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Couples with opposing political views face higher risk of separation

107 comments
  • Yeah, if my wife didn't think other people deserved the right to exist it would put quite the strain on our relationship.

    • especially if it turns out you are one of the people who doesn't deserve the right to exist, just that she magically makes an exception for you specifically because you're one of the good ones

      • As someone who genetically inherited a chronic life threatening illness, I am one of those people to the GOP.

  • Yeah no shit. If my partner thinks social welfare is bad and i am a socialist, ofc we wont get along

  • I get that people on lemmy are usually very political, and a big chunk of their lives orbit around politics.

    But for most people that's not the case.

    I think that's why I see so many comments of people shocked that someone would date other person who would vote for a different political party.

    If politics is not a priority on your life it won't really have much an impact on their relationship.

    Talking from experience, I've dated people that have voted both the right and the extreme right. And it really didn't burdened our relationship. You must understand that our conversations usually never pivot about politics, and when we talk about politics we don't get passionate about it it's just more like "you think that? Cool I think this other thing. So... what are eating today?"

    I suppose in long term when you are all your life with a person overtime there can be frictions, specially if one or both become more passionate about politics.

    • If politics is not a priority on your life it won’t really have much an impact on their relationship.

      This can ostensibly be true for stuff like what economic spending to prioritize, but once the country is deciding between fascist and non-fascist you can't really not have politics impact people's lives on a daily basis. If you live in a country where you don't have to decide whether the political party criminalizes marginalized groups that's all well and good, but it's not the reality for everyone.

      • I wrote another comment about this friend that votes for a political party that would make Trump look like a liberal. Still not an issue, because we are both very peaceful people and we are not very pushy, so really even if there are differences we don't try to hurt each other over those differences and we don't take it as an insult or something of extreme gravity. Because once again, not everyone is extremely political. Even if you think they should be because the current situation mandates doe more political activism or whatever, it doesn't mean that people are..

        And second big reason is the reasons she has to vote for that party. She does it mostly in spite of the socialist party to bring them down because she thinks they are corrupt thieves (and as I said in the other comment sadly it has recently been proven to be right).

        Also it's important to understand that your vision of an opposite political party is not the same vision that the voters of that party have of it. In this example, and I'm sure it applies to trump as well, I think vox is a fascist political party. But she does not, she doesn't think they are fascists and of course she doesn't think of herself as a fascist (neither do I). She doesn't vote it to stablish fascism. I remember saying to her that if they get elected they will cut right for women, she just doesn't believe that's going to happen, and that's it, different believes on what's going to happen if that party gets elected.

        And I'm skeptical on my own knowledge of the future as well, before the current government was elected I said that the government wouldn't do some things or some other things won't happen, and those bad things ended up happening and I was wrong about those.

        I think a big part of being open minded is knowing that yourself could be wrong, and being able to understand the reasons other people have to believe they are right. Not trying to make up those reasons for my own convenience. It would be easy, and politically convenient, to say that everyone who votes for vox (or trump in that case) is a fascist, but that statement would be closed minded and, probably, radicalized. People are complex, some would vote alt-right because they are fascists, but other would not. When engaging into any kind of relationship with anyone it's good to listen to the reasons they have for the things they believe in. If a person would be a fascist I wouldn't be friends of her, but that's not the same, imho, as voting for a party that I think is fascist.

    • asdf

      • You tell me. I can tell how I characterize myself.

        I used to vote between the far left party and the moderate left party. And for the next election my plan is not vote because they disappointed me big time.

        Giving more examples I have this friend, she votes for the alt-right party here (vox). But I get along with here very well. One instance of discrepancy is that while she is not homophobic (she knows I'm bi and she never said to me anything bad because of it) she is on the opinion that "gay people" is more promiscuous. Like she has some of these prejudices but she is not ill meaned, she is also Christian. But I don't think she is a bad person, and it's not like she is talking all the time about that or about politics in general. Most of the time when she talked about politics she just said that she was going to vote the alt-right because our current president is a thief. Which giving the current events in my country she might be right on that (big corruption scandal just blew up). But what I mean, is that she has some different opinions and when casting the ballot she votes for this radical party. But our relationship hasn't been hindered because of that, and she is not even a bad person, she just don't like the socialist party. And overall we don't really talk that much about politics, it's not a central theme for either of us, but even when we talk about it we have never argue, just talk differences calmly and with respect, we never insulted each other because politics.

    • In a different system where you've got multiple parties and there's the "20% of GDP goes to welfare, we're meh on cannabis, duh on gay rights, our top priority is unions and workers rights and our second priority is environmental protection" party and there's the "25% GDP to welfare, we're meh on unions and workers rights, duh on the environment, top priority is gay rights and second priority is education" a couple made of one member of each of those two parties will probably work, because those two parties likely unite against the "20% of GDP goes to kicking the poor in the stomach, we're death to the environment and death to workers, our top priority is making the rich richer and our second priority is war in the middle east" party.

      In the American system, which is quickly devolving into two religions whose core tenets are to hate each other as obnoxiously as possible, I just have to wonder where you even met? At what trans-ally klan rally did that meet cute take place?

107 comments