Dear Eric: I’m 70, and my 68-year-old sister has ghosted me over politics. After the 2024 election she stopped responding to me in all forms.

She also did this in 2016 — ghosting my mother (82 at the time) and me for more than two years.

I finally wrote her a letter and told her that I loved her the way she was, not the way I wanted her to be. Could she do the same? No response. I wrote to her about a major injury I had requiring surgery. No response.

I have a very full life. My first wife died of leukemia after a 40-year marriage. I am three years into a relationship and marriage to a wonderful second wife. I have sons and grandkids and numerous friends. While I would love to have a relationship with my sister and feel melancholy about it, I am fed up. Any suggestions on how to manage and/or accept this?

— Severed Sibling

Dear Sibling: Yours is, unfortunately, not an uncommon problem.

On a human-to-human level, there must be space for empathy, for communication beyond headlines, for love in times of need that focuses on the places where you meet, rather than the places where you diverge. This is sometimes easier said than done. All politics is personal. And in a time when rhetoric more frequently stands in for political thought, it becomes harder to separate the human from what they espouse.

It’s not clear from your letter if the ghosting came as a result of a specific series of disagreements, arguments, posts, or actions. And those tend to be important clues, because a relationship never breaks where it breaks; it starts to fracture much earlier and in tinier ways.

However, because it sounds like you’ve done the work to try to reach beyond this fracture, and even to try to heal it, the work in front of you now is mourning the relationship that you had. Your sister has made her boundary clear — even though ghosting is rarely, if ever, the most effective form of communication. Acknowledge, in thought or even in a journal, that you’re not getting what you want. You can even write down the things that you’ll miss. If you process it like grief, the frustration and anger you feel will abate. Anger often tells us, “this is for you to fix.” The hard lesson of grief is that there is nothing to fix. The task is to incorporate this new reality into the path going forward.

Dear Eric: Recently my sisters visited and that was a long road trip for retirees. So, I am very, very appreciative of their effort to visit.

But my younger sister talks too much. My older sister and I exchanged many silent looks trying to cope.

Three days is more than I can tolerate, really. We can talk about others who talk too much, and the hint goes over her head.

What to do? I would like to discuss this with her but that most likely will go south really quickly.

— Frazzled Sister

Dear Sister: A lot depends on if your younger sister is planning to come back any time soon. If she’s not, which seems more likely given what you said about the length of the trip, I suggest letting it go. There were pros and cons to the visit, but it’s over now and you can enjoy your quieter house in peace.

Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com.