Ask Anahit: The Fash and the Furious

I'm feeling increasingly frustrated and isolated from my right-wing family to the point where I’m considering cutting ties with them completely. I love my family and have tried to ask them several times to avoid talking politics with me but it’s getting worse and it's affecting my mental health. Help!

I hope you do not take this as rebuke, dear reader, but when this column started it was intended as a receptacle for petty nonsense (shout out to the girlie whose boyfriend didn't understand memes, I think of you daily), and has now become a place to potentially excommunicate fash parents. Like, I get it, it makes sense, but I’m just saying – what a weathervane. 

Anyway, if you have to cut ties with them you just do it – I don’t think you need my help with that. But I’m going to assume that you’re looking for a bit of a middle ground, which is great because my family and I come from way east of here and I was brought up learning that nothing ever comes between family (in reality, these places have some of the most telenovela family drama you've ever seen but on paper? Baby we're a Fast and Furious film). This is absolutely not to say that you shouldn’t cut your family out if that’s what is right for you, but I guess my instinct is to find a way where that doesn’t have to happen. It's hardwired into me, like eating rice with yogurt, or not using a washing up bowl.

It sounds like you’ve tried to communicate your boundaries with them and they’re not listening. I would maybe try again, in a firmer, more ultimatum-y, this-is-going-to-destroy-our-relationship kind of way. And if crickets, well. Family might be for life, but intimacy is something that’s earned. You don’t have to cut them out entirely, but I think you can cut that intimacy out – share less about yourself, check in less, ghost a few text messages. You know, mature behaviour. It really sucks, especially if you’re close, but if someone isn’t respecting the boundaries you clearly communicate, the only solution sometimes is to set up boundaries around everything. Maybe they’ll get the message. Maybe they won’t. But you don’t owe anyone complete access to yourself.