• EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    24
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    9 months ago

    Yeah, my partner is definitively leftist but totally checked the fuck out on politics (bored, not apolitical) which is fine because politics is as exhausting as it is annoying.

    Excellent vibe checker and indoor-grass-touching enthusiast, I love her very much.

  • AlpineSteakHouse [any]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    9 months ago

    Don’t let your politics prevent you from becoming happy. Chances are you’re not going to be the next Lenin so marrying a lib or a commie will have almost no material impact on your life.

    Unless they’re a literal fascist, then it’s just another thing you’d have in common.

  • lorty@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    9 months ago

    There are many who aren’t commies but still are good people. It doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker for you (unless they are fascist)

  • darkcalling@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    9 months ago

    It depends on what kind of person.

    I frankly wouldn’t be able to trust someone apathetic about politics in the increasingly repressive situation we face in the future in the west (or well in general, how can you look at police brutality against black people and shrug and say you simply don’t have an opinion, being apolitical in the US is tantamount to saying you’re comfortable with the status quo and can afford to not care. Which is different to be clear than being for progressive politics but checking out because of despair, mental health reasons, feeling a lack of progress, feeling it adds too much stress, etc. Like I get that, I don’t watch the bourgeois propaganda called news anymore because it’s just lies and it upsets me. I don’t need to know every development within the charade of domestic politics).

    A well-meaning Bernie-Sanders type that supports Cuba and doesn’t fully believe imperialist propaganda about the latest AES atrocities, sure. But someone who just kind of ignores your politics to be with you and who disagrees or “doesn’t have an opinion” (especially the latter as that’s just an empty head waiting to be filled and if they’re not letting you fill it, sooner or later their liberal friends, the state, bourgeois propaganda will) can just as easily wake up one day and think “oh shit, the news is right, I’m with a dangerous commie”.

    People don’t want to hear it because they think love conquers all or some such but the reality is couples fight, break up, grow apart for all kinds of reasons having nothing to do with the entire propaganda apparatus of state and nation-wide peer pressure bearing down on them. Sure you have the possibility of having to contend with his/her friends saying you’re an extremist and they should get away from you even if you’re not a communist simply because their friends take a disliking to you, but when you are a communist the chance is much higher and as the contradictions heighten it only gets worse.

    I guess I’d ask whether someone only tolerating that side of you by ignoring it won’t jump ship the moment their friends and society start pressing them too hard on what a horrible person you are because (propaganda). Fair weather love for anyone is easy, as is the first year or two where the passion is hot, its whether they have any tolerance for stormy seas after things cool a little that I guess I think matters.

    So having a good foundation not built on apoliticism of one partner for the other’s beliefs is I think important. They don’t have to be an ML but they can’t be the type of empty-headed liberal who frankly is just waiting to be turned into an anti-communist liberal who at the very least looks at you with contempt and thinks you’re delusional and irrational. Obviously if they’re empty-headed and are receptive to theory and education that’s one thing, being the type who gets stressed or looks distant at the mere mention of politics, theory, capitalism, exploitation is another.

  • SovereignState@lemmygrad.mlM
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    Marxist-Leninist politics is like 40% of who I am. I started studying it when I was a preteen, and it’s influenced my personality greatly ever since.

    toolongpost

    You will not see my eyes light up about anything quite like when I’m divulging some arcane secret regarding Trotskyists’ probable collaboration with Japanese Imperialists and Rudolf Hess in attempting to dissolve the Soviet Union, or such a smile on my face while explaining that at one point, the CPC was almost 9/10 ethnically Korean.

    This leaves me in a weird position. I have other interests, other hobbies. But I like reading, I like learning about this stuff. I devote a lot of time to it, and I love to talk about it. Few and far between do I encounter another Amerikan as interested merely in politics as I am, let alone one who’s not a CIA-agent-in-training, genuine fascist, or confrontational, perpetually-offended liberal with whom constructive discussion is impossible.

    I have dated open-minded people before, and they have all taken a fleeting interest in what I know or have read about. But it tires them. They typically didn’t like seeing me “obsess” over breaking international news. They’d ask to talk about something else, anything else, please.

    I also am so, so very tired of hearing “I just don’t think I know enough to talk to you about this”. I don’t enjoy feeling like I’m in some sort of position of intellectual power over my partner, and I always tried to approach these conversations as conversations and not, say, lectures, but when the conversation is over before it even starts…

    I don’t want to feel the need to radicalize my partner, I think. That all being said, if I wind up falling in love with someone who is not already a communist, then so be it. They will likely be ready and willing to talk with me about it, though. It’s a big part of who I am.

  • CamaradaD@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    9 months ago

    I’m about to marry one. At least he doesn’t lean to the right, even if he has some awful misconceptions about great many things.

  • lil_tank@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    9 months ago

    It’s important not to think that politics define individuals. In the end it’s all about the experiences one had in life. Unless someone has deep hateful bigotry or an absolute allegiance to an imperial core country (aka being a fascist) there’s no reason to not try dating and see how it works. Sometimes politics can be a point of strong disagreement and that’s not really good but I also think that any leftist must work on the “not being insufferable” skill

  • KlargDeThaym@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    9 months ago

    I’m currently dating a recovering liberal, so to say. She’s a very smart person, and her disillusionment with liberalism happened even before we met. I openly talk communism to her, and she tends to agree with most of the stuff.

  • cayde6ml@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    My almost girlfriend/future-wife was a slightly apolitical but firmly blue-democrat-type before and during the first few months/years of us talking, but over the years I’ve educated her to the point where she is also now a communist or at least communist-sympathizer.

    She is also very open to the idea of us one day moving to and living in Shanghai, China alongside my grandparents/family one day.