Wondering about this article. It says polarizing politics is another thing getting in the way of happy relationships.
In Canada, despite ample posturing, most people broadly agree on a lot of things. Although a few people adopt more “extreme” Canadian positions, even some of these would be mainstream or moderate from an international perspective. I would guess it is less of a thing here, where few women think the state has a say in certain personal topics (such as abortion). I could be wrong.
Anyway, what is your response to that. Or this… (quite possibly paywalled but jist given). Did it affect you? Do you generally agree with your spouse? Most other close relatives?
I generally agree with my spouse. We have different opinions and decision-making styles, but our values are similar. I don’t find people with significantly different values romantically attractive, so I would have wound up with someone that different only if they changed over time, which certainly happens. That could pose a dilemma for me depending on the issue(s).
I should say that my spouse and I have the same gender and major professions and met at a professional conference, so we had experiences and values in common before we got together.
The woman I thought I was going to marry was from a rich family. The woman I ended up marrying was from a lower-middle class background.
I didn’t think it’d make a huge difference back in the 70s and 80s… but given where we’re at now, I’m so glad things worked out the way they did.
The first woman is writing slanderous articles/posts on how we all have to hide our money before the socialists in the white house steal it all from us.
My wife is involved in our church’s food pantry, has been active in local politics and was a poll worker.
I’m sure if I’d married a rich, far-right-wing Trumper, we’d be fighting bitterly or divorced. Either way, I’d be miserable.
I see politics as ethics on a social scale. So it would be as hard for me to be with someone with very different politics as it would be to with someone with very different ethics. There could be some detente on hot button issues that didn’t in fact impinge on our lives. For example, if neither of us were much interested in religion, it wouldn’t matter too much if one believed in god in some vague, comforting way and one was a peaceable atheist, or one sided with Marx in the First International and the other with Bakunin. Fun, but not dealbreakers. Don’t get me started on Kronstadt. So Kropotkinskaya happily identifies as an “anarcho-Stalinist” and I am a cheerful anarcho-syndicalist, and we make it work.
Depends what you mean by “very different”. To be generally compatible I think you have to want the same goals for the world and the people around you but the means by which you might get there are free to vary in many ways.
We’ve certainly voted for different parties over the years and have different opinions on some major political subjects over the years but I don’t recally ever having an argument over it in our 36 years together.
I could, but only if the person has good and consistent logic to back up their views, are grounded in reality, and are honest about their views.
I don’t even care so much if a person is a bigot as long as they are consistent and open about it. So, for instance, if someone says “I hate men/Christians/Asians/Hispanics/atheists,” I’m fine with that - as long as they give solid reasons or at least are coherent in their logic.
What I cannot stand is someone who is bigoted but tries to cloak it in some more respectable language. Just say what you mean.
I’d rather marry a white-hood-wearing KKK-card-carrying woman than some disguised-racist woman who has a veneer on top of everything.
I work in party politics, so it would probably be awkward to be in a relationship with someone who was vehemently opposed to the party that I work for. I would call myself centre-left, somewhere between social-liberal and social-democrat. I think I could reasonably be compatible with anyone from a moderate conservative to a socialist.
Also as a gay man I couldn’t marry someone with a very different opinion on LGBT rights, but that kind of handles itself (barring some terrible cases of internalised homophobia).
I think more important for a relationship is matching views of reality - by which I mean that some people on all sides of politics (but especially the extremes) seem to be completely detached from the world of facts. I could not live with someone who believes in pseudoscience and counter-factual conspiracy theories, even if they shared my political views otherwise.
Ditto. I see right wing positions (these days) as selfish, callous, short-sighted, and stupidly violent. Despite knowing plenty of people who are right wing and personally generous and kind, someone able to hold political views that are the opposite would be a big red flag.
Ditto here too. In fact, I will quote you, as this nicely sums up so much.
But it didn’t seem so absolutely this way 34 years ago when my spouse and I were getting started. Decades ago there were legitimate questions lined up along the political spectrum, such as how much redistribution of wealth should the state supervise, or how quickly things should change.
Now it seems like the cruelty is the point, and the more offensive the better.
Once upon a time there was a tension between being truthful and being polite, and some people spoke the truth even though it was rude. Somehow, today, being rude became the proof that one was speaking the truth, and anything polite must be lies.
My spouse and I are politically similar. But this is partly luck. It’s essential today, but when we first connected, it was just a plus.
My ten-word set of necessary conditions for a couple considering marriage:
Mutual trust and respect. Shared or compatible goals/values/worldview.
Obviously, to the extent that political differences are indicative of incompatible values and world view, they should be a deal-breaker.
The values inherent in the Republican and Democratic parties as they are nowadays are so divergent that it’s just really hard to see how a marriage between persons of differing political parties can possibly work anymore.
This wasn’t nearly so much the case a few decades back. My father, a (nearly) lifelong Republican, and my stepmother, a lifelong Democrat, were married from 1978 until my father’s death in 2015. My father left the GOP in 2011 or thereabouts because it had gotten too extreme for him with the Tea Party wave, but while they were of different parties, the differences hadn’t been a problem for them.
To simplify matters, I won’t even date anyone whom I suspect of harboring right-wing views. Total deal-killer.
Eventually, and probably sooner, we’re going to have some vicious arguments about decency, respect for others’ rights, the social contract–basic things about how each of us views the world-- so why waste a second finding out more about such a person? I know all I need to know the second I find out about her politics.
The kindest thing I could say about such a person is that she has chosen ignorantly to align herself with malignant forces and I could spend my lifetime trying to educate her and most likely fail.
I’m not sure how people with diametrically opposed political views manage to stay married. However, there are a lot of people who are largely apathetic to politics so in their views the differences are not great. IMHO most people vote consistently for one party or another on some traditional basis without regard to the details. They may maintain that they believe in something or other that a party represents but don’t actually believe any of the rest is important or makes a difference. I’ve often heard the statement that “They’re all crooks, there’s no real difference between the parties”, yet that person is consistently on one side or the other.
When I was in my early 20s (the early 2000s) I dated a guy who was an active Young Republican. I myself didn’t really pay attention to politics so while I knew my family was Union Proud Democrat, I didn’t quite know the oeticulars of what it meant to be a Republican or a Democrat. I started reading more to understand what each party stood for and realized that I was solidly Democrat, and WHY I was.
This was before the Tea Party and before everything really started to unravel, so I was able to stay with him for a while as his party allegiances were mostly fiscal in nature, so we didn’t have fights about social morals or anything. Turns out he was a giant asshole so the trash took itself out, as it were.
I also dated a Libertarian some time after this dude, and he was just tiresome to be around. I’ll admit we did have some good political conversations that did help me on the path to forming some of my political views, but his overall demeanor was too much for me, and he definitely tied it to his political leanings.
Looking back over my dating history, the only guys I miss (or am currently in love with) are very Liberal Democrats, as am I. It just works better that way.
The degree to which one views political differences as a fundamental source of incompatibility is heavily influenced by how strongly one feels that such differences are an indication of moral failing/lack of humanity.
Mrs. J. and I have opinions that overlap to a great extent, but there are differences we respect and do not get into mutual harangues over. Agreement on the truly important things (dogs, kids, the best places to live etc.) waa established before marriage.
Well I guess a lot depends on what you consider to be a “right wing view” I can certainly imagine extreme political views from both sides that would be a huge turn off and a deal breaker.
But even considering the less extreme views and policies, for some people there may be a “one drop” concept that seems to me destined to either reduce the dating pool drastically or encourage people to begin that dating process on an unspoken lie. I hope that is very rare but I’ve heard it voiced.
The vast majority of people I’ve ever met hold a mixture of views that could be reasonably considered to be on one side of the political spectrum or the other and many (probably most) people hold combinations of views that extreme political purist of both sides would consider anathema.
The sum totality of a person’s worldview are complicated but the vast majority can and should find areas of mutual agreement and basis for discussion, perhaps friendship and, yes, even love.
e.g. someone completely supportive of gay marriage but in favour of strong border controls? Nothing surprising about that. In favour of basic universal income but also in favour of Brexit? same again. Fiercely protective of UHC but in favour of reduced corporation tax? yep, no problem with that at all.
I have no doubt at all that people with those combinations of views are right now living happy married lives with partners who hold the inverse. I find that an encouraging thought.
My husband is registered Independent and claims to have no strong views on anything. However, he does feel that people get what they “deserve”, that they can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps like he did back in the day, and that he doesn’t want anyone else taking what’s his.
I think he’s wrong about all that, and I have very strong emotions about some things. Sometimes when we watch the news, I’ll be hollering at the TV with my hair on fire and he’s shrugging. I don’t know why he votes at all, but the good news is that sometimes he’ll vote the way that pleases me because he knows I care very much.
It depends - and mostly it depends on what “very different” political opinions means. I got married in 1987 and if you had asked me then I would have said of course, I just did marry someone with very different opinions. But what I saw as very different opinions then don’t seem so different today, after the Tea Party and MAGA. A few years ago, I found a very former ( like 40+ years ago) boyfriend’s Facebook page - and all I could think of was that if we had stayed together then, either one of us would be very different now or we would have split up. Because the person I turned into could not have lived with the person he turned into.