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Listening to understand brings people together through the shared experience.

Being curious through conversation allows others to feel seen and heard.

We often have more in common when we allow ourselves to hear and be heard.

Recognizing the naming the feelings behind the conversation creates a common bond.

Last week, I did what in today’s society is unthinkable. I had a civil conversation with someone with whom I agree on nothing. No, it wasn’t a keyboard warrior duel or a tense debate with the goal of making my opponent feel as small as possible; it was an old-school conversation where each side genuinely cared about what the other was saying. Like I said, unthinkable.

It felt rare, because it is. Pew Research Center data shows that 72 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of Democrats now view the opposing party as more immoral than other Americans. Eight in ten U.S. adults say the two parties can't even agree on basic facts. We're not just divided on policy; we're divided on reality.

Against that backdrop, sitting down with someone whose worldview feels like the opposite of yours is increasingly uncommon. I did it anyway. And what I discovered changed how I move through the world.

Setting the intention

What made this conversation different was that I chose to enter it with curiosity. I have been increasingly confused about how I can know with all my heart that something is wrong, and yet there are others who feel just as convicted to the opposite truth.

So when the opportunity presented itself to have a conversation about this with someone I know, I took the plunge. What made this conversation fruitful was that I kept the emotion out of it. My goal was not to persuade them to believe my view; it was to understand theirs. That mindset was a conversation-changer. I was not invested in winning; I was seeking to understand, and frankly, they felt the same way towards me.

With the mutual understanding that the goal of the conversation was to understand, we dove in and quickly found that we had something in common.

We quickly found unexpected common ground. When I described feeling overwhelmed and anxious about what was happening in the country, they said they had felt the exact same way during the previous administration. Different trigger, identical feeling. In that moment, I realized something important: this person cared as deeply about the country's well-being as I did.

So instead of dipping our toes into the water, we cannonballed into the conversation, talking about maybe the biggest hot-button issue our country is facing: immigration. I shared my concerns about the human cost of current policies: safety, rights, dignity. They responded with their frustration about the previous administration, which they felt had created a mess that demanded a response.

On free speech, we found we shared more than I expected. As someone who has been silenced in my work when educating about equity, I expressed my frustration about how my rights to free speech have been compromised. This person is vocal on social media and, in the previous administration, had their accounts flagged and canceled on multiple platforms, so they shared my frustration. The grievance looked different from the outside, but the feeling underneath, my voice doesn't matter, was the same.

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Through this conversation, I began to see the disconnect between our views. My choices and decisions in life are centered on how it impacts people. I’m not saying this is right or wrong, but when I was openly speaking with another person with different views, it made me realize how human-centered I am. My conversation partner framed their choices and decisions on financial implications. Every topic covered ended with them talking about how policies impact the global economy.

What changed and what didn't

Spoiler: neither of us walked away having changed our politics. But we both walked away having changed our understanding, which, after all, was the goal.

Having a non-judgmental discussion opened my eyes to things I was not even considering in my decision-making process. I realized we are both passionate about the things that we prioritize in our worldview. One is not “right” and the other “wrong”.

There were concessions in recognition of a lack of kindness, truth-telling (or flat-out lying), and people being harmed, but these were not aligned with financial priorities, so those “infractions” are not valued.

Research supports this outcome. Cross-partisan conversations may not shift opinions, but they do reliably increase empathy toward the other side and a greater willingness to engage in future conversations. That might sound like a small return. But in a climate this fractured, it's actually significant.

Did that one conversation change the world? No, but it did allow me to use that information to inform my students, share context in my writing, and inspire others to talk across the aisle with the intention of understanding. More importantly, it allowed me to continue a connection with someone that I would normally have distanced myself from, given our extreme differences in beliefs.

What made this work wasn't a special technique or a particularly unusual person across the table. It was a choice about intention. Here's what I'd suggest if you want to try it:

Enter with curiosity, not an agenda. Your goal is to understand, not persuade.

Notice your own framework. What values are driving your arguments? What is your conversation partner optimizing for? Doing so tends to de-escalate and humanize.

Expect discomfort, not resolution. You will likely not agree at the end. That's not failure.

The divide in this country is real, and I don't want to romanticize a single conversation as a cure for it. But I do think something gets lost when we stop talking entirely and retreat so fully into our own information ecosystems that we forget there are real people on the other side, people who are also scared, also paying attention, also convinced they're doing the right thing.

Talking across the aisle won't fix the polarization. But it might remind you, and them, that there's a human being worth understanding on the other side of it.

Pew Research Center. (2022, August 9). Republicans and Democrats increasingly critical of people in the opposing party. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/08/09/republicans-and-democrats-increasingly-critical-of-people-in-the-opposing-party/

Stirling, D. (2025, October 23). The 'great divide': Understanding US political polarization. Syracuse University Today. https://news.syr.edu/2025/10/23/the-great-divide-understanding-us-political-polarization/

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