When my husband and I first started dating in 2016, we were politically Democrats. I even drove him to the polls to vote for Hillary Clinton. But after weathering the business storm exacerbated by the pandemic, his voting interests have reportedly changed and he now identifies as a Republican, putting us among the 4% of Americans with mixed political affiliations. Married or cohabiting couples.
It would be easier for me to accept this if it were during the Mitt Romney era of the Republican Party. But I recently learned that he voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 election — something he didn’t disclose at the time.
“So you didn’t vote?” I asked the day after the election.
“Yeah, no,” he whispered vaguely.
“Well, at least you didn’t vote for that bastard,” I said with relief.
I was Already known to have donated to “that bastard’s” campaign. When the campaign mailers arrived at our townhouse, I cringed. To me, Trump is a toxic scourge on our political system. As a result, politics in our homes can become tense. But for the sake of the longevity of our relationship, I strive to be a bipartisan lover.
Gender partisanship is becoming a widespread issue. My husband is Gen are more likely to be Democrats, while male voters are more likely to be Democrats and within that range are more likely to be Republicans. The article states, “The forces of American culture and politics are pushing men and women under 30 into opposing camps, creating new fault lines among voters”—not to mention creating new fault lines in heterosexual relationships. Line.
If you can’t imagine dating, or worse, being married to someone with different political beliefs, trust me, I get it. Honestly, if this divide had existed at the beginning of our relationship, I wouldn’t have swiped right on Tinder. At that time I was not attacking anyone who had Trump on their resume. I thought I would never date a Republican, let alone marry a Republican.
My family and friends love my husband, but many of them have no idea how I do it. They cannot imagine sleeping with their enemies. Modern humans have a unique instinct and ability to live in a bubble – to isolate themselves from different political views and paint them as evil – which I think makes our democracy ineffective. . . Our relationship also became stale.
Maybe I’m a masochist, but I’m really grateful to have “one of them” in my home. Even if I don’t agree with him, I can usually understand his point of view, and I don’t think we have to agree on everything. If James Cavill and Mary Matalin can make it work, so can we.
It helps our overall values align. Although my husband is a Republican, it seems to me that he does not have any shocking ideologies. He is fiscally conservative but socially liberal: accepting of the LGBTQ+ community, pro-gay marriage and pro-choice, all of which are crucial to me. The Dobbs decision and the overturn of Roe v. Wade are matters of personal concern. We were considering having a baby and split our time between California and Texas. (Not surprisingly, he spent more time in Texas and I spent more time in California.) I would not have gotten pregnant in Texas because of the abortion ban. Not one day. I also wouldn’t do IVF in Texas because of the judicial process pushed by anti-abortion groups in some red states. He agreed with me on all of these points.
We are both strong believers in free speech, which was another key point we both agreed on and probably why the whole thing went so well.
Yes, sometimes, I have to bite the bullet and live with my political opinions (and vice versa). For example, we had an argument about trans women in women’s sports and I had to remind him, “No one transitions to win in sports! Why is it that the only time men seem to care about women’s sports is when they’re debating about trans women?” Gender female?
But bombings are rare. Typically, when a problem arises, we have a brief, warm, respectful conversation and then move on. These discussions forced me to think about this issue with an open mind. I can’t just reduce my husband to a one-dimensional meme and mentally categorize him into a box labeled “bad.” It forces me to have more empathy for a wider range of people with whom I disagree, which I think is a good thing.
The main issue in my partisan relationship with my husband is this year’s presidential election. I find Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance to be one of the worst parties in the Republican Party. So I hope they lose a lot this election cycle and the entire MAGA movement dies before Kamala Harris’ term in the White House is over. I want my side to win and govern with the other side in mind. I’ve been very vocal about my desire for Harris-Waltz to win. My husband rolled his eyes at the seriousness of my obsession with the DNC live broadcast.
The biggest drawback to our mixed political relationship is that neither of us enjoys the pleasure of talking nonsense without rebuttal – and venting politics to someone who agrees exactly with you is an enjoyable pastime! However, on the plus side, our political debate forced me to clarify my views and find sufficient evidence to support my beliefs. I used to have bigger blind spots in my position.
No, I probably won’t be driving my Republican husband to the polls this November, but I’m glad we can coexist despite our political differences. I don’t like to be too confident about the future, but for now, our dynamic is pain-free. I see this as an opportunity to expand.
The rest of the country could learn a thing or two from our marriage: how we can work through this political divide without rejecting it outright and thus being forced to think and articulate our ideas in ways that make sense to both of us. Letting people into your life who don’t fully believe in what you do isn’t a bad thing; it’s a gift. Finding ways to work through these differences in our closest relationships may be the key to stabilizing this country’s contentious marriages.
Courtney Kocak is a writer and podcaster based in Los Angeles. She wrote the scripts for Amazon’s Emmy Award-winning animated series Danger & Eggs and Netflix’s Know-It-All. Her bylines include a report in The New York Times and a widely circulated article in Cosmopolitan. She is the host of the Privacy Unknown podcast and is currently writing a coming-of-age memoir.
