POLITICIZING THE ROMANTIC: Party Affiliations and the Politics of Love

#relationships, #love, #helpmyboyfriendisarepublican

Imagine this: you’re walking home, hand-in-hand with a cute somebody you’ve been seeing for about three weeks now. It’s the end of your third date (and a lovely date, too: a couple of drinks at a pub, a tour of their old high school at midnight, then a walk in the park on the way back to their car) and you’re feeling on top of the world when suddenly they turn to you and say: “I need to tell you something.”

You stop.

“What?” you reply, a little hesitant. They take a deep breath, dropping their gaze to the ground. You gulp. Now you’re a little worried.

A couple of seconds go by in silence. Then:

“I voted for Trump.”

Cue the horror music.

In today’s tumultuous post-2016-election climate, the extent of fidelity to one’s political party has grown exponentially. Now, the way we view both ourselves and others is greatly colored by our party affiliations, and such affiliations play a large role in our interactions with our peers. According to Tali Sharot, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London, we are more likely to see someone as credible when we perceive them as holding similar viewpoints to us. In relation to politics, this bias can cause people to disregard information from media outlets — or indeed regular people — with conflicting political leanings, relying instead on social inferences to assess believability.

This is especially dangerous in the sphere of interpersonal relationships, as it can lead us to make false assumptions about people with different beliefs — specifically political beliefs — and cause us to rely solely on inference rather than straight-up asking the other person about their views and values. A study conducted after the 2016 for example showed that Clinton voters greatly overestimated the importance of the issue of immigration to Trump voters, citing its oft-discussed nature as proof of its importance. This is just one example of the misleading rhetoric around the members of each political party, and yet another example of how personal bias can cloud value judgement.

So, going back to the situation above, what happens when two people with different political leanings enter into a romantic relationship? Well, a lot of things. In my own particular case, it meant arguments with family members and constant pleas to break things off from my friends, initial disappointment from my mother (she’s coming around to him), refusals from my sister to even talk to him, and a complete moratorium on politics at the dinner table when my partner was around. It did not, as you would imagine, lead to sunshine and rainbows.

People are often shocked that I could ever fall for a Republican, when I myself am as Leftist as the next Democrat and an International Relations student to boot. “How can you look past his politics?” they ask, incredulous. The answer is that I don’t; not really. I accept his politics as a facet of who he is — just like my politics are a facet of who I am — and recognize that our politics are only a part of us. To me, there are other factors that are much more important to the maintenance of a relationship: trust and accountability, for example, and emotional connection. I think that a romantic bond is very much possible even between people of two opposing political viewpoints, so long as they have respect for each other’s opinions and endeavour to see things from their partner’s perspective.

But how do you do this? How do you establish and maintain a relationship with someone who is so politically different from you in this politically-charged environment?

Well, according to psychologists Susan Johnson and Hara Estroff, the bond between two people is based on two key things: their accessibility to each other and their responsiveness to each other. This is based on an offshoot of attachment theory, which states that our primary motivation in life is to achieve a sense of security by forming connections with other people. Thus, all successful relationships (even ones between Democrats and Republicans) are based on establishing an aspect of emotional openness and responsiveness. In other words, all you really have to do is be there for one another, and try to understand one another.

That may seem like a very Sesame-Street moral to take away from this story, but it is the moral nonetheless. I am confident in the fact that my partner is a good person, regardless of his conflicting political views, and we agree on the important moral and ethical issues (well, most of them). When political disagreements come up, it is usually in the form of good-natured teasing and fun, respectful debates. Even when we do argue about politics and ethics, we both make sure to remain open to persuasion and to listen to what the other person has to say. It is very easy nowadays to group people into little boxes and paint them with a certain brush, but it is important to remember that we are all human beings (no duh) and we all have our reasons for voting the way we do. This is true not only for American politics, as is the case with my particular story, but with Western politics in general and with political leanings all over the world. In conclusion, we would all do well to remember that your voting preferences are only one aspect of who you are, and that which political party you belong to does not determine your worth or value as a person.