JULY 1, 2025

Shriya Srivastava

🔖 Anecdotal analysis on how to deal with conflict of views while maintaining our relationships.

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We have heard about many incidences where people mention getting into heated arguments with their peers, relatives or loved ones about politics or beliefs that leads to an irreparable strain or ensue demise of the relationship. Is losing friends over “tough conversations” inevitable?, Is there a way to not let political discussions destroy our relationships? Will I ever be able to persuade my father to not be homophobic?

Today I’ll share when I had a similar conflict of belief and how I did not let it ruin my relationship!

I remember when I was freshly out of college with my new woke political views on our society is build on oppression of lower class and I have so many privileges’ so I need to be more vocal about it. One day I was having breakfast with my father and he said something appreciating our prime minister. I felt like this is my moment! I need to reveal to my dad how he is being manipulated by the current government and in reality their agenda is to serve the religious majority at the expense of minority. I expected my dad to be baffled with this information and feel shame on not being critical of a self-serving government. However, he didn’t. Instead he disagreed with me and when I told him some more harsh facts to support my arguments he eventually said “ you don’t know what you are talking about”. I was mad at his reaction and I didn’t talk to him for a week. That was the last real conversation I had with him before his demise from COVID-19.

This incident made we wonder how could I have had that conversation without that outcome. How could I have approached him better that wouldn’t lead us to have an outburst like that.

I value my relationships, I aspire to be an empathetic and open-minded person. So, I would never want to force my views on someone. Similarly, I would never want my conversations with other people to trigger resentments or any backlash. So I have decided to be more mindful of such subjects and to learn to change someone’s perspective peacefully.

Cut to couple of years later, I am a bit more mature now, I have collected more opinions and my political beliefs have also become more stable. I have more patience to listen to people and I don’t outright dismiss someone’s believes if they don’t align with mine. So far, I have managed to stay curious and dodge conflict of believes with close ones and life was going great.

Until!! I got into a relationship with this amazing guy! He is a blue collar worker and he is eldest of four siblings and he takes care of his family and has a healthy relationship with his parents, even after his parents’ divorce, he has managed to stay amicable with his absent father.

I feel very content in this relationship but I realized soon that because our differences in culture, educational and professional background, some of our beliefs mainly political are not the same.

For the beginning of our relationship I decided to just listen to his perspective and postponed any confrontations about political views waiting for that one lucky day where we will have an elaborate conversation where I will present my rational arguments and facts to him and he will convert! We did have that lucky day when we had an elaborate conversation and it became clear to him for the first time that I did not see eye to eye with many opinions of his. What did not happen was him being the obedient boy who assimilated my point of view and changed his beliefs to mine. Basically, I lost!

This continued for long. We would have the same conversations where I would tell him that his beliefs are not just wrong but also immoral in some ways. Also, that he is supporting the wrong people which could have disastrous aftereffects in the future. I was frustrated, felt the same betrayal that I felt from my father that they do not want to listen to me. I became verbally mean resorted to ad hominem because I felt hurt. This was no longer about the conversation, this was about trust now! In my head, it was simple, I was correct because I had some facts and all they had to do was let go of their ego and admit that I am correct. Even if, they didn’t think my opinions were objectively correct still they should bow their heads and trust me that I would not lead them to a ditch, and accept my way of thinking. I accused him of not being open-minded, I told him that he is lesser person because he doesn’t believe in “right” things.

He told me he didn’t mind accepting me with the beliefs I have but that won’t mean he will change his. I was sad because I saw we are not compatible as our political views don’t align. The only right thing to do at this point was to break-up. I had lost again.

Because I really admire my boyfriend and I had promised not to compromise my relationships at the expense of conflicting beliefs, I decided to introspect one last time.

Questions I wanted to ask myself:

What do I truly want and value out of my relationships?

I value the person, my boyfriend (or my father in my last argument). I value myself when I am with the person because he makes me a better person. I cherish people who make me better.

What are my expectations out of having the same beliefs?

I expect them to understand me and to love me with all of my qualities, flaws and opinions.

Does him keeping his beliefs come at a cost of changing your beliefs?

No, for him, the most important thing is mutual respect and love in the relationship. So, he is accepting of my beliefs. He is also ready to update his beliefs if he deems it appropriate. He would never force me to see things the exact way he does.

How is the person without these beliefs/opinions?

If I subtract our conversations about politics, we are really compatible. He is a good person who is not judgmental. He believes people should be judged by their actions and not by their inherent traits of gender, race or color.

Why is it so important for me to have same political views with my partner/loved ones?

It is instilled in me that arguments are bad! Having different opinions means that we might argue which can lead to breakups. Of course, everyone is different person and I accept that your background gives you a unique quality that made me love you or value you but political views are important, they should be same.

Is there underlying insecurity that makes me so adamant on sharing the same beliefs?

I am afraid that these difference in political views reflect a dissonance of personalities and if he can’t accept my views means he is rejecting me as a person in some ways. This feels scary.

Did I make effort to understand his point of view? How did I do it?

I listened to him. I asked him why he believes in what he believes, when he told me, I judged him and dismissed his experiences as false. When he told me his point of view, I labelled him as privileged and told him he is “living under propaganda”.

What did I learn?

After I introspected, I realized the problem was not just “differences in political views”. I had deep insecurities about conflict in general and not many tools on how to deal with it. Although, I had told myself I am an open-minded and tolerant person. I don’t really practice it. My insecurities convinced me to belief that their is malice hidden under disagreement. And what did I do to solve it? Impose my term and thinking on him to save myself from any effort. I though my beliefs has solid foundations but as soon as I saw different way of thinking, I felt threatened and tried to suffocate them by dismissing their values and experiences to null. I was not educating him and I forcing him to obey me because my ego taught me that anything different is unscientific and wrong.

So, now what I am doing is being more aware about what I learned about myself. I used to feel like a ticking time bomb every time he mentioned politics to me but now I am unaffected. He will mention something to me, I go inside my head to first learn what I feel about that topic before I speak about it. If I feel like I disagree with something he said, I just tell him simply that I disagree with him, sometimes we go into the topic trying to put our views on the table. When I understand where he is coming from, it helps me to acknowledge the difference. If we don’t get into the depth of the topic, I don’t feel agitated instead I feel curious. Unsurprisingly, since I have shifted my way of thinking, I have also realized that in many instances I was wrong even with my hard facts in hand as they were false information that I collected through the echo-chamber of trying to be correct.

It’s been couple of months and we have not had any fights related to politics or our different perspective on things.

Hope you enjoyed learning about my experience and got some tips on dealing with conflicts.