Asking Eric: A Sister Ghosts Over Politics, and a Friend Breaks an Old Agreement

A 70-year-old man wrote to the advice column Asking Eric this week about a silence that began after the 2024 election. His 68-year-old sister stopped answering him. There were no birthday cards, no Christmas cards, no phone calls, and no emails. He signed his letter "Severed Sibling."

It was not the first time. In 2016 the same sister cut off contact with him and with their mother, who was 82 then, for more than two years. This time he tried to reach her in writing. He sent a letter saying he loved her as she was, not as he wished she would be, and asked whether she could extend him the same courtesy. She did not reply. He later wrote to tell her about a major injury that required surgery. That letter also went unanswered.

He described his life as full. His first wife died of leukemia after a 40-year marriage. He is now three years into a marriage to a second wife, whom he calls wonderful, and he has sons, grandchildren, and many friends. He said he would love to have a relationship with his sister and feels melancholy about its absence, but he is fed up and wants to put his energy into the people who are present. He asked how to manage or accept the situation.

Columnist Eric Thompson said the problem is not uncommon, and the day's second letter touched on a similar political divide. He wrote that there should be room for empathy and for communication that goes beyond headlines. He said love in times of need should focus on where people meet rather than where they diverge, though he acknowledged this is easier said than done. In an era when rhetoric often stands in for political thought, he said, it gets harder to separate a person from what they espouse.

The letter does not say whether a specific argument, post, or action set off the ghosting. Eric noted that such details matter, because a relationship never breaks where it appears to break. It starts fracturing earlier, in smaller ways. But since the writer had already tried to reach across the gap and even to mend it, Eric said the work now is mourning the relationship he used to have.

His advice was to treat the estrangement as grief. He said the sister has made her boundary clear, even though ghosting is rarely if ever the most effective way to communicate. The writer can acknowledge, in thought or in a journal, that he is not getting what he wants, and can list the things he will miss. Anger, Eric wrote, often tells us the situation is ours to fix, while the hard lesson of grief is that there is nothing to fix. The task is to fold the new reality into the road ahead.

The second letter came from a reader signing as "Political Silence," who has a friend of 50 years. They have supported each other through many of life's challenges, but their politics could hardly be more different. About 30 years ago they agreed not to discuss politics, since the friendship was never built on it. The agreement held until a recent lunch, when after the pleasantries the friend began complaining about national and international politics. The writer said he disagreed and suggested changing the subject, but she kept going, and the lunch ended on an unpleasant note. He does not want to lose the friendship or argue with her. He asked what else he can do.

Eric suggested asking before the next lunch whether they can talk about what happened, and going in with curiosity about the reason behind her behavior. She may have been too frustrated that day to talk about anything else, with the writer simply the person across the table. Or something in her thinking may have shifted so that his position is now hard for her to accept. The writer should listen for what she thinks beyond the political issue. The topic of the conversation, Eric said, is the friendship itself, and the question underneath is whether it has changed. The frustration over the broken agreement, he wrote, is on the surface about respect and disagreement, but underneath it is about a shared understanding of how the friendship works.