How to convince my girlfriend to be open about the discussion of political topics [duplicate]

Question

My girlfriend and I have been together for about 5 months. She tends to be more left leaning in her beliefs and I tend to be more centered.

Every now and then she'll ask me something related to something she agrees with politically (often to do with feminism/race etc), and I would end up disagreeing with her. The problem arises however, when I explain why I disagree, and she, instead of understanding we have different beliefs, gets angry that I don't agree with her, going so far as to completely ignore me for a whole day (we don't live together). On the flip side, I do everything in my power to have a civil discussion and to further the conversation.

As an example, here is a conversation we had recently.

Her : Did you hear that Kanye West thinks that Black Lives Matter is an excuse to whine?

Me : Yeah, I did.

Her : Outrageous, am I right??

Me : Well, I don't think it's an excuse to whine necessarily, but I don't exactly agree with all of BLM's actions.

Her : What, so you're a racist now?

Me : I didn't say that. I completely agree to the general sentiment that Black Lives, do in fact matter. What I don't agree with is how BLM has gone about trying to prove this point to the public, with some members assaulting police officers who had done nothing wrong and things of the like.

Her : You know what, forget it, sorry I ever brought it up.

She ignores me for a day before she talks to me again, still angry at me, but wants to talk to someone

How do I get her to accept that I may have different beliefs sometimes and that it is okay to disagree?

Answer 1

You can't get her to agree to disagree until you actually listen and understand why it upsets her enough that she needs to be away from you for a day after having these conversations. There may be something about your beliefs that makes her feel like you don't respect her as a person or that she can't accept about someone else because she feels like it makes them somehow less moral.

For example, let's turn the tables. If your parents were illegal immigrants (but she was unaware) and she staunchly believed that illegal immigrants were ruining the country - I think you'd agree with me that you'd have a difficult time having differing beliefs on this issue.

These strongly-held beliefs (if we are unwilling to change them) can't always be met with compromise... or, I should say, the compromise may have to be that you stop seeing each other entirely. This depends on the person and what they're willing to accept.

Some couples live happy lives together while having different religions (or non-beliefs) - some people could never marry someone who doesn't share theirs. It depends on how deeply the belief is held and how much you're willing to talk... or not talk - I'm sure that some couples have vastly differing political opinions and either have huge knock-down, drag-out fights or they ban all political discussion entirely.

But, if she can not accept your views for some reason, there's not necessarily any convincing you can do. Some people simply can not be in a long-term relationship without sharing their beliefs and there's no way to know which beliefs will cause an impasse and which will be "no big deal". Each person is different. As part of learning to be in a relationship, you have to ferret out these and decide which end of the spectrum they're on.

Actually, this reminds me of how OK Cupid finds out how well a pair of people are matched (based on my memory). They ask you hundreds of questions and they have you answer each in three parts:

• What is your answer (single selection, multiple choice)
• Answer(s) you accept (multiple selection, multiple choice)
• How important is it to you? (rank from: a little - somewhat - very)

For some questions, two people may have differing opinions about the answers to a question and what they want their potential partner to answer but if they rank it as not important, then OKCupid doesn't really look at it as hard... but if it's "very" important, those two will be less likely to be a match because it will be unlikely that they will be able to reconcile that issue if it comes up.

So, keep this in mind and communicate with your girlfriend. Learn from her why she is so upset by your feelings on these subjects and listen to why she feels the way she feels about it - without interjecting your own thoughts/feelings. If you can do this, you may find a solution or you may find that there is none.

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^{Full disclosure, my husband and I have been together for nearly 11 years and we met on OK Cupid, so I'm a fan of their system but I can't say that it's necessarily scientifically proven to work or anything like that.}