I found a profound and poignant observation of our times in this post: "I hate that I am stuck living in a world where my only real options are two dogmatic, moralized, conspiratorial political and social camps obsessively creating endless purity tests, cultish fixations, and bottomless echo chambers."
I admire your commitment. Marriage is tough and should never be taken lightly. Seems to be a lot of people who don’t understand that these days. That being said, feeling like you have to hide parts of yourself from her is not a healthy place to be. It breeds dishonesty and distrust, something that, if you let it, will destroy your relationship. It’s perfectly fine to have differing opinions on things but you should both be on the same page when it comes to core values (things like how you plan to raise your child, etc.), and you should always be honest. It may hurt to hear the truth but it hurts worse when the lie is revealed. And yes, omitting the truth is a type of lie. Keep trying to talk (not yell and scream, but talk) to her. If she doesn’t want to listen, that’s out of your control. Come at it with love, respect, and kindness. You may not understand why she believes these things and you may never know but, for one reason or another, she believes them. If you truly are committed, you will listen to her, keep your heart open to her (even when you want to pull your hair out). Don’t belittle her (no matter how ridiculous her opinions sound to you). I’m not saying enable her, just be there for her as much as you can.
It’s really sad people have let politics stifle productive communication. We have freedom of speech for a reason. When all our differing ideas come together in civil collaboration, we are capable of achieving so much and doing so many great things for our community.
I was in her camp. Until I heard Matt Taibbi on Majority Report rebutting Russiagate. I decided to be more open minded. I read Hate Inc, Listen Liberal, then kicked social media and cable news to the curb. I started listening to heterodox podcasts instead. Now I can hear other’s opinions without losing my shit. She needs to get out of her bubble. She being lied to and propagandized. By her Listen Liberal and Hare Inc. they will open her eyes/
I feel bad for this gentleman. Let's see what happens and how he feels when his wife tries to trans their kid, though. I can't believe he doesn't see that train coming down the track. Love blinds us to so many things.
This may seem totally unconnected but bear with me. I have a sarcastic theory about PETA: they are actually a front group for the meat industry. I’m of the opinion that a large number of people could be convinced to pare back or eliminate their consumption of (at least factory-farmed) meat if confronted with the reality of it. The statements and stunts that come from PETA, on the other hand, are so flagrantly off-putting and irritating, they probably have the opposite effect from what they say they want. My non-sarcastic explanation for this is that PETA’s goal is not what they say or even think it is: it is really an outlet for people to be sanctimonious about animal rights. I bring this up because some of the comments on this post remind me strongly of my PETA theory: you are not here to change my mind or anyone else’s. You are here, reading and interacting with a substack that clearly has no bearing on your personal situation (or that you loudly opine to be a grift), not to accomplish anything positive, but to unleash your extraordinarily strong sanctimony on people you don’t know.
As I believe most any literate, sentient human with a passable grasp of the English language should have been able to tell, the point of the above was the sentence: “More than anything, I hate that I am stuck living in a world where my only real options are two dogmatic, moralized, conspiratorial political and social camps obsessively creating endless purity tests, cultish fixations, and bottomless echo chambers.” I was not complaining about my wife or singling her out; I could easily have written the exact same piece about my progressive sisters or a mirror-image equivalent about my grandfather and his obsession with Donald Trump. I was expressing fear and frustration, not with my wife, but with the state of our culture and politics.
P.S. To Messrs. Weingrad and Mike: I sincerely hope that you are able to extract yourself from this foolish, arrogant, presumptive, and valueless hobby of surfing comment boards that has clearly dominated you, but in the meantime: Get bent.
I hope the OP gets some marriage counselling with his wife, as this is not a healthy way to exist. I too can't talk about politics with my husband, but it's not because he doesn't agree, but rather that he gets so angry at the state of things. Seems like maybe the wife has a cohort of friends with similar beliefs that allow her to exist in an echo chamber. A difficult situation, that's for sure! I saw something similar play out while living abroad. Two expats that were a wonderful match in many ways, but she was just sooo progressive (although had many other wonderful traits), and ultimately it seemed to be an issue that led to the couple breaking up.
I felt this in my soul. I relate to this so much. My wife isn’t as extreme (no blue hair, lol) but talking politics has always been difficult. Good luck, sir.
I’m not totally sure how to react to this comment.
You say that women should stay out of politics. Bridget is a woman. Should she stay out of politics? Should she stop providing commentary via Dumpster Fire or her Substack? I agree that women, generally, are more empathetic than men and that’s a large reason why we see a lot of women subscribe to these types of ideas. But to suggest that women as a whole should “stay out of politics” is absurd.
You say that “weak men don’t know what to do about it.” Is the man in this piece a weak man? Am I a weak man? Marriages and romantic relationships are incredibly complicated things. In a perfect world, spouses would always be perfectly aligned on all of their core values and opinions, but sometimes this doesn’t happen (especially considering how much people grow and change over time and the fact that new issues present themselves as time passes). It’s a difficult thing to navigate these differences in values in a marriage. Many of us are trying to do so in whatever way we can. But, as with anything else, we have to balance this with competing interests (for example, we would kind of prefer to not get a divorce). The fact that navigating these competing interests is incredibly difficult does not mean that the men trying to do this are “weak.”
I agree. In fact, I would argue quite the opposite. It takes incredible strength to stay committed through tougher times. I think a lot of people underestimate how much work marriage takes.
Also, yes. This man is weak. He is airing his dirty laundry with his wife to the world via Bridgette Phetasy. He is happy to make his marriage grist for a parasocial infotainment grift. lol. He is crying on Bridget and your shoulder. That you would feel motivated to white knight for this guy should make you question yourself.
Bridget is welcome to her grift of centrist reasonability and plaintiff cries of “can’t we all just get along”. She is entertaining at times and a sweet person. She is not a serious analyst and one doesn’t learn anything politically useful from politics as entertainment.
Most people have almost no understanding of politics or history beyond what they picked up in school and university and the middle brow continuation of that course of indoctrination. Given this limited worldview they are poorly placed to negotiate any debates. Chompsky (who has his problems) pointed out that one method of control is to allow and in fact foment incredibly harsh debate and conflict within a narrow scope of ideas. Disallow anything outside that scope. This gives the illusion of a free society. “Look we had a really big argument! We must be doing poltiics! We are free and democracy works and our vote matters. I’m important!”
Of course middle brow normie people are unable to discuss politics. They don’t really know politics. They both artificially constrain themselves to the subjects and allowable approaches. They are unable to actually know what marriage is or for, they use terms like gender without knowing the implications or rejecting them. They start off with the delusion that their voting is some reflection of themselves and actually impacts the world. There is so much delusion piled up there how can people actually talk effectively within such a fake model of the world.
Women and men just look at things differently. We’re mostly heart while men are mostly brain. Emotion vs. logic. It’s meant to work in tandem but society has muddled it too much. “Men need more emotion! Women need more logic!” No, we just need to learn how to push our own pride aside and listen to each other.
If you’re saying we shouldn’t select someone for a job simply because they are a woman, I agree. Everyone should be evaluated by merit. Period. People need to earn it. That goes for men and women alike. It’s not the fact women have been involved in such things that have created the issue, it’s the fact people were selected by other factors in place of merit.
Still, as far as government goes, everyone deserves a say in how they are governed. If you earned the money you have, you should have a say in how it’s spent and where it goes. And to what laws you are bound.
While I agree that not all are well suited for it, not all are well suited for military service or becoming an astronaut either. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any suited for it at all. Women shouldn’t automatically be discounted in their voice simply because they are women.
Have we won a war in the last half a century? How is NASA performing? Government safeguarding your rights or is it using rationalizations of safety and empathy to do things like force you to take vaccines and lock you in your house for a year or two? Women are amazing and wonderful. Some of them are brilliant in all sorts of ways. The modifications to our institutions necessary to accommodate them have not been worth the costs. Look around.
But men have so tamed the world that it might not matter. We can live in a relatively comfortable standard and people can aspire to empty email jobs and we can have a soft feminized culture and given the infrastructure we have inherited we might just middle along. It does seem like the coalition that embraces insuring women and others are represented might not be capable of maintaining the patrimony they have inherited. We will have to see if Flints water supplies and California wildfire incompetence settle at a sustainable equilibrium. But I suspect that a nation that empathizes with a women’s luggage stealing cross dresser such that they are in charge of our nuclear waste or has a woman Supreme Court Justice who can’t say whether she herself is a woman is not going to be able to keep the lights on forever.
In tandem does not mean equally distributed. There are spheres where each approach is better suited. Politics is not well suited to the fairer sex. Democracy is so idiotic that it demands that everyone be equally engaged and pretend they are all equally suited to governance.
A reasonable analogy would be saying that all husbands and wives should all approach life’s responsibilities equally. Each do half the laundry. Each do half the car repairs. Each pay half the bills. Each manage half the social calendar and holiday tasks. People would hate it and argue all the time trying to live like this. Yet they are surprised when approaching poltiics with this same asinine egalitarianism leads to equally noxious outcomes.
Men are weak for not forcing women to acknowledge this reality because it would force women to accept that on balance some spheres of life are not a good fit for them. Some women are politically salient. Most of the best of them would say that most of the rest of their sex are politically disastrous. The non-narcissistic of them would trade away their own vote knowing that giving up their vote and getting women out of politics would be the most positively political impact they could possibly make.
What kind of "economic understanding" are you talking about? What you think is economic common sense is often going to have this effect on others. You are correct: You should not be discussing this stuff with anyone! It makes for bad arguments!
I’d respectfully recommend that your wife and you take a look at Braver Angels (www.braverangels.org). It will give you ways to communicate that will help you better stand each other and find common ground, if any exists. Among the free workshops you might find helpful are Depolarizing Within, Skills for Bridging the Divide, and Families and Politics (which is especially popular in the run-up to Thanksgiving and the holidays). These and other offerings have helped me improve communication across differences with my wife, other relatives, and others who have different perspectives than I do. Good luck!
Oh God dude, you have made a HUGE mistake. Marrying and procreating with this woman was a STUPID thing to do. She is going to take all your money and trans the kid and you will be screwed unless you start framing her (with iron-clad evidence) for some heinous activity RIGHT NOW.
I guess we know that this isn't Jeren's letter since you talk quite a bit about politics with him.
Seriously though, I don't necessarily have a direct experience with a wife/girlfriend, I do have this view regarding family members. I can understand why it feels so frustrating.
Well I can see why you married a liberal progressive with the statement
"a party that remains in hock to a man that recklessly peddled conspiratorial nonsense"
No bias or cognitive dissonance there then.
The words "made your bed" and "lie in it" spring to mind.
It's almost like you wanted to prove his point with your comment
Just pointing out the blind hypocrisy.
I found a profound and poignant observation of our times in this post: "I hate that I am stuck living in a world where my only real options are two dogmatic, moralized, conspiratorial political and social camps obsessively creating endless purity tests, cultish fixations, and bottomless echo chambers."
I so appreciate "Politically Homeless."
^^This^^
Politics has taken on dangerously cult like aspects. Are there resources for people married to cult victims?
I admire your commitment. Marriage is tough and should never be taken lightly. Seems to be a lot of people who don’t understand that these days. That being said, feeling like you have to hide parts of yourself from her is not a healthy place to be. It breeds dishonesty and distrust, something that, if you let it, will destroy your relationship. It’s perfectly fine to have differing opinions on things but you should both be on the same page when it comes to core values (things like how you plan to raise your child, etc.), and you should always be honest. It may hurt to hear the truth but it hurts worse when the lie is revealed. And yes, omitting the truth is a type of lie. Keep trying to talk (not yell and scream, but talk) to her. If she doesn’t want to listen, that’s out of your control. Come at it with love, respect, and kindness. You may not understand why she believes these things and you may never know but, for one reason or another, she believes them. If you truly are committed, you will listen to her, keep your heart open to her (even when you want to pull your hair out). Don’t belittle her (no matter how ridiculous her opinions sound to you). I’m not saying enable her, just be there for her as much as you can.
It’s really sad people have let politics stifle productive communication. We have freedom of speech for a reason. When all our differing ideas come together in civil collaboration, we are capable of achieving so much and doing so many great things for our community.
I was in her camp. Until I heard Matt Taibbi on Majority Report rebutting Russiagate. I decided to be more open minded. I read Hate Inc, Listen Liberal, then kicked social media and cable news to the curb. I started listening to heterodox podcasts instead. Now I can hear other’s opinions without losing my shit. She needs to get out of her bubble. She being lied to and propagandized. By her Listen Liberal and Hare Inc. they will open her eyes/
These comments are amazingly unhelpful. Good luck to the OP.
I feel bad for this gentleman. Let's see what happens and how he feels when his wife tries to trans their kid, though. I can't believe he doesn't see that train coming down the track. Love blinds us to so many things.
From the OP:
This may seem totally unconnected but bear with me. I have a sarcastic theory about PETA: they are actually a front group for the meat industry. I’m of the opinion that a large number of people could be convinced to pare back or eliminate their consumption of (at least factory-farmed) meat if confronted with the reality of it. The statements and stunts that come from PETA, on the other hand, are so flagrantly off-putting and irritating, they probably have the opposite effect from what they say they want. My non-sarcastic explanation for this is that PETA’s goal is not what they say or even think it is: it is really an outlet for people to be sanctimonious about animal rights. I bring this up because some of the comments on this post remind me strongly of my PETA theory: you are not here to change my mind or anyone else’s. You are here, reading and interacting with a substack that clearly has no bearing on your personal situation (or that you loudly opine to be a grift), not to accomplish anything positive, but to unleash your extraordinarily strong sanctimony on people you don’t know.
As I believe most any literate, sentient human with a passable grasp of the English language should have been able to tell, the point of the above was the sentence: “More than anything, I hate that I am stuck living in a world where my only real options are two dogmatic, moralized, conspiratorial political and social camps obsessively creating endless purity tests, cultish fixations, and bottomless echo chambers.” I was not complaining about my wife or singling her out; I could easily have written the exact same piece about my progressive sisters or a mirror-image equivalent about my grandfather and his obsession with Donald Trump. I was expressing fear and frustration, not with my wife, but with the state of our culture and politics.
P.S. To Messrs. Weingrad and Mike: I sincerely hope that you are able to extract yourself from this foolish, arrogant, presumptive, and valueless hobby of surfing comment boards that has clearly dominated you, but in the meantime: Get bent.
I think the more important thing is to have enough going on in your life that you don't need to discuss politics with your wife.
Or have other people to do that with.
I think Sam Hyde said it best:
"Stop thinking that you need a woman who aligns with you completely, because you know who's going to align with you completely?
A man. A man with Asperger's."
Fascinating responses!
I hope the OP gets some marriage counselling with his wife, as this is not a healthy way to exist. I too can't talk about politics with my husband, but it's not because he doesn't agree, but rather that he gets so angry at the state of things. Seems like maybe the wife has a cohort of friends with similar beliefs that allow her to exist in an echo chamber. A difficult situation, that's for sure! I saw something similar play out while living abroad. Two expats that were a wonderful match in many ways, but she was just sooo progressive (although had many other wonderful traits), and ultimately it seemed to be an issue that led to the couple breaking up.
Leave her or your new kid will end up castrated
Surely it's more likely to be if he leaves, and therefore has less influence?
I’m sure when she’s living on the street she’ll rethink her values
Get custody she has an obvious mental illness
I felt this in my soul. I relate to this so much. My wife isn’t as extreme (no blue hair, lol) but talking politics has always been difficult. Good luck, sir.
It is almost like women aren’t suited for politics and weak men have no idea what to do about it.
I’m not totally sure how to react to this comment.
You say that women should stay out of politics. Bridget is a woman. Should she stay out of politics? Should she stop providing commentary via Dumpster Fire or her Substack? I agree that women, generally, are more empathetic than men and that’s a large reason why we see a lot of women subscribe to these types of ideas. But to suggest that women as a whole should “stay out of politics” is absurd.
You say that “weak men don’t know what to do about it.” Is the man in this piece a weak man? Am I a weak man? Marriages and romantic relationships are incredibly complicated things. In a perfect world, spouses would always be perfectly aligned on all of their core values and opinions, but sometimes this doesn’t happen (especially considering how much people grow and change over time and the fact that new issues present themselves as time passes). It’s a difficult thing to navigate these differences in values in a marriage. Many of us are trying to do so in whatever way we can. But, as with anything else, we have to balance this with competing interests (for example, we would kind of prefer to not get a divorce). The fact that navigating these competing interests is incredibly difficult does not mean that the men trying to do this are “weak.”
I agree. In fact, I would argue quite the opposite. It takes incredible strength to stay committed through tougher times. I think a lot of people underestimate how much work marriage takes.
Thank you for the insight. I will now question myself.
This is why I don’t interact with people online lol. I suppose I should blame myself for that one.
Also, yes. This man is weak. He is airing his dirty laundry with his wife to the world via Bridgette Phetasy. He is happy to make his marriage grist for a parasocial infotainment grift. lol. He is crying on Bridget and your shoulder. That you would feel motivated to white knight for this guy should make you question yourself.
Bridget is welcome to her grift of centrist reasonability and plaintiff cries of “can’t we all just get along”. She is entertaining at times and a sweet person. She is not a serious analyst and one doesn’t learn anything politically useful from politics as entertainment.
Most people have almost no understanding of politics or history beyond what they picked up in school and university and the middle brow continuation of that course of indoctrination. Given this limited worldview they are poorly placed to negotiate any debates. Chompsky (who has his problems) pointed out that one method of control is to allow and in fact foment incredibly harsh debate and conflict within a narrow scope of ideas. Disallow anything outside that scope. This gives the illusion of a free society. “Look we had a really big argument! We must be doing poltiics! We are free and democracy works and our vote matters. I’m important!”
Of course middle brow normie people are unable to discuss politics. They don’t really know politics. They both artificially constrain themselves to the subjects and allowable approaches. They are unable to actually know what marriage is or for, they use terms like gender without knowing the implications or rejecting them. They start off with the delusion that their voting is some reflection of themselves and actually impacts the world. There is so much delusion piled up there how can people actually talk effectively within such a fake model of the world.
Women and men just look at things differently. We’re mostly heart while men are mostly brain. Emotion vs. logic. It’s meant to work in tandem but society has muddled it too much. “Men need more emotion! Women need more logic!” No, we just need to learn how to push our own pride aside and listen to each other.
If you’re saying we shouldn’t select someone for a job simply because they are a woman, I agree. Everyone should be evaluated by merit. Period. People need to earn it. That goes for men and women alike. It’s not the fact women have been involved in such things that have created the issue, it’s the fact people were selected by other factors in place of merit.
Still, as far as government goes, everyone deserves a say in how they are governed. If you earned the money you have, you should have a say in how it’s spent and where it goes. And to what laws you are bound.
While I agree that not all are well suited for it, not all are well suited for military service or becoming an astronaut either. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any suited for it at all. Women shouldn’t automatically be discounted in their voice simply because they are women.
Have we won a war in the last half a century? How is NASA performing? Government safeguarding your rights or is it using rationalizations of safety and empathy to do things like force you to take vaccines and lock you in your house for a year or two? Women are amazing and wonderful. Some of them are brilliant in all sorts of ways. The modifications to our institutions necessary to accommodate them have not been worth the costs. Look around.
But men have so tamed the world that it might not matter. We can live in a relatively comfortable standard and people can aspire to empty email jobs and we can have a soft feminized culture and given the infrastructure we have inherited we might just middle along. It does seem like the coalition that embraces insuring women and others are represented might not be capable of maintaining the patrimony they have inherited. We will have to see if Flints water supplies and California wildfire incompetence settle at a sustainable equilibrium. But I suspect that a nation that empathizes with a women’s luggage stealing cross dresser such that they are in charge of our nuclear waste or has a woman Supreme Court Justice who can’t say whether she herself is a woman is not going to be able to keep the lights on forever.
In tandem does not mean equally distributed. There are spheres where each approach is better suited. Politics is not well suited to the fairer sex. Democracy is so idiotic that it demands that everyone be equally engaged and pretend they are all equally suited to governance.
A reasonable analogy would be saying that all husbands and wives should all approach life’s responsibilities equally. Each do half the laundry. Each do half the car repairs. Each pay half the bills. Each manage half the social calendar and holiday tasks. People would hate it and argue all the time trying to live like this. Yet they are surprised when approaching poltiics with this same asinine egalitarianism leads to equally noxious outcomes.
Men are weak for not forcing women to acknowledge this reality because it would force women to accept that on balance some spheres of life are not a good fit for them. Some women are politically salient. Most of the best of them would say that most of the rest of their sex are politically disastrous. The non-narcissistic of them would trade away their own vote knowing that giving up their vote and getting women out of politics would be the most positively political impact they could possibly make.
What kind of "economic understanding" are you talking about? What you think is economic common sense is often going to have this effect on others. You are correct: You should not be discussing this stuff with anyone! It makes for bad arguments!
I’d respectfully recommend that your wife and you take a look at Braver Angels (www.braverangels.org). It will give you ways to communicate that will help you better stand each other and find common ground, if any exists. Among the free workshops you might find helpful are Depolarizing Within, Skills for Bridging the Divide, and Families and Politics (which is especially popular in the run-up to Thanksgiving and the holidays). These and other offerings have helped me improve communication across differences with my wife, other relatives, and others who have different perspectives than I do. Good luck!
Oh God dude, you have made a HUGE mistake. Marrying and procreating with this woman was a STUPID thing to do. She is going to take all your money and trans the kid and you will be screwed unless you start framing her (with iron-clad evidence) for some heinous activity RIGHT NOW.
I guess we know that this isn't Jeren's letter since you talk quite a bit about politics with him.
Seriously though, I don't necessarily have a direct experience with a wife/girlfriend, I do have this view regarding family members. I can understand why it feels so frustrating.