How Can We Heal a Friendship with Another Family?

We are a close, we are close with another family. Our families have recently had differences and emotions are running high. How do we heal our important friendships with this other family? This is an interesting one because you're, you're talking family. Um, probably my, my biggest suggestion would be, um, I, what I refer to as how to communicate when you don't know what to say. And it's just a little formula that I put together in terms of just like, how, how do I, how do I see this when I, I don't know what to do. So the first step in this is you, you probably step back yourself and identify what you've identified as the core issue. What, what's actually transpiring between you and the other family, or your family and the other family. So the first step is to step back and evaluate as objectively as possible, how are, how is our family experiencing this? How am I experiencing this? And then ask the question. It's a much more difficult and important question is what are they experiencing? What is the other family experiencing that, that's a different level of thinking, of trying to put yourself into their shoes, developing empathy for how they're seeing this. So my suggestion here is to reflect on, on those two questions, what is it that I'm experiencing and what is it that they're experiencing now? Then other than that, we have the next step and that is really how do we communicate our desire with them in a positive way, in a productive way. And really what I'm looking at here is how do I talk with them about, I, I want to resolve this. I don't know what happened to help me understand. I'm wondering if those types of statements can at least try to get the conversation going. And what we're trying to do is get them to open up to see how they're experiencing this. So a phrase that we typically use is seek to understand before you seek to be understood. So I wanna understand what they're experiencing and, and that at a certain point there may be a transition that's interesting 'cause I, we were experiencing this way, you might find that you were having apples and oranges conversations. Now that, again, that's just a possibility. Now, if there has been something that has been done that's very offensive, if it's been done by them or if it's done by someone in your family, then we need to really address that head on. If I've done something that's offended you, I need to be responsible and take accountability. I realize that when I did X, Y, z, that was not appropriate or, uh, that that was probably hurtful for you guys, and I need to apologize. So again, what's my role and can I communicate hurt and pain in an appropriate way as we communicate through this? So that, that's where I would start with this conversation. Michelle Doesn't sound like an an an easy solution, but definitely worthwhile. Well, the alternative is to not is for the relationship or the, a friendship to the die because we aren't willing to have hard conversations. Uh, and then when I refer to mental rehearsal, there's a term that, that's a term I use. Mental rehearsal is when I practice something. So when I go into the situation, I feel more comfortable. I think far too often when I'm in car conversations are important. One of the things that we do is we don't practice it in, in the way, well, what would they, what would we do if they responded this way? Or how would we, you know, say this if they answered this way? That kind of mental rehearsal can go a long, long way. But we need to in advance, we need to think through a scenario. Okay, what would we do if they responded that way?