Dr Miriam Stoppard offers advice to a woman who worries about the growing gulf between herself and her husband when it comes to politics.
My husband and I have begun to disagree politically. We used to share broadly centrist politics. I understand that many people get more conservative as they get older, which is perfectly fine and also applies to me in many ways.
However, he has drifted quite a way to the right and has started to say things that I find quite offensive – and also things that I don’t think he would say to anyone else, but wants to get out of his system on me.
When I raise this as a problem, he gets very cross. I don’t want to sound like an adolescent, but I’m worried it’s putting me off him.
Politics are often deeply held beliefs and can divide families, communities and nations, let alone couples. They seem to spring from deep within us and excite feelings of defensiveness and aggression if questioned.
Within a couple each partner can develop a different political viewpoint according to their education, their background, their parents’ beliefs and a personal belief of what’s fair, right and proper. Given this background, it would be unfair to think a partner should necessarily agree with you about your political views.
However, given that you have to live with it, a view very different from your own, can feel threatening and hard to understand. One of the tensions in a partnership is that partners develop psychologically and culturally at different speeds. Most of us still have a lot of development to do while in a relationship and may become different people from the ones who originally got together with a partner.
When a partner’s view is upsetting and, to use your word, offensive that’s difficult to handle. To reach a place of equilibrium, one of you may have to move quite a long way to meet the other. It sounds to me as though you’re not right-wing. If you’re liberal or have centre-left leanings, you may have little sympathy with outright right-wing tendencies.
I don’t think you’re being adolescent. I’d be surprised if that didn’t put you off him. To find a solution many couples go their separate ways as far as their interests and beliefs are concerned, but come back to the bedrock of affection they feel for each other that keeps the relationship alive.
If that’s beyond you, love and affection will diminish. There’s a beautiful Stephen Sondheim song from the musical A Little Night Music called Every Day a Little Death which describes the daily cuts that one partner can inflict on another, and with each cut a little love dies.
If your husband’s political stance goes against your own personal ethics, even morality, it’s going to be difficult to find common ground and his failure to engage with you could turn into a serious rift.
Women often say: “I couldn’t love a man if he...”. How would you finish that sentence? For me, it’s “I couldn’t love a man who didn’t love my children”. Yours might be: “I couldn’t love a man who has extreme right-wing views and beliefs”.
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