Love in the Time of Polarization – BCB #103

It’s not just your politics but how much you care about politics, parents worry more about party than race, and tips for love across the divide

I can’t date you if you’re not paying attention

It won’t surprise you to hear that people care about political views when choosing romantic partners (a topic we’ve covered before). But many singles don’t just care about political views, they also care about how politically engaged their potential partners are.

In a 2017 study, researchers Gregory A. Huber and Neil Malhotra worked with an online dating service to observe how often users of various political beliefs and political engagement levels interacted.  Users answered questions like “How do you think of yourself politically?” meant to measure political identity and issue positions, as well as questions like “How important are your political beliefs to you?” and “Generally speaking, do you believe that people have a civic duty to vote?” which gauged political engagement. 

Unsurprisingly, people prefer to date others who share their political views. However, the researchers found that people also look for partners with a comparable level of political engagement (or lack thereof):

Those who are civically engaged may view those who are not as failing the duties of citizenship … which may be akin to violating a core value. This may in turn cause those who are not engaged with politics to shun the engaged so as to avoid their social disapprobation. Such a pattern may be exacerbated if those who dislike politics view it as conflictual, partisan, corrupt, and uncivil.

Huber and Malhotra’s research did show that other factors—race, age, education level—are still more significant in determining relationships than politics. Still, their study indicates that it’s not what just someone believes but how fervently they believe it that matters to us.

As our country becomes increasingly polarized, Huber wonders whether romantic attraction to political similarity could be damaging to society in the long run:

If you’re concerned about polarization in America today, you might want to know: If people are seeking out like-minded partners, does it mean that kids are growing up in homes where there is just one political point of view? What, in fact, these data suggest is that, yes, there is a little bit of that — people try to seek out a partner who shares their political views, but even if they weren’t doing that, it would happen quite a bit because of all of the other factors that drive our decision making.

Those factors are, in some ways, alongside politics but also prior to politics. We don’t quite know if it affects how children are being raised, but it would be concerning if, by and large, kids were being raised in households where they are only exposed to one political orientation.

Do parents care more about inter-party marriage than interracial marriage?

In recent decades, Americans have become significantly more accepting of interracial marriage. According to a 2016 Pew study, 14% of polled non-Black respondents said they would be very or somewhat opposed to a close relative marrying someone who is Black, down from 63% in 1990.

(Source)

But that doesn’t mean twenty-first century family members are without judgment. A 2020 YouGov poll shows that 38 percent of Democrats and 38 percent of Republicans said they would feel somewhat or very upset at the prospect of their child marrying someone from the opposite party.

(Source)

This got us wondering: are cross-party relationships more taboo today than interracial ones?

Participants in the YouGov poll listed several reasons why they would be opposed to their child marrying a person of a different political party: concern about how the marriage might impact their family dynamic, worry that an inter-party marriage would mean they failed to instill their values in their kids, and, above all, concern that differing ideologies would make the marriage challenging. For example,

“It wouldn’t have upset me 10 years ago, but the two main parties are sooo extremely different these days that anyone who proudly claimed to be in the opposite party would be admitting that they don’t share my core values and beliefs,” wrote one user. “It's not “just politics" anymore. It's a serious moral divide,” wrote another.

It’s true that right now the stakes of disagreeing politically with your partner can be incredibly high. The decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade has brought politics into the most personal moments in a relationship, as couples must contemplate what might happen after an unplanned pregnancy. But for most hot-button issues—police funding, the war in Gaza, or climate change—political outcomes won’t materially affect the day-to-day lives of most couples. The conflict is more likely to be about immaterial things like values and identity.

Tips for love across party lines

All this said, inter-party relationships don’t have to be doomed! In the best case, being close to someone with radically different views can be an opportunity to learn and evolve. As, Jay, a 31-year-old liberal contributor to the recent Buzzfeed story, put it:

Being in a deep relationship with a conservative—someone I regard as a genius, no less—challenged me to move past my preconceptions. I had to confront the fact that my failure to understand the other side wasn't just about politics; it was about empathy and humility. I once staunchly believed that I would “never date a conservative,” not because their ideas were wrong, but because they were immoral. Without realizing it, I bought into a narrative that tacitly placed me as morally superior to half the country.

For those in an inter-party relationship or those who might be, there is no shortage of resources available to help you manage political disagreements.

In I Love You, But I Hate Your Politics, psychotherapist Jeanne Safer draws on fifty interviews with politically diverse friends, relatives and romantic couples—as well as her own personal experiences as a liberal married to a staunch conservative—to help people navigate ideological differences. Florida therapist Carla Barrow, who lives in a purple family herself, summarizes some of the key takeaways from Safer’s book:

Seek First to Understand: Deeply consider what shapes your own political attitudes, and try to willingly understand enough about the makeup of your partner to see that factors shape the dynamics of their political discourse. Remind yourself of what you love about them and why you value your partnership.

Regulate Emotional Responses and Establish Limits: Monitor and regulate emotional responses and be conscious of tones of voice, how much alcohol both partners have drank and timing. Couples should also explore their own limits. Some use humor, some choose not to discuss politics at all or in limited ways, some limit time and disengage when efforts go awry.

Inquire. Explore. Ask Open-Ended Questions: These are questions that try not to trap or limit the individual to stances or positions, just so that you can argue against them and prove you’re right. Instead, they are open-ended inquiries that invite exploration about the history and contours of your partner’s belief systems, about their pain and fears, their hopes and dreams and boundaries.

Do What’s Effective for Your We-ness: As a couple, you have numerous ways of interrelating, only some of which are political. Couples also share family members, children, memories, rituals, values, activities, hobbies, art, and roles together, and often these are what sustain the partnership and allow their relationship to survive with or without political division. Being effective in listening and dialoguing over tough issues also requires a firm commitment to repair when you injure the other, be it through insults, criticism or stonewalling.

Quote of the Week

By equating political views with morality and intelligence, I bolstered my pride and diminished my empathy. But through my marriage, I learned that, more often than not, political views are informed by identity, not the other way around.

– Jay