Comment by gsf_emergency_2 a day ago
This gets more complicated when you replace "friend" with "spouse" (/partner) because there comes up the problem of consensuality in unavoidably unpleasant unavoidable decision-making..
(Assuming one marries for "love")
Then so be it, if your views keep you from finding a partner then maybe you should start thinking about compromise rather than falling deeper into extremism.
But, this is also why one political party in the US tends to vote against things like no fault divorce and other questionable policies regarding womens rights.
>> those with directly opposing views are a constant source of drama and tension in your life
I don't think this is true at all. The vast majority of people largely ignore politics, cast their vote, and move on with their lives. It's completely fine to have different political views if you both act like normal reasonable people. We see a lot of the 'kick, scream, and cry' types on both side in the media. In the real world, most people have more important things to be getting on with.
> It's completely fine to have different political views if you both act like normal reasonable people.
Yes, this is true, you can have different political views and still be friends/lovers/partners/whatver.
What parent said though was "directly opposing political views", which I'd also agree with is inviting trouble, as it'll leak out in constant tensions and frictions. Simple things like "We shouldn't drive as much as we currently do" can lead to heavy argumentation if the underlying reasoning cannot be understood by both parties.
In real life, people might not speak about parties or political figures, but their everyday actions are driven by their values and beliefs, which also ends up reflected by who they vote for. Politics is everywhere, even where people don't speak of it directly.
>> We shouldn't drive as much as we can do
I wouldn't consider this a political view. It's a lifestyle choice based on personal beliefs. Two people can be fully behind the idea we need to do something about climate change and have different ideas on how that should be done. And I think that's part of the problem in recent times - instead of politics being about the big ideas and how a country is run it's become about small personal choices. If a person has heavy arguments with a partner about how much/little they drive I would say they've got an issue with a need to control others, rather than just a strong political opinion.
> Two people can be fully behind the idea we need to do something about climate change and have different ideas on how that should be done
I'm not sure if you purposefully ignore what I wrote directly after what you quoted, "if the underlying reasoning cannot be understood by both parties". If a partner would discuss things like this in real life, I'd say this partner might have an issue with discussing in good faith with others.
My point was that it'll lead to friction if you disagree about what "big ideas" are worthwhile to try to implement or not.
Note that various surveys report young women and young men diverging a lot more politically. Partly because women's rights have become so politicised.
>Partly because women's rights have become so politicised.
What is the womans suffrage movement?
I may be extrapolating on a single statement too far, but I do feel that you are missing a huge chunk of history regarding all the rights women (at least regarding the US) did not have.
Womans rights have been political for the last 200 years if not longer.
This trend is certainly one aspect of the explanation for the decline in the number of long-term relationships.
The other being that once women have largescale representation in the workforce, can open bank accounts and credit cards on their own, and can support themselves financially, one of the key pressures to marry is removed. Once there was no fault divorce and women did not need to prove why they needed to divorce, one of the key pressures to stay married is removed.
It could also be the opposite causality. Because people aren't getting into intimate relationships as much (looking out for each other, caring deeply about an individual of the opposite gender), the two groups are naturally diverging into preferring "what's best for ME".
I think the political split between genders is MUCH stronger for singles. It's kind of a trap actually.
> Partly because women's rights have become so politicised.
That's a hand-wavy way of saying that a core pillar of one of your parties is to take away the rights of an entire gender.
Imagine describing 1940s Germany and saying "Ethnicity has become so politicized these days. I'm just interested in nationalizing the auto industry"
That would only be true if words weren't perverted for political leverage. Sexist used to mean "women can't do that" now sexist means "a woman experienced an unpleasant thing, and it carries more significance because of her gender, and if you dare dispute this you can expect to be cancelled".
What do you mean by women’s rights? The difference in support for abortion by sex is trivial. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opini...
Probably not abortion. While rights never happen in a vacuum, it is usually framed as a matter of fetus rights.
How about a woman's right to equal employment opportunity? 67% of women are in favour of DEI, while most men (57%) take the opposing view. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-american...
The primary political parties are definitely catering to those sides.
Seeing a 3 point difference in the support for abortion between men and women is *wild* to me.
Also white/black, straight/gay, poor/wealthy etc.
We can find hundreds of dividing lines if we insist.
Marrying purely for "love" and ignoring core values, mindset compatibility, what they want in life and so on is a recipe for disaster, or at least some deep regrets down the line. I haven't seen nor heard about a single success story a decade or two down the line. Whom to marry is probably the most important decision in our lives. One of reasons why marrying early is too risky - people still massively change till at least 25-30, it cal still work but chances are smaller.
Its a typical junior mistake to marry for love/lust and not think a bit on top of that, in this case I blame parents who don't have some hard talks with their kids explaining them not-so-rosy parts of adult existence. Like initial enormous physical attraction wanes over time, kids crush most of remaining, and what still remains are 2 people and how they treat relationship and each other with that lust tuned down eventually to 0, under various, often not so nice situations. But our parent's generation didn't figure it all out, in contrary the amount of actually nice relationships in higher ages ain't that high.
I didn't have such prep talk neither, nor do I know anybody who had, and had to figure it all on my own via rough trials and failures till finally figuring myself and women out, and then happy marriage (so far, hard knock on the wood). Its like expecting everybody to be sophisticated engineer, learning them to count on fingers and throwing them out and good luck, I am sure you'll figure it out eventually. Some do, some don't. Most don't I'd say.
> Whom to marry is probably the most important decision in our lives.
That's putting way too much pressure on it. Find someone you feel like you could spend the rest of your life with? Marry them, see what happens. If you get a divorce, so be it, it's not the end of the world and there is plenty of others out there, even if you're "damaged goods" or whatever your worry is.
I feel like the pressure people put around marriage it what makes it so damaging in the first place, people feeling like they have to marry in the first place, or if they're married, they need to try to stick together more than some couple who isn't married, and so on.
Just make a decision and learn from your mistakes in case you fuck up, it really isn't more complicated than that.
I'm going to assume you're a man and probably have a little less experience here than the average woman does.
This said, I am a man too, but a large part of my career was supporting lawyers and court systems, including family court systems.
Choosing the wrong partner is one of the biggest risks you take in your life, especially for a woman. This is one of those things that can easily lead to you being bankrupt with nothing. This can lead to you being abused or raped. You can end up with a child that you did not want to have. You can end up dead.
With states pushing to revoke things like no fault divorce (and women being the primary initiators of divorce) it's not hard see the traps women lived in the past coming back.
Then add the strongly religious connotations marriage has in the US and you quickly see why this is a rollercoaster that emotions and politics are not going to be removed from.
> That's putting way too much pressure on it. Find someone you feel like you could spend the rest of your life with? Marry them, see what happens. If you get a divorce, so be it, it's not the end of the world
This is quite bad advice, because divorce can be devastating financially.
Politics feels like an integral part of finding a partner nowadays. Which makes sense—values are important to agree upon.
I believe having a partner with directly opposing political views is unsustainable. Partners with adjacent political views may be manageable, or even preferable to a fully aligned one, but those with directly opposing views are a constant source of drama and tension in your life. Political views often reflect deeply held values and beliefs.