Dating : What To Do If Your Partner Has Different Political Views

That’s the key to a strong relationship: acceptance. Like the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius wrote thousands of years ago:

“Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.”

I didn’t even consider the idea of getting into a relationship with a conservative until I met my (now ex) girlfriend. But once we both prioritized love over politics, we found a way to make it work. For anyone wondering, the reason we broke up wasn’t due to political differences.

Anyway, you probably won’t convince your partner to join your side of the political aisle. So instead of negatively judging them, a much better strategy is to practice acceptance. As Alice Boyes writes in Psychology Today:

“In relationships, it’s easy to develop habitual, frustrated responses to your partner’s flaws and lose sight of how important that quality is in the big picture of your relationship. If you step back and get perspective, you can turn down the intensity of your emotional reactions, feel more gratitude, and move on to thinking about practical solutions for how you can minimize the impact of your differences.”

If you don’t accept each other for who you are, you’ll both build a lot of resentment. And for obvious reasons, that’s not a great long-term relationship strategy.

Chances are, your partner isn’t absolutely perfect, and neither are you. Everyone has flaws. But falling in love requires practicing acceptance, empathy, and tolerance.

That’s how you make a relationship work.