliefs.

If both people agree that the relationship itself matters more than the differences, that there is enough connection to build upon outside of your oppositions, then you can enter a space of repair.

Repair may look like agreeing to avoid certain topics, intentionally building connection in other ways, or setting a boundary that allows you both to talk about how the differences affect you, but not about who is right or wrong. Sometimes, distance is the repair, an agreement for less contact or proximity or a plan to revisit the relationship after a set period of time.

There is a misconception that repair means everything will be resolved, but it’s rarely a neat process with tidy edges. It does not always mean that the relationship can be restored to the same level it used to be, but it may mean you find a way to stay connected. The goal here is to negotiate the new terms of how your relationship can still exist in the present, without either one of you betraying yourselves. You may also need to work through feelings of anger, sadness and grief, with the realisation that some differences permanently change a relationship.

Acknowledging the rupture

It is important to spend time witnessing the rupture itself and not rush into repair before fully acknowledging how your differences have hurt each other. You should also identify the specific behaviours that are damaging the relationship, so you can both agree to stop repeating those actions and prevent further harm.

For example, a brother and sister with two opposing political views identify that a repeating harm in their dynamic is when the brother repeatedly makes jokes about his sister’s beliefs in a mocking tone. The sister has started to withdraw and distance herself by excluding her brother from family events. This has eroded emotional safety and trust over time. When witnessing the rupture together calmly, the brother can acknowledge how his behaviours are hurtful and disrespectful to his sister, and the sister can acknowledge that her response was alienating to her brother. They both agree to stop repeating these behaviours with each other and to continue an open dialogue in the future whenever they have issues.

It is important not to fall into the pattern of blaming or shaming each other, instead offer to listen compassionately to each other’s experience. You can offer empathy for how they feel without sharing the same perspective. The goal is to understand, not agree.

Some other things to discover during this stage could be to express what you are hoping for, what your expectations are, what you feel responsible for, or what meaning you are making out of the situation. For example, there may be a false assumption that arguing means you don’t love each other anymore.

Choosing what matters

Not everyone will be able to meet you in this space of repair. Repair requires tolerance for discomfort, a willingness to be accountable and the capacity to stay present without defensiveness. These are skills that many people were never taught and simply don’t have yet. Sometimes, even with great conflict resolution skills, a choice is still made to end the relationship regardless. Not everything can or should be fixed.

But rupture doesn’t have to be the end of the story, it can be the beginning of a new chapter, one that is more intentional and focused. Ultimately, relationships are not sustained by shared beliefs alone, they are living fluid dynamics that change over time and require different things from us as they evolve.

What defines a relationship is how we each respond to it, with a shared commitment to keep choosing each other with curiosity, empathy and courage, to co-create a space for the connection to keep existing.

If you would like further support to navigate family dynamics and the process of repair. Counselling sessions are available for both international and Australian clients.

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