The Disappearing Skill of Tolerating Imperfect Relationships
Why modern families break not just from harm—but from expectation
There’s a quiet shift happening in how we think about family—not just in what we expect from relationships, but in what we’re willing to tolerate when those expectations aren’t met.
We’ve raised the bar for what relationships should provide: emotional attunement, psychological safety, validation, growth, repair. These are not trivial gains. They reflect real progress in how we understand human needs.
But at the same time, something else has diminished—our tolerance for disappointment, ambiguity, and imperfection in the people closest to us.
And that shift may be playing a larger role in estrangement than we’re willing to acknowledge.
From Duty → Authenticity → Optimization
Family historians and sociologists have written about the transformation of family life in modernity. Where relationships were once anchored in duty and obligation, they gradually came to be organized around authenticity—being true to oneself, expressing one’s needs, rejecting roles that felt imposed or inauthentic.
That shift was, in many ways, liberating.
But we’re now in a third phase—less discussed, but increasingly visible—where relationships are judged not just by whether they are authentic, but by whether they are optimizing our emotional lives.
Do they support my growth?
Do they align with my values?
Do they feel healthy, regulated, and mutually affirming?
When the answer is no, the question becomes: Why keep this relationship at all?
The Rising Cost of Imperfection
In earlier eras, people remained in imperfect relationships because they had to. Today, they often leave them because they can.
But this freedom comes with a psychological cost.
When we begin to expect that close relationships should consistently meet our emotional needs—should feel safe, validating, and growth-oriented—we inadvertently narrow the range of what becomes tolerable.
A parent who is loving but emotionally limited.
A sibling who is caring but intermittently distant or negative.
A family system that is meaningful but also frustrating, uneven, or unresolved.
These relationships haven’t necessarily become worse.
But our tolerance for their imperfections has.
The Loss of Ambiguity
Estrangement is often framed as a response to harm—and in many cases, it is.
But it is also, increasingly, a response to ambiguity.
To relationships that are not clearly harmful, but not clearly nourishing either.
To histories that include both care and hurt.
To people who are neither villains nor heroes, but complicated, inconsistent, and human.
The skill that seems to be disappearing is the ability to hold that ambiguity without rushing to resolve it through distance.
To say: This relationship is imperfect, and I will stay in some form of contact anyway.
To tolerate discomfort without turning it into a verdict.
To remain engaged without requiring resolution.
What We Lose
When tolerance for imperfection declines, estrangement becomes not just more common—but more likely in situations where repair might have been possible.
Not easy. Not guaranteed. But possible.
Because most family relationships are not cleanly categorizable. They exist in the gray space between harm and care, disappointment and love, rupture and potential repair.
If the threshold for maintaining contact becomes “this relationship must consistently meet my psychological needs,” then many relationships—perhaps most—will fail that test.
And when they do, we risk losing not just the relationship, but the capacity to stay in connection despite its limits.
An older—and perhaps still necessary—question is:
What does it mean to stay in relationship with someone who cannot fully meet my needs?
That question doesn’t deny harm.
It doesn’t require self-abandonment.
And it doesn’t apply in every case.
But it does ask something that modern culture asks less and less:
Can we learn, again, how to remain in relationship with people who love us imperfectly—and whom we love imperfectly in return.
Dr. Coleman, I thank you very much for this excellent piece.
It seems like every week you are making more progress in untangling the twists and turns of the logic embraced by this movement. And how sad and disappointing lots of this is for society as a whole, and for each of us as parents trying to navigate these confusing, and crazy-making waters.
I appreciate the deep dives you are doing to reveal the motivations and the outcomes.
Thank you very much!
This column is a stellar piece of writing. It encapsulates perfectly the dance of our current relationships familial and otherwise. You never fail to amaze us Dr Coleman .