I only realised my husband was right wing after we got married (2025)

Around the world, men and women are growing further apart when it comes to their political beliefs. Women are moving to the left, while men move to the right or stand still, and it has been described as a “global gender divide.”

In the latest season of the dating show Love is Blind, two female contestants broke off their engagements over political differences, while in White Lotus, a long-standing friendship is rocked by the revelation that one in the group voted for Trump.

Politics can be a real deal breaker, especially for Gen Z. But does it need to be? In 2023, I married someone who votes differently than me. And I only realised how different his political views are after our wedding.

My husband, Alex, and I are polar opposites in our political beliefs, but we live the same way, and we have the same hopes for our shared future. We holiday the same amount, in the same places. We have the same ideas about schooling our daughter, Ada. Our level of community engagement is about the same.

We are both postgraduates who attended Russell Group Universities. We grew up within a mile of each other and attended the same school, so I guess you could say we have the same references. However, we vote very differently.

We were childhood sweethearts. I never once talked to him about politics, although I did passionately with my friends, and we all took it at A-level. If I’m really honest, I thought he was cool, fun, and blonde, and I didn’t care what his beliefs or ideas were, so I never asked him about them.

When we rekindled our connection at 27, it was a whirlwind romance. We were living together with a baby before I learnt about his voting history.

For example, he voted for Brexit. When he first told me this, I honestly thought he was joking. When talking about the economy, he said: “That’s why I voted for Brexit,” and I laughed. Later, I made the same joke myself when talking about NHS wait times and when we went to an understaffed restaurant: “Good thing we have all that lovely Brexit money” and “Now this is why I voted for Brexit.”

In my head, and clearly mine alone, we were both making a joke at the expense of Brexiteers and the state of our country. It was genuinely years before I realised he was serious.

It just didn’t seem like something he would do. It wasn’t in line with what I knew about him. He’s thoughtful and caring and not a racist. It surprised me because we are so similar, I assumed, obviously, he would vote the same way as I did. He claims his reasons were economic.

If someone seemingly shares the same sentiments and ideas as you do, it doesn’t seem necessary to ask the question, “Who did you vote for in the last General Election?” But when I realised he was serious about Brexit, I did have to ask the question in 2023, and he was reluctant to tell me.

“Anything other than Labour is a wasted vote in Bristol,” he said.

“But who did you vote for?” I pushed.

“It doesn’t matter because it wouldn’t make a difference here,” he said.

“Right, but who did you vote for?”

“I’ve never got it wrong,” he finally admitted.

And by that, he meant that he’d “always picked the winner”, and that meant that he had voted Conservative.

He talks about voting Conservative like picking a horse, but it was devastating information to me. He tried very hard not to tell me, so I think he knew that I would not take this revelation well. I had voted for Jeremy Corbyn. I wasn’t going to end the relationship over it, but I had to pause.

I now see that Alex is economically Conservative. He says I’m the “biggest champagne socialist he knows” or that I “vote Labour but live Tory”. (Why leftists can’t enjoy champagne, I’ll never know. I can tell you prices have gone up thanks to Brexit.)

If I had this information up front, I don’t know how things would have panned out. I would have probably assumed we were too different, and I might not have given the relationship a chance.

But I’m glad we’re married, and we’re happy together. And you might be surprised to hear that we never argue. Apart from during an election cycle obviously, when things have become heated, but to solve this, I have stolen his polling card to simply stop him voting. He said there was no point in voting in the last one anyway.

To settle an argument and prove to me that we aren’t that different, he had us both take a “Who should you vote for” quiz on his phone. I got Green, and he got Conservative. “But I checked your answers, and they were basically the same as mine,” he said.

It’s actually not awkward. I think the reason it works is because we’re willing to hear each other out. He’s changed his mind on things I’ve persuaded him on, and I’m not afraid to say, “I’d not considered that before” or “That’s a fair point”.

Alex went to private school, and his mother’s family boarded. Our daughter goes to state school, but we moved into a better area to get a place here, which Alex pointed out was just the same because I’m still using money to access a better education. I had to concede he was right. I’d never thought about it that way before.

There are only a few key points we disagree over, such as nuclear weapons, but they’re big ones when it comes to voting. When it comes to everyday beliefs and values, they aren’t so big.

The choices that come up day to day are about family, child-rearing, school, the community, and the home. These aren’t shallow things. They’re big when you’re married. As long as it’s not something which harms people, or restricts their rights, I think we’re okay. I don’t think in the future, it would be harmful for our daughter to hear us debate politics and the news, it will probably help her understand and make sense of it and form her own ideas.

I think there are ideas about “purity” on the left which discourage dating outside of your political ideology. And I don’t think it matters too much if you’re not engaged in any civil or local activism. If all you have is ideology, not practice, and you’re otherwise living the same way – what difference does it make?