Well, one of my fervent political opinions is that the institution of marriage is an utter buzzkill with few redeeming features to offset that, that sexual possessiveness and obligatory monogamy aren’t natural or inevitable, and so on.
Hence, it is unlikely that I would marry anyone with a different opinion on that, but also unlikely that I’d marry anyone who agreed with me either 
I think it is unlikely that either of you would have turned out exactly how you did if you had stayed together. I certainly know my views and my wife’s have been changed, moderated and modified just by the joint experiences we’ve had.
Marry someone? Heck, I couldn’t go on a second date after finding certain qualities. A “right winger”, someone for whom religion is an important thing, someone who is racist are a few turnoffs.
Heck, I’m pretty pragmatic centrist-Democrat and my wife is more liberal and we already get into some “spirited debate” over some stuff. I can’t imagine what it’d be like if one of us was wearing a MAGA hat.
That is a very good point.
Absolutely - but there’s a whole lot of space between turning out exactly as we did and turning out very differently. We would certainly have had different experiences than we actually did , but it’s not so certain that either one of us would have been very different rather than just a little different.
Well it certainly isn’t an experiment we can easily run and the academic debate on “nature v nurture” is yet to be settled.
“different” is pretty much certain but you are right “slightly v completely”? who knows?
I couldn’t conceive of even dating a right wing republican much less marrying one.
The articles puts that thusly (see first post):
Young single men have been moving to the right, even as their female peers have been moving even further left. About 10 percent of such men were conservative in the early 1980s, but that share has now risen to about 15 percent (while the proportion of single liberal young men has held steady at about 18 percent in recent years).
As for single young women, the share identifying as liberal surged from about 15 percent in the early 1980s to 32 percent in the 2020s. (Correspondingly, the share of conservative single women declined from 10 percent to about 7 percent over the same period.) Most of this change has happened since 2010. In short, the past decade has seen single young men shift slightly to the right and single young women move markedly left, which means that the ideological divide between the sexes is growing.
This poses a major challenge for people looking to marry, given that many of today’s young adults show a growing preference for partnering with someone who shares their politics. Granted, partisanship as a determinant of the choices people make in love and [marriage] is not a wholly new phenomenon: Americans have been sorting partners by politics [for decades]. This is a wise strategy for most people—assuming that, for many, an ultimate goal of dating is to find a spouse—because research suggests that marriages across political or religious lines (when those things matter significantly to each partner) can be [less happy], more [conflicted] and more likely to end in [divorce] than marriages where spouses agree on religion and politics.
I’m about to be married and I’m hoping to get through the entire marriage without discussing politics. Nothing to do specifically with marriage I just hate talking politics with anyone. I do it here and other places online because I can just disengage whenever I want.
My soon to be wife doesn’t like talking politics either. We know each other enough to know we aren’t too far apart on many things.
I don’t care, unless the beliefs cause obnoxious behaviour. Politics should not be such a central part of life. Social media and craven politicians and mass media looking for ratings have pushed politics into every part of life, and it’s not healthy.
In my list of CTQs for a partner, politics is way down the list, unless it affects other things more important, such as:
And on and on. Things that actually matter in a day-to-day relationship. Compared to any of these, who they vote for every four years is trivial.
Much depends on the level of activism. Someone opposed to my ideals and constantly fighting to subvert them or arguing with me would be a problem. Someone opposed to my ideals but who only expresses it from time to time and at the ballot box would be ok.
Another agreement with @Kropotkin.
I could have a relationship with a “traditional” Republican as long as we had the same fundamental priorities. For example, I had a close friend who was a sincere Republican, but like me she strongly believed in poverty reduction and equal opportunity; we just differed in our assessment as to which mechanisms were the best way to achieve those goals. She truly believed that the free market produced the best results for everyone in society at all economic levels. (This was long before Trump, whom she despised.)
Short answer: No.
Would I marry a Trump supporter? No, I would never marry someone who was either callous, bigoted or a lunatic.
I have a hard enough time being related to them.
Sure. I certainly did. My wife is quite liberal and I’m fairly conservative.
The biggest factors that have made us a successful couple are exactly what one might expect. We are both rational, educated people who communicate with each other well. Neither of us belongs to a cult of personality. We take personal responsibility and don’t blame the state of the world on “those people.” We are not “true believers,” in the sense that we refuse to listen to opposing points of view or are unwilling to compromise.
On the whole, I feel rather sorry for the younger generations. (We are both 70 YO.) It seems to have reached the point that sincerity of belief, along with the willingness to go to extremes to justify one’s actions, continues to edge out sincere and honest debate. I’d love to think that tribalism is waning. I’ll let you be the judge.