With every week, life under the Trump administration becomes more unnerving. The administration is trying to “phase out” the 15,000 trans people in the military, Trump is basically threatening nuclear war with North Korea and Mueller is tapping a Grand Jury to look into the Russia connection.
We live in interesting times, and by interesting, I mean on the very verge of the second dark ages. Or, at least, some people believe that. Other people believe everything is fine, somehow.
Don’t ask me how.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is starting to create a rift, not just between different parts of the country, but between couples. In Florida, a former Miami Dolphins cheerleader and the top prosecutor in Palm Beach County reportedly split, in part because the wife claimed that as “a staunch Republican and supporter of President Donald Trump… she felt increasingly isolated in the marriage.” Deidre Ball, who recently filed for divorce from Trump’s former communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, also reportedly did so in part because she was “not a fan of Trump.”
Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of articles with advice on topics like “How To Survive Being Married to A Trump Supporter."
They offer advice like “We look deeper than the arguments. We look at each other... at the passionate, committed humans that we are and we find gratitude in being married to someone who cares so much. When the fire of the argument subsides and we are left with only the smoldering embers, we kiss.”
What if you find yourself… not wanting to kiss someone who believes that it is cool for the President to think women should be grabbed by the pussy?
The woman who is kissing her husband over the smoldering argument embers also remarks, “How could I explain how vulnerable I felt? I couldn't. But I tried. And he tried to understand. And we went round and round in circles. Him, unable to see the human element of my arguments.”
God, that sounds exhausting.
I’m going to save you three years of therapy where you and your partner try to “agree to disagree.”
If your partner is a Trump supporter and you are not, just divorce them.
You do not need to try to make it work with someone who thinks of people as “illegals.” Just divorce them. Those divorced couples made the right choice.
This may not always be possible. Some people may not have the financial or practical means available to get a divorce, but if you do have those means? DIVORCE THEM.
Because if one member of a couple believes the President should endorse police brutality and the other member believes that is balls-to-the-wall insane, that is not a disagreement you’re going to find common ground on. You can use all the measured voices and positive words you want. It’s not a question of disagreement about the most effective way to load the dishwasher, or even whether trickle-down economics works. Those are opinions that might be altered by showing compelling factual evidence.
Supporting Trump at this point does not indicate a difference of opinions. It indicates a difference of values.
Values aren’t like hobbies or interests. They don’t change over time, and they more or less define who you are. Trump’s administration may have been, for some of us, a time when what we value has become much clearer to us.
So, while you may be able to convince your partner that there is a more efficient way to load the dishwasher, you will never be able to convince them that they need to care about people they are fundamentally uninterested in caring about.
Couples don’t need to agree on everything. Disagreement on some issues helps broaden our perspectives. But most successful couples do seem to have moral compasses that point in roughly the same direction. That’s because one of the best things about being in a relationship is having someone who helps you go out and live your values in the world.
If you saddle yourself with someone who fundamentally does not share your values—and at this point, it seems fair to say that people on different ends of the political spectrum have wildly different values—you’re going to be unbelievably, achingly lonely.
So, just skip it. Get a divorce. It’s clearly not ideal—no one goes into a marriage planning to get divorced—but people get divorced for a great many reasons. "My partner’s views are morally repulsive to me” is one of the best reasons I can think of.
Skip the tremendous emotional labor that will go into trying to make someone care about the people you care about. It will be exhausting, and it will very likely be fruitless. Trump’s ratings may be very low, but his approval rate among those who voted for him, as of a recent poll, remains around 81 percent. Go find a partner who thinks nuclear war is a bad thing, because life is not a video game, and watch On The Beach together. That’s a thing you can do instead of fighting about whether or not you’re being rational in couples therapy. Because God knows how long we have left.
And if anyone says that this demeans that sanctity of marriage, well, just remind them the President they love is on wife number three.
Jennifer Wright is BAZAAR.com's Political Editor at Large. She is also the author of 'Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes That Fought Them' and 'It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Break-Ups In History.'
