This is reminiscent of the saying that you can't have both FTL and intact causality, "because of relativity". What it actually means is that you can't have FTL, causality and relativity in the same story... so why not ditch the latter? Most space opera settings with FTL ditch relativity implicitly (by simply never referencing the concept) but it could also be done explicitly (e.g. by saying the FTL drive breaks it).