Happily married for 25 years:

My husband and I will celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary in July of 2021. That’s a quarter of a century, although I tell everyone we’ve ‘actually been together’ since 1990, which is 31 years of enjoying my best friend’s company.

Our teenage daughter complains ironically that her dad and I agree on ‘everything’. Translation: she feels like we ‘gang up’ on her when making parenting rules and offering guidance in her daily life. Our daughter is correct about this- we DO agree on most everything. Everything, that is, except politics.

My husband and I are unable to have any political discussions without the conversation escalating into a full on argument. It happens every time so we have decided to just not have political discussions with each other any more. It wasn’t always like this. He has always been mostly conservative and I have been staunchly liberal, however the fireworks in our political discussions really only began with the election of Donald Trump to the U S presidency in 2016.

Ah, yes, I’m sure you saw that one coming. Many families and marriages are bitterly divided over this person. I don’t feel I’m imaging that. Constituents who support him do so to a level that borders on fanaticism or cult like loyalty. My husband is no exception.

Now, let me just say, this is not an essay on what I feel are the evils of Donald Trump. This is an essay on my excitement for reaching our 25th anniversary in a world where marriages often fail long before that milestone is reached. I won’t bore you with the stats on this- you’ve heard them before. It’s extremely disheartening how many marriages fail in the United States.

I think my husband would agree that we have had our share of hardship and marital ups and downs, but for the most part, the years have been happy ones that have flown by. Until we stumbled onto a man so divisive that even our rock solid relationship often feels threatened by our arguments over him.

I feel Trump’s career should have imploded into nothingness with his ‘pussy grabbing’ remark. My husband thought it was really not a big deal.

I feel Trump endangered our country with his mistreatment of what he called the ‘Democratic Hoax’ of Covid 19. My husband feels Trump was right on.

And so on and so forth. The list of our differing opinions about Trump is endless but the final straw(s) have been the election lies and insurrection incited at the capital. I can’t tell you my life partner’s views on these because we can’t discuss it calmly enough to take turns speaking about our opinions of them. We resort to yelling over one another. How strange that we do that- we have never yelled at one another over any other topic in our 30 plus years together.

Suffice to say that I had hoped we could put these divisive discussions behind us once Trump was out of office, but no, that hasn’t been the case. All political discussions inevitably lead us back to Trump which releases the venom on both sides. So the pact to remain silent about this person (and politics in general) is still the status quo of a long, mostly joyful, marriage.

Looking to the future, I can only hope that our country is finished with Trumpian politics, but the Republican Party seems not to agree. Neither does my sweet natured husband...