A shared universe › Blog › Speaking to a relative again · Español
To make up with a relative, it usually helps more to stop fighting over who was right than to try to clear up the past: those who managed it accepted a different relationship and started with something small. And it is neither rare nor usually for ever. An argument, an inheritance, a wedding someone didn’t go to. Months go by, then years, and two people from the same family stop speaking to each other. Hardly anyone talks about it.
The researcher Karl Pillemer, a professor of Human Development at Cornell University, surveyed more than 1,300 people in the United States and found that 27% of adults, more than one in four, had cut off contact with a relative. His team then carried out in-depth interviews with around 200 people estranged from their family and another 100 who had managed to make up, as Cornell University itself explains. Pillemer calls it a problem hiding in plain sight.
If it is happening to you, you are not an oddity. Many people live with that silence in shame, as if theirs were the only broken family, and that is why it is so hard to talk about.
There is a finding that offers hope. In 2023, Reczek, Stacey and Thomeer studied thousands of adult children followed for years in the United States. Around 6% had been estranged from their mother and 26% from their father. But most of them were back in touch later on: 81% of those estranged from their mother and 69% of those estranged from their father.
In other words, an estrangement can last a long time, but it is often not the end of the story.
Pillemer found something in common: those who made up stopped needing the other person to accept their version of the past and to apologise. They decided that the relationship now mattered more to them than being right about back then.
If what holds you back is the idea of apologising or forgiving, how to forgive and how to apologise covers what psychology says.
Some distances protect. When there was abuse or the harm is still going on, keeping away may be the healthiest thing, and nobody should feel obliged to go back. Pillemer himself, who believes that in most cases it is worth trying, acknowledges that extreme cases involving violence or abuse are different. Making up is an option, not a duty.
If you are in that situation and feel in danger or very low, talk to your GP, a psychologist or your local council’s social services.
It doesn’t take a big conversation. A short message, with no reproaches and asking for nothing, leaves the door open: “I thought of you. I’d like to know how you are”.
Before you write, it may help to think about what you really hope for and what you would do if the answer is not the one you want. Talking it over first with someone you trust, or with a psychologist if the story is very painful, also helps you take the step more calmly.
In A shared universe you can light a “For someone” star for that person you don’t speak to. Sometimes writing it down is the way to find out what you want to do. Nobody will know who you are or who you mean, and other people can keep the star company with a tap or a few words of hope. If one day you take the step and it goes well, you can say so in the same star. Why lighting one for someone helps is in a star for someone.