Love in the time of partisan politics: No, opposites don't attract

Indian Express

6 days ago

Whoever came up with the adage that 'opposites attract' clearly wasn't trying to date in a democracy. It's a theory best confined to magnets, where it's at least literally true. Sorry about the outburst. Perhaps it stems from my spectacular failure to match with someone who has actually read all 1,000 pages of Das Kapital — never mind that I barely made it through the first seven minutes of Karl Marx's ENTIRE Theory Explained in 48 Minutes on YouTube. Or maybe I'm still reeling from this weekend, when my mum insisted during lunch that she set me up with the daughter of someone from her power-walking gang. When I asked, 'Does she follow the news?' she snapped, 'That shouldn't matter.' I nearly let a fish bone take me out, just to end the conversation.
The obsession with finding someone who thinks like me isn't about romanticising some grand union of love and politics — at this point, I might even settle for someone who thinks voting is hot. And I'm not disputing the fact that people tend to seek partners with similar political views — that's well documented across numerous studies and surveys; for example, as recently as April, an NBC News poll in the United States found that the partisan divide between Gen Z women (largely pro-Democrat) and Gen Z men (leaning Republican) is the widest of all generations. The real question, then, is: Why, in the pursuit of love, does this factor appear to be non-negotiable today, rather than just a bonus point?
The truth is, if there's any life advice worth heeding over 'opposites attract,' it's the far less glamorous, but infinitely more reliable 'Be practical'. After all, socialism, liberalism, conservatism — these aren't just political theories taught in textbooks; they're perspectives (except apoliticism, which is supposedly a lack of interest in politics or political neutrality, but really, it's just what LinkedIn bros call a personality). Politics isn't just how I vote. It's how I interpret my world, and how I make sense of the people I let into it. Having a friend who disagrees with me on secularism in Political Philosophy class is one thing, but spending the rest of my life with someone who doesn't share a basic vision of the country we want our children to grow up in? That's not so simple.
Can you imagine the endless squabbling? I'm just trying to eat rice and dal. She's mid-rant: 'You Leftists and your reservations ruined Saxena ji's son's medical dreams!' I chew, nod, and go, 'Yes, because god forbid we ask why 'merit' always looks like Saxena ji's son.' She can't resist: 'One Marxist book and now you think you're Che Guevara?'
Even if we somehow managed to follow a strict 'no-politics' rule — no debates, no shouting matches, no Rumble in the Jungle — how comfortable would we really be knowing that our partner, the so-called love of our life, holds diametrically opposite ideas about society, justice, government, and humanity? About how people should be treated by the State? About whose lives matter, and whose don't? How do I look someone in the eye and say 'I love you' with full sincerity, knowing that they genuinely believe in a socialist world, the poor would be handed free iPhones? Can I really love someone who thinks like that? Isn't it more likely for those much-talked-about sparks to fly with someone who, too, has lost sleep over Donald Trump's return to power and teared up during Zohran Mamdani's celebratory speech?
I'm not saying the world should be free of Conservatives and Liberals, and I hope they don't wish the same fate on us Leftists. As Hegel argued with his Dialectics, contradiction is essential; without it, there's no movement, no progress. Society needs an ideological back-and-forth to evolve. But in dating or marriage? That kind of contradiction isn't evolutionary, it's exhausting. Love is hard enough without having to argue the basics, like whether billionaires should exist or not (they shouldn't).
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