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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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You definitely can. I'm married to someone with fairly different political views from mine (I'm libertarian by nature although somewhat moderate, she is fairly standard liberal beliefs). We've been married for 5 years now and it hasn't been a stumbling block for us. I think we have two things that have helped that to be the case.

First, we respect each other. Even when we disagree, we never make it personal. We don't call each other names or anything, and we each bear in mind that the other is coming from a place of good intentions even if we don't agree on the object-level discussion. Some people can get pretty nasty about political disagreements, and you really can't have that in a relationship IMO.

Second, neither of us is the sort of person whose mission in life is to convert others, so we don't actually talk about politics all that often. And when we do, we are able to end the discussion and agree to disagree. Sometimes we just aren't going to agree on the topic and that's OK with both of us. And that extends to our families as well: I keep my mouth shut when her family talks about how great Biden is, and she keeps her mouth shut when my dad talks about how great Trump is.

If people can pull off those two things, I think they can date each other regardless of personal beliefs.