A bigoted old bastard: that’s how Letitia Clark thought of her dad, Tony, when she found out he had voted to leave. She worked in a restaurant, where many of her colleagues were EU migrants, and was dating an Italian. “He disappeared for a while,” she says of her father. “I think it was a wish to avoid conflict.”

The vote played a significant role in Letitia’s decision to move with her then boyfriend to Sardinia, where she still lives and has written a cookbook, Bitter Honey, about Sardinian cuisine. She and her two brothers – a journalist in Cape Town, and a captain in the Royal Marines who travels all over the world – lead very different lives from Tony’s in quiet, rural Devon.

“Now, he says he realises it wasn’t a very informed decision, more of a gut instinct,” says Letitia, 32. “I think he also knows that all of us [siblings] have made a conscious effort to escape, and move away from England.”

Tony gets a good shoeing over Brexit whenever they see each other, most recently at Christmas. “We have so little time together as a family anyway, it seems a shame to focus on the things we don’t agree on,” Letitia says. Tony, 70, agrees: “I would never actually fall out with family or friends about it. You shrug your shoulders and get on with it.” He and his daughter share an inability to take themselves too seriously, and clearly love each other very much.

We live in a divided country. The 2016 Brexit vote – and, to a degree, the general election last December – revealed a fissure of leave v remain, left v right, old v young, urban v provincial. This has manifested in politics and public life, but also crept into our relationships. The fallout for friendships, marriages and families has, for many people, been profound. In a 2016 study, one in five relationship support practitioners (19.4%) from Relate, Marriage Care and Relationships Scotland said clients had mentioned the decision to leave the European Union as an issue in their relationship.

I was being called an idiot, a racist, and accused of not knowing what I’m talking about

Yet we all have to live together on these little islands, so how can we begin to find a way forward? What strategies are people using to address conflict with loved ones?

Laughing about it has helped James, 32, from Maidstone, defuse conflicts that arose as a result of his leave vote. Most of his friends voted to remain. “It’s usually in the pub. Some of them take it personally, like I’ve attacked their sense of being, when I really haven’t. I decided to vote that way because I didn’t think there was any accountability in Europe,” he says. He found social media especially hard. “I was called an idiot, a racist, and accused of not knowing what I’m talking about. I don’t mind if you disagree with me, but it was the language used.”

Then, about a year ago, a girl he had been talking to on a dating app ghosted him because he had voted leave. “All my friends, even my remainer friends, found it hilarious. That sort of brought us together. You get some perspective, realise that politics isn’t the be-all and end-all,” he says. James says the election did momentarily reignite tensions. “Now, when I go out with friends, we have a no-politics rule. It has got a lot better. They have been a lot less argumentative now that Brexit has happened.”

Olivia Whelan, 38, from London, has reached the “resignation” phase: “I can’t have the same argument over and over with people.” Having studied in Germany and worked there for a decade, she was dismayed by the result and by the fact that her parents – who had lived in Spain for seven years – voted to leave. “When I found out, I was very upset. I found it very difficult for that whole first year to talk about anything else, especially with my dad, who had told my mum how to vote.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘He disappeared for a while. I think it was a wish to avoid conflict,’ says Letitia Clark of her father Tony. Photograph: Muir Vidler/The Guardian. Location: Diddy’s

But she has come to understand her parents’ reasons for voting leave. “They really did think there would be that £350m a week for the NHS.” She is now, “amazingly”, dating a man who voted leave, which she says would have been unthinkable 18 months ago. They first went on a date in 2017, but ended up screaming at each other about Brexit. “I felt quite sad. I was still so angry and all I could see was that, if you voted for that, you must be terrible, your politics must be terrible, you must hate this country. I couldn’t see past it at all.”

Has Olivia been through a grieving process of sorts, and come out the other side? “Yes, life has to go on. We have to find a way to live together after this.” Whether the harmony with her parents and her partner will continue, she doesn’t know. It depends what happens politically. “It’s calm at the moment, but if things get hairy again, I’m going to find it quite difficult.”

Alison, 75, a British citizen who lives in Portugal, doesn’t know anyone else in her community of expats who voted to leave and, while her husband didn’t vote, he was pro-remain. “I was subjected to a constant barrage of criticism,” she says. “I frequently felt bullied, sidelined and isolated. I love Europe. I’ve always travelled in Europe. It’s the EU I don’t like.”

Things have calmed down a little since the election, but it is clear from talking to Alison that she is still hurt. “I can stand up for myself and make my reasons known. But if you’re totally alone in that argument with no support from anybody else, it’s intimidating.”

What about her husband? “We argue every time we watch the news,” she sighs. “You can’t divorce your husband because of different political views. We’re fine.” It doesn’t sound fine – how does she think things will progress? “I’m not sure. We’re in a bit of a limbo at the moment. I think more war could break out.”

There’s something particularly British about many of the stories I heard from families trying to resolve Brexit conflict, after a callout on the Guardian website. Many of them were simply burying it. Does banning politics as a conversation topic simply repress negative emotions until a later date? Or does it allow people the time and space to focus on what unites them?

One person struggling with a politics moratorium is James Turner, 41, from Buckinghamshire. James, who voted remain, and his family live close to his wife’s parents and siblings, and their families, who all voted leave. Brexit sparked conversations that shook his understanding of the people he thought he knew. “I couldn’t believe how emotional I found it,” he says. “When that leaks into family dynamics, it’s really hard.”

Brexit has been a validation for people expressing anti-immigration feelings

He was particularly disturbed when his nephew started making approving references to the far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself Tommy Robinson. “I was like, hold on guys, is no one shocked [by this]? Out of the blue, these people had views I’d never heard before. It really hit me.”

A lack of communication following several disagreements has left James second-guessing his own feelings. “It occurred to me that it might not even be an issue to them, they might not have even realised how much it has affected me,” he says. This isn’t simply a difference of opinion, though, but extreme right ideologies. What would help James move forward? “Just a conversation; that would go a long way to making me feel better about it. I’ve tried so hard to make that happen. But everyone seems terrified of engaging.”

Ana, 43, lives in London, and is Spanish-Italian. She has lived in the UK since she was 15, when her anglophile parents sent her to study. She stayed, marrying a Briton who had been raised in Spain, and they have two children, aged eight and 12. When her mother-in-law and husband voted for Brexit, she felt betrayed. “I feel Brexit has been a validation for people expressing anti-immigration feelings,” she says.

There have been explosive arguments and emotional conversations in the years since. “My husband has tried to have a conversation but then [his mother] gets upset and walks out. Last Easter was really tense: it had been bottled up for years and then it exploded.” When her in-laws visited at Christmas, Ana says things were much more peaceful. “We didn’t talk about politics at all.” It is for the sake of her children that Ana has tried to keep the peace. “I need to forgive, and think I’ve started to. It’s taking time. I’m doing it for my kids, really. They have fantastic grandparents. I have to swallow it, basically. But it isn’t easy.”

Pete, 37, who is British and lives in Germany, wept at the Brexit result – voted for by both his parents and their respective partners. It sent him down a long and stressful path towards German citizenship. He became snappy and withdrawn with his mother. “I resented her for what I saw as her supporting people who were working against my way of life, causing chaos for my friends and family, and stripping people in Britain and in the EU of important rights,” he says. What helped was channelling his energy into remain causes and working on his own responses. “I have made personal efforts to change my thinking, and I have the impression she has, too. I am lucky that both my parents are still here, and I want to have enjoyable times with them, and appreciate the good things about our relationship.”

Simon, 48, from Solihull, was the first in his family to go to university. He voted remain. He told me how his Brexit-voting father had called him a “liberal elite” and he had called his father “a fucking stupid builder” during years of beer-fuelled arguments in the pub. “For a while, I was using all the hard data. I’d print out arguments with experts and statistics. He’d look at them, but it took me years to realise that it wasn’t the data that was going to change his mind. He hadn’t used reason to get to that position; he just wanted out.”

What was a logical question to him, Simon realised, was an emotional one for his dad. “It became clear that we were on different wavelengths. If your criteria are completely different then you could be speaking a different language.” But, Simon says, it would never have got to the point where father and son stopped speaking.

When Simon wrote to me in January, his father was very ill; he died before the month was out. Despite their political differences, the men were close. “As I used to say, ‘Dad, you are a complete arse but I love you.’ Him being ill crystallised the whole thing: some things are more important than politics. Ultimately, this is just an argument in the pub – it’s not going to change how we feel about each other.”

Some names have been changed

The philosopher: don’t jump to conclusions

We tend to make presumptions about the wider set of values other people hold on the basis of one or two that are salient. This is particularly evident post-Brexit. People assume that a person’s stance on Europe is a reliable indicator of all sorts of other values, often negative. Healing requires recognising the complexity of our value systems, and that holding a single view you find intolerable is consistent with holding any number of other values you share.

Julian Baggini

The divorce lawyer: look beyond the hurt

I usually prefer to avoid seeing a divorce as a place where you win or lose. As a lawyer who deals with matters involving a high level of emotions, my number one priority is to keep my clients focused on the desired outcome, instead of seeking cheap wins and ego boosts. In the context of Brexit, the comparison should be that of a divorce with children, where the best interest of the child should always come first. It is my job to help people see beyond the emotional hurt and seek common groun1d on which to build a future for themselves, unburdened by past hurts, as well as for their children. With Brexit, things are similar: accepting the new reality, and finding common ground with those who have chosen a different path to the one we would have preferred, is the only way forward.

Rakhi Singal

The counsellor: have a conversation

I could never understand my grandmother's sadness – until I learned her tragic story Read more

If you’ve fallen out with someone over your views on Brexit, and want to get your relationship back on track, talk – ideally face-to-face. Say you know you have had your differences recently, but you’re still family/friends/partners and your relationship is important to you. You don’t have to come round to their way of thinking, but you will need to agree to disagree and draw a line under it. If the other person is ready to move forward, try talking through some of the things that you do agree on, and looking back at some of the good times you’ve shared. Keep in mind that you are two different people with unique perspectives – it’s just that the polarisation around Brexit has made these differences more visible. Difference can be a good thing – it’s how you manage it that counts.

Peter Saddington, at Relate

The podcast host: put yourself in others’ shoes

Get perspective: trying to understand where someone else is coming from is tough but helpful. Try to see things through their lens. If you can understand their starting point, you will be in a better position to come up with solutions that give them some of what they want. This is critical to being able to move forward – if you are offering them nothing, don’t expect them to agree. Learn what triggers negative reactions in you – is there a specific point of disagreement that winds you up? Whatever it is, identify it and practise staying calm when thinking about it, or experiencing it. Reserve your energy, pick your battles.

Kate Daly, co-founder of Amicable, an online divorce service, and host of the Divorce Podcast

• If you would like your comment on this piece to be considered for Weekend magazine’s letters page, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication).