When it is family

A family expectation is not a request and does not answer to the same script. It usually arrives as an assumption rather than a question, it is attached to genuine care, and refusing it can be heard as refusing the relationship. The move that works is to name the care first and the disagreement second, and to disagree only about the specific thing.

It also usually needs more than one conversation, and it goes better when it starts long before the decision point. A view raised early is a discussion. The same view raised on the last day is an ultimatum, and gets responded to as one — which is how positions that could have converged end up hardening instead.