How Donald Trump helped my marriage
In our 20th year of marriage, my wife Stacey and I have stumbled upon an improbable catalyst that has made our relationship better than ever: Donald Trump. It’s true, of course, that just over a year ago, the same Trump was blamed for destroying marriages across America. Couples that once respected diversity of opinion found themselves, in light of the toxicity and tumult that surrounds him, simply unable to carry on without fantasizing about bashing each other’s heads in.
Yes, his election was also a death sentence to politically mixed marriages.
But now that these pro-vs.-anti Trump spouses have split up, we’re left with another cohort of couples, more aligned than ever.
Even a couple like James Carville and Mary Matalin, once famous for their divergent political views, are suddenly much less divided, as her decision to leave the Republican Party reflects — yet another bad omen for the school of “opposites attract.”
If my experience is any guide, Trump’s very outrageousness, and shared shock that anyone might support him, has helped millions of couples develop more meaningful and passionate bonds.
We don’t need Freudian, Jungian or Reichian therapy. Opposition to Trump is all it takes.
Long gone are the days when my wife screamed in horror seeing her name on mailers sent from George W. Bush. I blamed it on a few modest campaign contributions to moderate Republicans from our joint bank account and, non-defensively, reminded by my Democrat wife that I was proud to be an independent.
We both voted for President Obama, and while I subsequently voiced some disappointments, she stood by her man — him, not me.
Any political friction has since vanished. We now feel like newlyweds again.
There’s little danger these days of a dinner spent staring into space at a loss for conversation. Not when we have been treated to a daily diet of gripping images, stunning dialogue, wacky characters and shocking twists!
We laugh, cry and recoil in fear as the orange human wrecking ball careens out of control. We gather strength by donning our pink pussy hats, holding hands and taking to the streets in Washington on inauguration day and last month in the Women’s March down Central Park West.
The daily drama, mutual conviction and shared obsession (sorry — concern for the future of the republic) is a Cupid’s dream, a new lease of conjugal love and life.
Yes, my wife and I still quibble. One of us prefers to watch Anderson Cooper rather than Rachel Maddow. One might even be more inclined than the other to demand a disconnect from social media and issue an invite to a walk. One of us might ask the other to avoid the phallic images of Riverside Blvd., while the other has a strange dislike of the Central Park ice rink.
But there are bigger things at stake. When we try to escape the city, we are equally appalled at having to stare, like deer into headlights, at the Donald J. Trump sponsored section of the Saw Mill Drive. Like dictators in Third World countries, the name and image seem ubiquitous.
We two New Yorkers who used to consider Trump a clown best suited to the WWF madhouse and bankruptcy courts of Atlantic City, analyze the grim situation hoping it will soon be Mueller time.
We have both met him, on separate occasions, and written him off as a self-promoting con man. But jesters have a way of turning human history on its head.
Bill Maher retraced the steps that Trump has already taken in his evident drive to supplant democracy with a strongman regime: the attacks on the media, the nepotism, the corruption and now the military parades.
He’s yet to launch a war — but as he gets more desperate to cling to power while Republican sycophants and cynics enable and cower (how we miss the courageous Howard Baker of Watergate times, or even the decency of otherwise dopey Bush!), it could get worse before it gets better.
Alas, we see a weak Democratic party with no clear leader, and no independents with the needed bipartisan pull and deep pockets. We hear the same failed political consultants who will focus-group the hell out of the mid-term election and probably devise a lame slogan too weak to face down the fury of the beast.
We worry about that anticipated November Blue Wave; might we be bloodied, instead, in a sea of red? Together as never before, we fervently hope not.