Family problems are never easy to deal with unless you’ve hardened yourself against your nearest and dearest (and maybe they’re not that near or dear even though they’re family!).
It’s easy to say “I’ll never speak to them again” in the heat of the moment but the consequences of that can impact on the rest of your family and ultimately you too because even if you feel betrayed or very hurt by a sibling or parent, there will almost certainly be things that you will miss too.
We expect our loved ones to know what we need or want, especially when a shared history and family dynamics are at play. We sometimes assume they know what we’re going through without our having to explicitly share. However, these assumptions are sometimes wrong and don’t lead to healthy communication.
A lot depends on how much you want to reconcile and how long the situation has been going on. Sometimes, in an emergency like a parent becoming very ill, things have to be said and done to try to mend a rift, if only on a temporary basis. But if you’ve had an argument with someone in your family and miss them but feel they won’t reconcile, the only thing to do is reach out to them. If you wait for them to do that, it might never happen.
People get scared that all the old problems will be rehashed and wonder if they can just move on without the need to analyse and talk about it. Of course, life moves on anyway whether we like it or not but in this particular case, the longer things go on, the harder it can be to heal.
It is possible to have a fresh start though, especially if you approach it with care. A break in a relationship can be a time to re-evaluate what’s happened and acknowledge your own part in it. It’s good to reflection how the other person or people have dealt with the hurt too. There’s no guarantee that an approach on your part will work but if you decide to go for it, ask yourself why you want to reconcile. Is there pressure from other family members and has something changed that makes you think that things might be better now?
If you want to go ahead, ask yourself how you want your relationship to change and what your expectations are. Think about what you want to say and how you might say it. The other person might want to talk about but you might not. Some sort of compromise has to be reached and boundaries need to be put down too. If they’ve agreed to meet up, try to broach the subject of how you’ll discuss it. For instance, no interrupting and no monologues from either of you. If you’re the one who doesn’t want to discuss things, remember that they have needs too and some discussion might be needed to resolve at least some of the issues.
If they’ve agreed to meet, if shows a willingness to find a resolution even though some people just want to prove that they were right all along! Make sure that you’re heard, make a few notes beforehand if it helps and, most of all, realise that both of you will probably need to make some changes in the way you deal with things. Every family has ways of dealing with issues, ranging from sweeping them under the carpet to out and out shouting matches. If you’ve grown up in either of those households, you won’t have established a way of resolving issues but now’s your chance to change that and move forward more peaceably to a calmer future.
Same But Different. 