• S E X
    L O V E +
    R E L A T I O N S H I P S


    ❤️ Welcome Guest! ❤️


    Posting Guidelines Bluelight Rules
  • SLR Moderators: axe battler | xtcgrrrl | arrall

Sleeping With The Enemy: Should You Date Across The Aisle?

D
I find this topic interesting because my I have opposing political opinions with my SO. We started off on very similar view points politically, so our dating phase was never an issue politically. Now that we have decades of experience behind us, we have also changed and grown as people.

Specifically I have become more conservative while my partner has remained liberal. We barely argue about it however. We still argue more about what we are going to do for dinner than who we are voting for. Sure we throw jabs very occasionally at each other but it's playful and it isn't obsessive. Sometimes we have CNN and FOX news playing simultaneously. It's really not a big deal for us but we can see how it might be a huge deal for others.

Could you date someone with opposite political views as you? Why or why not?




Depends how extreme they are,
I'm an anarchist in the vein of that conflict journalist Robert Evans,
So depending on what the political views are and how extreme they are it's a solid maybe.
 
Change is natural and to be expected.

What would you guys/girls do if your SO changed political views after you had been together for a long time?
 
@assclass @Keeloverandfly @Mjäll SLR is not The Dive or CEP, this is about if you would date someone with different politics rather than discussing your differing politics with each other. We have 2 entire subforums for that.
 
Please stop creating drama in my thread.

These posters you listed have done nothing wrong
Assclass was pointed by an admin for his personal insults in this thread, so I'll have to disagree with you on that one.
The other two didn't do anything wrong perse, they were just debating feminism in SLR and it was starting to derail the topic of the thread so I moved their posts over to the Dive.
I have no interest in starting drama, I just like to keep interesting SLR threads such as this one on-topic and that oftentimes means moving posts to TD and TL.
You're welcome to reach out to the staff team in PMs if you have issues with our moderating.
 
Assclass was pointed by an admin for his personal insults in this thread, so I'll have to disagree with you on that one.
The other two didn't do anything wrong perse, they were just debating feminism in SLR and it was starting to derail the topic of the thread so I moved their posts over to the Dive.
I have no interest in starting drama, I just like to keep interesting SLR threads such as this one on-topic and that oftentimes means moving posts to TD and TL.
You're welcome to reach out to the staff team in PMs if you have issues with our moderating.
Why don't you join the discussion instead of being a drag?
 
Why don't you join the discussion instead of being a drag?
I already have, I wrote a massive post on the first page.
This is a tough one for me.
I don't give a fuck as to what political views a girl has if it's just a hookup or we're friends with benefits. And I don't care what political views my friends have either.

But serious, long-term relationships might be a different story. I couldn't date someone who refused to call my trans friends by their preferred pronouns in conversation or was discriminatory towards a gay couple who I am close friends with, for example. It could be argued that such behaviour is far more of a petty and pointless bigotry disguised as a legitimate political belief than a political ideology, but I digress. Another thing to keep in mind is that some people will hide or alter their beliefs (and other things about themselves, obviously) to better align with that of their partner/prospective partner. But that is an honesty issue, not specifically the issue of differing beliefs.

Could I date somebody who believed that the 2020 election was rigged? I don't really care about that viewpoint as a non-American, but the people who hold that belief tend to have far more diffusing issues as @jasperkent and @Jerry Atrick implied.
Could I be in a long-term relationship with someone who is anti-vax? Probably not, I think that denial of medical science would annoy the fuck out of me as someone who is pursuing a career in medicine.

I think that the issue here is more that certain political beliefs are indicative of toxic/undesirable/incompatible traits in a person than anything. The link between personality traits and political beliefs has been studied a fair bit. We'll use the Big Five model here to simplify things.
Liberals tend to be more agreeable, extroverted, and openminded, conservatives tend to be far less agreeable and less open-minded than the population but more conscientious.
Authoritarians tend to be high in neuroticism. And libertarians tend to be very high in openness but somewhat disagreeable.

For example, I personally am very high in openness, high in extroversion, somewhat below average in agreeableness, somewhat high in conscientiousness, and neuroticism is probably average range but really depends due to episodic mental illness. My agreeableness has increased drastically (still slightly low), my conscientiousness has increased, and my neuroticism has decreased in recent years, and with that I have shifted from right-libertarianism towards something approximating a belief in leftist anarchism and community governance.

I could certainly date a girl who was a liberal or libertarian and probably even a conservative (Canadian conservatives tend to be a bit less nutty and radicalized than their American counterparts) But someone who was extremely authoritarian would probably clash with me poorly, as I have low tolerance for extremely neurotic people who like forcing those views on others due to trauma.
Someone who was extremely agreeable or disagreeable would also obviously be difficult to date long-term, since I don't want somebody whom is very overly argumentative or whom agrees with everything I say to the point that we can't even have a proper conversation.

But yeah. For me, it isn't the beliefs themselves that I really care about politically beyond a certain point. As long as somebody generally holds my basic values, I don't care how they identify politically or what their views are on taxes or firearms laws.
Religious beliefs are a bit of a different story, as I wouldn't want somebody who would give me an ultimatum about converting to/practicing a religion.
 
Change is natural and to be expected.

What would you guys/girls do if your SO changed political views after you had been together for a long time?
Depends what they shifted to. If it was to a viewpoint that would go against my values and lead to a lot of conflict like bigotry, anti-vaccine dogmatism, or QAnon type detachment from reality then it would probably place a LOT of strain on the relationship and eventually lead to us splitting.

As long as it wasn't something like that that completely altered their personality in a drastic and negative way, I doubt I'd care.
 
My best friend (a staunch republican) who recently died told me he was leaving his inheritance with his republican wife and daughter.

It turns out that those millions of dollars went to two democrats. He had lied to me. My best friend who was NOT afraid to tell me of his darkest secrets...Secrets of childhood despair that only the lord could mutter words of support for. He could tell me of the darkest times of his life but he could NOT admit to loving someone with opposing political beliefs. I only found out of the truth after he died.

Is it perception? Is it acceptance? Why do you care?

It's love.

Why do you care?
 
For those who are not able to have sex with someone of opposing views, do you consider your self demisexual?
 
For those who are not able to have sex with someone of opposing views, do you consider your self demisexual?
I guess when I originally replied to this thread, I was only talking about dating/relationships with someone across the aisle.

As for just sex, especially casual sex, I don't have as high of standards with regards to political opinions :love:
 
This would be much more difficult in the U.S. now than in the past. Some of the things going on have a much more immediate impact on daily lives. When I was dating politics were a pretty abstract thing that only the nerdy cared about.
 
I mean politics was still consequential back then...I think the only difference now really is the fact that so many different issues are presented to people all at once with (as you said) a sense of urgency and immediacy (oh my god, is democracy gonna survive? Is the planet gonna survive? will my darling little Billy get exposed to trannies and gay porn in grade school? etc.) for all of these topics that people may not have even given much thought too in the past, simply because of the way the current media ecosystem functions

The way so many of these things get presented with are as follows: it's 1) extremely consequential, and 2) you are directly implicated in it...or, if you aren't, you're implicated through your INACTION if you don't help stop it (i.e., stopping the planet from being destroyed or preventing Billy from seeing hordes of gyrating trannies). That's how so much of this crap is framed nowadays. "VOTE FOR ME, IT'S YOUR LAST CHANCE TO SAVE DEMOCRACY BIATCH!"

I'm so sick of all of it
 
Again, I'm not in the dating scene, but I would think not agreeing about abortion would be a big problem.

If my wife was attacking cops at the Capital that would be a tough one to look past.
 
"The enemy"... lol... a symptom of the fucked up times we live in. Politics aren't supposed to be war. That's like the right hand shooting the left.

For me it would depend on how aggressive/vocal they are about their political opinions and how much their political opinions affect our shared life together. As a moderate/centrist, I am predisposed to avoiding extremism of any kind. I see it as mentally unbalanced or simply a sign of blind stupidity. My ex got the first covid shot and three days later he had severe chest pain. This was back before the myocarditis effect was widely known and anyone who started to know about it was being called an anti-vaxxer (please do not start the covid debate with me in this thread, I'm not interested, I'm just telling my story). Four weeks later he planned to go for his second shot even though he was STILL having intermittent chest pain that was new in his life. All because he wanted to join a local sports league that had the V mandate. We fought so much about it. He felt it was his civic duty to get the shot to "stop the pandemic" because he super trusted the government's advice, whereas I was connected with medical communities who were unofficially raising red flags and I just wanted to possibly save his life. It was hell. He kept calling me a conspiracy theorist, even though one day he asked me to call an ambulance while he was working in the backyard because his chest pain was so bad he thought he was having a heart attack. The paramedics came and thankfully he wasn't, but he was later referred to tests for angina. Covid politics aside, I don't understand people who blindly trust what the government says with NO background check into what is being said.

We broke up for many different reasons but I realize now that I can't be with anybody who is hardline about things and not open to new information. I'm a moderate/centrist by nature and people who get very dutiful or blind in their politics or nationalism disturb me greatly. Party loyalty is even worse and a mental illness IMO. It's why I could never live in the USA. I would almost prefer to be with someone apolitical than someone who has basic bitch level political consciousness. I can't reckon with people who are clearly programmed in some way. Lack of critical thinking really frightens me because when it manifests in a group it becomes truly dangerous. I can't even be friends with somebody who follows the herd blindly. I can accept if someone has done a lot of research to inform their opinion but if it's just "the government told me so" or "the doctor told me to do it" or "I saw it on the news" or "I don't want to lose my [job, schooling, friends/family, etc.] so I better tow the line" then it's bye felicia.

People of different political leans are all expressing the same basic humanity, just through different facets. I believe most of these facets can be accommodated. They used to be, before the corporations took over our countries and weaponized our own politics against us for their obscene profits.
 
Last edited:
As others have said, it would depend largely on how extreme their views were and the level of commitment they had to those views
 
Hey thank you everyone for your replies.

I am seeing a theme from many here concerning levels of extremity and commitment from the other party as well as the level of commitment from the poster themselves. If it's just about casual sex, as @Jerry Atrick suggest, it's easier for many here, including myself, to ignore or glaze over some opinions about the other person. Sex for many of us is simply friction and need not be more complicated.

When the relationship becomes more serious, opinions about the other person become harder to ignore. What if it's your college roomate who goes off the political edge? Sad, but not the biggest loss right? What if, as @64tf suggest, your spouse does things that seem unforgivable? What if it's your child who does the unthinkable?

Do you really know what your breaking point is if it's never been tested? How far would you go to get your rocks off? How far would you go to keep your drinking buddy around? How far would you go to keep your spouse? How far would you go to keep your child?

When I was actively addicted to heroin, I put myself in danger as well as my friends, SO and loved ones. I made really bad decisions. I went off the deep end. I almost lost everything. It took forgiveness for a proper recovery.

My partner and I recently had an extremely dividing political action between the two of us that occurred this year shortly after the war started. I don't want to get into details but I've been dealing with a lot. Forgiveness again, has been our only savior. I feel lucky to have made it out the other side without any major damages. Sure, we changed, slightly, but more importantly we are overcoming our differences.
 
Funny you should mention children. My kids were in the car during the Capital insurrection, and I remember telling them both that I want to be accepting of their beliefs and positions, but treason against our government is where I draw the line:) There will be punishment for treason. Most everything else is fine.

So curious about the divide. Wars are a big deal. That can be a tough one to accept different views on.
 
Top