Molly McLaughlin CAPS #6

The intercultural relationship I am going to analyze fits with the topic I have been working on and researching through out the semester, Republican Americans.  According to Martin and Nakayama (2013), "who we choose to befriend is determined by both our individual preferences and by social, religious, and political contexts" (p. 382).  I consider myself a Democrat, I have only had the chance to vote in one major election but I feel strongly about many of my beliefs and opinions when it comes to politics.  When you are friends with someone who does not hold the same beliefs as you, it can become a rather big challenge in the relationship.  I constantly have to tell myself that this person believes what they believe and feel what they feel because it was how they were raised, its what they learned in their very conservative, Catholic and closed family life.  While its easy frustrating for me sometimes to talk politics with my friends, because several of them consider themselves Republican, but even harder than that is being engaged to a Republican.  My fiancé Tony is a political science major here at UNL and a Republican, this has been a rather important intercultural aspect in our relationship.  Challenges occur almost allows surrounding the topic of politics, but almost always we have very constructive conversations.  When we do discuss it, I focus on the attempt to open Tony’s eyes to some of my beliefs and he does the same with me.

 There are several stereotypes that surround being a Republican, especially in the Midwest. Having the relationship with him allows me to see that not all Republicans act and think the same way. Tony, while being raised Catholic and attending Catholic school most of his life, is actually not all that religious, he believes in free choice and that all Americans have the right to marry, he does not blame our President for everything that is going wrong with the Country and he certainly doesn’t believe that I am a communist.  I share many aspects of the same with Tony, we are both 22 year old, white college students who came from hard working class American families.  We are both the by product of a the melting pot we live it, him being Italian/Polish/Irish, myself being Irish/German both growing up in South Omaha and working hard to be where we are today.  With all of what I share with him, our political cultural differences have been interesting and have allowed both of us to grow into what we are today.  I actually met Tony when I was 14, we started dating when we were 17 though and didn’t realize that our differences in the political cultures we had would even be an issue one day.   According to Martin & Nakayama in 2013, “the static-dynamic dialectic suggests that people and relationships are constantly in flux, responding to various personal and contextual dynamics” (p. 400).  We will leave it at, the last Presidential Election was a test, we passed and are stronger because of our ability to share and communicate about our differences.  Every 4 years our communication skills will be tested, and now that we are getting married that will be something we deal with for the rest of our lives, but having that intercultural aspect in our relationship has allowed us to both expand on beliefs and opinions.