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Disagreement is an inevitable event in every relationship, and one of life’s most valuable lessons is how to heal those hurt feelings. However, since I started this column, I have received many emails asking about estrangement from parents or siblings. When is it right to cut ties with someone close to us? And what are the consequences for our well-being?

I talk from personal experience when I say that this is one of the hardest decisions we ever have to make. There can be no hard and fast rules, but sociological and scientific research can help to put our own dilemmas in perspective.

Let’s first consider the sheer prevalence of the phenomenon. Kyungmin Kim at the University of Massachusetts Boston and her colleagues questioned 633 adults aged 40 to 60 in the US about their contact with their parents and children – a total of 2252 bonds.

Around 38 per cent of the relationships involved . Around 35 per cent involved some kind of conflict or ambivalence, leaving just 28 per cent who were actively engaged and “harmonious”. Happy families, it seems, are relatively hard to find, at least in this sample of people in the US.

Crucially, the team also assessed the well-being of the participants. The clearest pattern to emerge concerned those with the active and conflicted relationships, who were considerably more likely to show symptoms of depression and worse life satisfaction. Any other links to well-being failed to reach statistical significance.

I think these findings are helpful for two reasons. First, we often feel embarrassment or shame at our dysfunctional families, but these statistics should reassure us that we are by no means unusual or strange in struggling to maintain a bond to our blood relatives.

Secondly, while estrangement comes with a terrible sense of loss not unlike grief, the data suggests that distancing ourselves from a relation may be better for long-term well-being than persevering with someone who fails to treat us with respect or care. Alongside the loss can be a .

When coming to these difficult decisions, we might consider what we think about how relationships evolve. Some people view others’ personalities as immutable. With such beliefs, any error may be seen as a fatal flaw in their character. This can make it far a perceived transgression. Others see more potential for personal growth, which can promote greater forgiveness. That is often good, unless it means clinging on to toxic relationships that show no signs of changing.

Neither extreme is ideal. While I am a firm believer in third, fourth or even tenth chances, we must be prepared to recognise the limits of our love, and establish a suitable distance from our loved one until they have shown their commitment to change.

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