Posted on 06/05/2024 7:27:07 PM PDT by DoodleBob
Growing up in a conservative family in California, I was used to being the odd one out. But that didn’t calm my nerves when the beautiful woman I’d asked to dinner started questioning my beliefs. “So, you’re pretty much a conservative,” she said, eyebrows raised in surprise. “Does that extend to abortion?”
I got a sinking feeling in my stomach, prepared for our date to come to a quick end. Expecting the worst, I said, “Yeah, I just haven’t come across an argument that would make abortion morally justifiable.” But to my great surprise, the conversation continued. In fact, it turned into a debate without becoming unfriendly.
Stranger still, more dates followed. And now, nine years later, that beautiful woman is my wife and the mother of our growing family. Here’s what we learned when we fell in love across the political divide.
Facing Down Partisan Headwinds
When my wife Tessa and I met, America was facing strong political headwinds. It was the fall of 2015, and Donald Trump was starting to look like the probable Republican nominee. Newscasters complained about polarization while doing everything they could to fan the flames of division. It was in this inauspicious setting that our romance began.
Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that it didn’t take long for the spirit of the age to rear its ugly head. While hitchhiking from Kyoto to Tokyo, we fell into another abortion debate that slid into an argument. Instead of calmly exploring first principles, we both got angry and started hurling slogans at one another. We had made a crucial mistake.
Our tempers didn’t cool until later that evening, when a piece of luggage fell from the overhead compartment on a bus we had boarded and slammed into my head. In retrospect, the pain of that moment hit like an act of mercy. The argument had passed.
Avoiding Slogans at All Costs
The lesson of that first fight was simple: Slogans help no one. By resorting to well-worn phrases about bodily autonomy and the sanctity of the unborn, we had transformed a conversation into a competition. We beat one another over the head with our words in an attempt to “win.” In the end, both of us lost.
From that moment on, we both did our best to express our ideas using our own words. It wasn’t always easy—in fact, we had a few more arguments over abortion before we learned how to communicate more effectively. But every time a discussion turned ugly, we could trace the shift back to a slogan.
Heading for Deep Water
In the early years, my wife and I found opportunities to disagree about a wide range of issues. And when we talked about those issues directly, things could get unpleasant. That’s why, whenever possible, we tried to discuss topics in as much depth as we could.
It’s easy to get caught up in day-to-day disputes. Whether you’re discussing income tax, abortion, or marriage, the battle lines have already been drawn out for you. All you have to do is pick a side and start arguing.
For whatever reason, people get more upset about the details than the really important stuff. My wife and I, for example, could have all sorts of disagreements about taxation, but we never once had an ugly argument about the meaning of life or the way to happiness. When you talk about the big, often metaphysical questions, things become more peaceful.
Patience is Key
A long-term perspective can also help calm controversy. Once it was clear that our relationship wasn’t going to be temporary, each of us didn’t so strongly feel the need to convince the other.
Over the course of our marriage, our values have naturally meshed. Through a long and steady process, both of us have cast away opinions that aren’t grounded in anything more than bias. In fact, we have ended up with a pretty similar worldview.
Keeping an Open Mind
According to an analysis by the Institute for Family Studies, only about 20 percent of married couples are politically mixed, and under 4 percent of marriages are between Democrats and Republicans. This is just another sign of the times.
I understand why people aren’t open to falling in love across the political divide. We want a potential spouse to share our values. Yet when we refuse to love anyone who disagrees with us, even on hot-button issues, we close ourselves off to loving anything but an image of ourselves.
Besides, values are more than mere words. Instead, they are made in the daily practice of love. Will we be open when it comes knocking?
This whole idea of peacefully coexistance between the “left” and “right” has ended. Communists and Americans cannot occupy the same country and be governed as one nation. It’s just impossible.
They arrest and imprison your President and then invite you over for cookout?
Religion: I could imagine being married to someone raised in a different faith, and still devoted to that faith; purely ideological differences based upon differing interpretations of Scripture (sometimes as picayune and legalistic as the placement of a comma in a Biblical quote), or perhaps simply accepted as matters of Dogma, will not necessarily result in incompatibility.
Money: If the husband is the primary breadwinner and holds the purse strings, then his views and values should prevail. In a completely symmetrical arrangement, differences in attitudes towards earning, spending, and saving could be brutal.
Work: Again, assuming a traditional division of labor and roles (husband = breadwinner; wife = housewife), this shouldn't be a source of friction.
Sexual fidelity: I am appalled that that one item should even have to be listed.
Abortion: For me, this is a shibboleth - in the sense of: a means of dividing the sheep from the goats. I don't accept the bogus argument that, because males can't become pregnant, we should be allowed no say in the matter (NOTE: Roughly HALF of all aborted babies are males). But I understand that females will almost always have a different feeling on the matter.
Guns: Another shibboleth, but more in the meaning of: Gives one insight into a far deeper political attitude which a person might harbor.
Regards,
Advice - don’t date or marry outside your species.
Good thing that you dumped Pelosi's sorry *ss! Hope that you had better dating luck later in life!
/humor
Regards,
I think that it is also a matter of fear and/or cowardice.
They refuse to acknowledge the existence of, let alone consider concrete measures to combat, certain vital (geopolitical) issues - because the truth is simply too terrible for them to accept.
They advocate "peace," "appeasement," and "disarmament" not because they genuinely believe that it would work, but rather because the idea of actually having to fight against truly evil forces in the world is too awful for them.
They'd rather pretend to themselves (and get us to pretend, too) that sticking daisies into rifle barrels (metaphorically) really works.
Regards,
"Over the course of our marriage, our values have naturally meshed. . . . we have ended up with a pretty similar worldview."
No one agrees on everything 100%. There will be disagreements. People learn and grow and change their opinions. I assume she adopted his position on the issue, and not the other way around (or he wouldn't be writing for that publication).
Hmm. This reads like the tortured rationalizations of a man who doesn’t realize he has a very painful and expensive divorce in his future.
Amen.
- Ogden Nash
Abortion is MURDER!
Pretty sure Adam went over to Tessa’s side.
I’m a very traditional woman who, on the day I married, vowed to be faithful to my husband until death us do part. I meant it and have kept that vow through thick and thin over 30 years. My husband is the love of my life.
I see fidelity as one of the cornerstones of marriage.
There are lots of young people out there now who think open marriages are the “in thing.”
I see it as grounds for divorce.
Unfortunately, in this day and age, something that used to be considered as a given now must be confirmed beforehand.
Sad, isn’t it?
Doesn’t sound like this applies to the couple under consideration. Apprently neither has come to looking at things from God’s point of view. Both need to see that each is walking the path that leads to eternal pain and loneliness, not as children of God.
Yeh, just what I’d want to listen to across the dinner table everynight. 😆
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