relational politics

Through the years I never really understood how people from different political parties came to the conclusion that it was a good idea to get married. Even more confusing to me were the high-profile relationships where people had, and still have, a vested interest in furthering the principles of their chosen party. As examples, the Arnold Schwarzenegger/Maria Shriver marriage and the James Carville/Mary Matalin marriage struck me as odd, though I certainly have never had enough information to know the dynamics of those relationships. In recent years I have modified my thinking about this.

Golden and I both have some strong political views about some topics, but I am amazed at how little we actually discuss political issues. If and when there are issues about which we disagree we may not even know what the other person thinks about the issue, let alone care about whether we are in agreement about the topic. I think I expected that marriage entailed a lot of discussion about politics because of the vast amount of conversational time that the married couple has to fill. I did not think of this as a good or bad thing, but I did figure it was inevitable.

While I do now understand how politics can be almost completely irrelevant to a married relationship, I do still think that there are some specific political issues that would be difficult to reconcile in a complicated situation. For example, differences on how the individuals feel about abortion could be the most major of issues in the event of a surprise pregnancy. For most issues, though, there are not an abundance of scenarios where a difference in viewpoints should affect my relationship with Golden. As a modern hypothetical example, if one of us supported the Democrats' healthcare reform plans and the other opposed it that would not really make any difference in our relationship. Our viewpoints on the issue will not change any major family decision that we could make and we very truly have little influence on the outcome of the issue anyway.

All of this is really quite academic because Golden and I most frequently agree when we even know each other's political views. It is nice to know that this is not something that is likely to hamper our relationship when we disagree, however. Having the freedom to focus on our important relational situations rather than getting bogged down in the things over which we have no control anyway is the absolute ideal.