Day 8: Politics

I said, "I'm not a liberal, I'm just sensible."
He said, "What's that?"
I said, "My point exactly."
He said, "No, really, there's nothing like that on the ballots."
I said, "My point exactly."

Driving home from work tonight we're talking about politics. It's election day. Rich and I talk politics all the time- usually one of us is shouting and we've rarely agreed on an issue. You see, when you elope with someone after only knowing them a few weeks, you don't find out certain things. You don't learn about how they see seatbelt laws as the government overstepping it's bounds. You don't find out that they secretly love conservative talk radio (and agree with almost everything that's said) or that they despise the welfare system with an uncommon anger. These are the pieces of a partner that you discover in layers. One heated debate after another.

I wonder, would he have called me back if he knew my last car was covered in hippie bumper stickers? Would I have continued to date this guy if I knew he supported the war in Iraq? Would he have asked me to marry him, if he knew how obsessive I was about seatbelts?

But when you're married to someone, you don't walk about the door because you think she's a bleeding heart liberal. You can't refuse to see him again because he thinks hunting is a sport. Because you're united. You are one person. And so we fight it out. I tell him he's being ignorant ( again) and he tells me I should move to Vermont and eat granola.

Eventually we laugh about it because in the end our core beliefs are the same. We're two people who want to know that the people we love - that the person we love-is taken care of. Love is at the core of our politics, which is why we can be so different and still remain the same. Together.